This One's for Pete Desrochers: Rusk Mt

[NoTrace]

Mike -

I set out yesterday to climb Rusk and SW Hunter in honor of Pete Desrochers, and to sign his name in the register (they were his last two peaks). However, some planning, navigational, and foot problems got in the way of getting both peaks done yesterday.

My friend Rick and I started out from the parking lot on Spruceton Rd, intending to follow the same route that I, Mike Gebhard and Jason B followed back in March. Got to the sharp bend in the trail where the stream descends from Rusk and we started bushwhacking from there. It was a far different setting from early March - full-on, suffocating foliage limiting visibility, and not-so-friendly stuff, either: Stinging nettles everywhere, and witch hobble. No wonder nobody bushwhacks in the summer in the Catskills! Within half an hour, I was changing out of shorts and into long pants. Even so, the stinging nettles still stung through the light fabric.

I don't have a functioning printer at home, so I had emailed Rick the night before to print out the detailed map showing Rusk and SW Hunter, but he never opened the email. So all we had was his overall Catskills Trail Map, that didn't have the level of detail we needed, nor were we GPSed. That was a mistake, because w/out being able to consult the map, I thought, incorrectly, that the stream drained just west of the summit, when in fact, it's a little east of the summit. So, heading up to the right of the stream would, I thought, bring up close to the summit, when in fact, it would put us further away.

When we finally gained the summit ridge, you couldn't see caca because of all the foliage, so I guessed (incorrectly) that the higher ground was to the right, and we started off in that direction. It did climb, eventually, and we found ourselves on a high point - but it wasn't Rusk and there was no canister, although there was a small cairn and some surveyor's tape nearby. Confused, we started looking at the map to figure out what we had done wrong. Rick suggested that we were in fact EAST of the summit, and then it all made sense. The "summit" we were on was a 3500 foot bump east and north of the true summit - a long ways away.

We debated what to do, and finally decided to go back and hit the summit of Rusk, to the west, and call it a day rather than trying to push for both summits. So we backtracked and then found a well-trodden herd path that took us right to the summit. Took three hours and 20 minutes - no speed record there!

My foot was bothering me from an injury the week before, so we just decided to bag it and do SW Hunter another time. I gathered up some dirt and duff and put it in a ziplock back for Pete's wife, and we headed back down through the thick, suffocating witch hobble, stinging nettles, and the like, striking a SE bearing until we hit the descending stream, which we then followed all the way down - coming out almost exactly where we had started from.

This one's for Pete.

[mudrat]

Nice, Jim, nice...

[ScAtTeRbOnE]

Nice Report, wrong turn just means more time in the woods! I did the hike up Rusk on the same day as North Dome and Sherrill. The woods just below the ridge were thick even early in the spring. The herdpath on the ridge was VERY distinct and I didn't want to drop back down after we summitted, I wanted to follow that path as far is goes east on the ridge (East Rusk?), but alas it was sunset and we had to get back to the TH. Maybe another time? Hope you foot heals up quick!