Quadricentennial Challenge
Catskills Live! Trails & Wilderness Association
issues a challenge to all — venture forth and seek all 15
Quadricentennial Challenge geocaches. Go to many great places
throughout Ulster County — visit the shores of the Hudson,
feel the cool air in an historic cement mine, enjoy our small
parks, ride on our rail trails, summit two Catskill peaks, and
savor the breath-taking view from Gertrude's Nose in Minnewaska
State Park Preserve. Bask in our county's treasures with family and
friends, exercise your body, and build lasting memories. Over 100
specially minted commemorative Quadricentennial geocoins were
released from 15 Challenge geocaches set up in 2009 in celebration
of the 400th anniversary of the exploration of New York State by
Henry Hudson. Congratulations to Joe The Mailman, the first person
to complete all 15 caches! Funding for the Challenge was provided
by Ulster County and the Hudson River Valley
Greenway.
Tremper Mountain
At 2740 feet above mean sea level, Tremper Mountain is one of the
lower peaks in the New York State Catskill Forest Preserve. Much of
the hike up from the Old Route 28 parking area follows the
Phoenicia Trail, initially as a rocky, wide, unpaved road. After a
while, the roadway turns into a pleasant trail.
The elevation gain to the summit is about 2,000 feet and is
strenuous in places. A fire tower at the top affords excellent
views of surrounding mountains and valleys, including the Burroughs
Range, Ashokan Reservoir, Mount Tobias, and Black Dome Mountain,
making the 3-mile hike up well worth while. Alternately, the summit
may be approached from the end of Jessup Road in Willow. This
moderately strenuous route is about 8 miles round trip, but gains
only 1640 feet over a longer distance than from Old Route 28.
A Trek Back in Recent Geologic Time
The forested and sculpted landscape you hike up through is the
product of hundreds of thousands of years of erosion by streams and
glaciers. The waters of the Esopus Creek at the base of this hike
have flowed to the Hudson River through the eons, helping to deepen
it for exploration by Henry Hudson and others.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to hike along
the bottom of a lake? Near the end of the most recent glaciation, a
huge glacial ice wall blocked the outlet of the Esopus Creek in the
vicinity of the Ashokan Reservoir. This high ice dam was part of a
massive valley glacier that extended between Overlook and High
Point Mountains and beyond, effectively blocking pre-glacial Esopus
Creek drainage. This resulted in different levels of glacial lakes
being impounded behind this ice dam, changing as the ice sheet
melted. Two of the former glacial lake levels reflect former outlet
elevations that may be visited today. Glacial Lake Shandaken, at
1330 feet msl, is discussed in NYS Quad Challenge - High Point
Mountain. The oldest recognized glacial lake level was at 1830 feet
msl — Glacial Lake Peekamoose. This lake drained westward
through the Peekamoose gap and was backed up throughout the main
stem of the Esopus Creek and many of its tributary valleys,
including the Stony Clove and Beaver Kill valleys.
Imagine as you hike up from the Esopus Creek that you are
climbing upward through almost 1,100 feet of ice cold water. You
break the water surface at 1830 feet msl and proceed upward another
910 feet to the treeless summit of Tremper Mountain. Your view
would have been of an expansive glacial lake with distant mountain
peaks. You can see on the map that you would have been on a rocky
elongate peninsula that came close to being an island. By
comparison, this glacial lake would have dwarfed the relatively
small Ashokan Reservoir that we see today. It is likely that
icebergs floated in the lake, having broken off from melting
mountain glaciers. Relict steep-walled cirques in the Stony Clove
– Edgewood area whisper of these bygone glaciers. Other
sediments in nearby Edgewood speak of another massive ice wall
pressed against the Stony Clove notch. As you stand on the
northwestern tip of the peninsula, listen and look northeast across
the lake surface into the notch to see meltwaters from this glacier
thundering through the notch only briefly until flowing into
Glacial Lake Peekamoose. This was an exciting time some 14,000
years ago.
Before you head back down the trail, be sure to notice
skull-shaped Mount Tobias Island to the southeast, projecting some
720 feet above the surface of Glacial Lake Peekamoose. The little
island to the west of Mount Tobias Island measured 1,380 feet long
by 720 feet wide. It projected 80 feet above the surface of Glacial
Lake Peekamoose.
The Mountainside Today
The
Esopus Creek is near the base of this trail. If you take a close
look in the creek bottom, you may see soft, finely-layered clays
that were deposited year-after-year in Glacial Lake Peekamoose.
Floodwaters regularly lift cobbles and boulders from the creek
bottom and suspend these clays in chocolate-milk appearing water,
thus resulting in a water quality problem for New York City.
Lots of rocky ledges are seen along the trail on the way up. If
you're lucky you might see a black bear as it disappears into the
forest.
Two lean-tos are available for camping for those who wish to
enjoy a night out. Look closely at the photograph of a trailside
spring. This is typical of Catskill Mountain springs where water
flows downward through vertical fractures in sandstone bedrock,
only to surface along the hillslope when an underlying shale bed is
encountered.
Animals seen or heard when setting this cache up included a
red eft, a brown creeper, a great horned owl, juncos, a cat bird,
and a black bear. Rattlesnakes have been reported on Tremper
Mountain.
The fire tower may be climbed for views, but the top portion is
locked.
The Cache
Access to the cache is from Old Route 28 or from the end of Jessup
Road in Willow. An established parking area is present along Old
Route 28. Parking permission needs to be requested along Jessup
Road. Northeastern Catskill Trails Map 41 published by the NY-NJ
Trail Conference is recommended. The cache is a 2-liter cylindrical
poly bottle hidden along the trail a short distance from the fire
tower. The cache is filled with kid-friendly items and, initially,
three NYS Quadricentennial Challenge geocoins designed to travel
throughout the world.
This geocache was approved by the New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation.
Parking
Public parking is available along Old Route 28 (County Route
40; also know as The Plank Road) at the edge of the hamlet of
Phoenicia in the Town of Shandaken.
Please Cache In and Trash Out!