Lackawanna County High Point Trip Report

Date: April 19, 2002
Author: Dan Case

one area in Moosic Mountains 2.25 miles west of Lake Quinn (2,323 ft)

I had passed through some storm cells near Port Jervis on the way here, and noticed as I approached the exit that some of the cloud ahead was assuming a quasi-nimbus character. Still, the storms seemed to have passed for the day. Mike Schwartz's directions are accurate up to a point. It's when you get to the SR 1012 turnoff that the signs or lack thereof creates some confusion. I found, at about 3 miles or so down Cortez Road, Living Water Road forking off to the left, which is also signed as 1012. (If you miss this, you can also get to 1012 by taking the last turn left before you cross the county line.)

A mile or so down this you reach a three-way intersection, where the road going off to the left heads uphill and has a sign saying trucks of 10.5 tons or more are prohibited. Take it. It seems to be called (surprise) Mountain Road. After some early switchbacks, you will reach the indicated dirt road on the right at about a mile, right where Mountain takes a sharp left turn, opposite a house. This leads into state game lands, clearly marked with paint blazes and appropriate signs. The woods up here consist of distinctly shorter trees, bringing to mind higher-elevation ridge lines in New York that I have hiked.

Mike's description of the quality of this road out where it meets the power line easement was enough to convince me to bring a high-clearance four-wheel drive vehicle for this, but it turned out that a regular vehicle could do this stretch easily enough with a driver not too squeamish about taking a few bumps and splashes. However, the road is now gated where it leaves the power line. You could drive around it, but the signs do state clearly that motorized vehicles are banned beyond this point except for those with disability plates or hang tags transporting disabled hunters. There is plenty of room to park here, however.

I got out to read the game-commission regulations in case any of it was relevant. I noticed that there was a bit of rain falling, thunder rolling on high, and the clouds seemed to be moving in a direction that suggested it was only going to get worse. So, I made the decision to sit tight in the car for a while, and true enough, as I stood outside to put my rainshell on, it began to pour and storm. It continued in this vein for about ten minutes. As it began to let up, it occurred to me that the weather conditions were about right for hail. And what do you know? It did. The car seemed as if under assault from an artillery battalion that had been reduced to using pebbles for a few minutes. It was really coming down. Some of the ice pellets, when I was able to check them later, were about three-quarters of an inch in diameter.

I emerged as some blue and sunshine began to show through again, feeling quite proud of myself for this little display of prudence. With Mike's report stuffed into my rainshell pocket, I began to set out for the crest, which didn't seem too far away. But it was. At about the furthest point visible from the gate, the road does indeed begin to level out and the forest changes from short, immature beech-birch to a stunted, brushy cover of generally below eight feet in height that has an above-treeline feel to it. It seems to me that there was heavy and repeated burning of this ridge over the years, and not only from the bits of charcoal that can still be found in the ground. There are areas of the Shawangunks with such a history that show similarly low-growing forests. There are thus some stunning views out over the southern Wayne County panhandle to the east. And it keeps getting just a little bit higher. You have to go some distance along it, in fact to a little bit past height of land, about 0.4 mile from the gate, to where you find the woods road mentioned by Mike.

It's actually pretty good and can easily be followed. I'd say after another 0.2 mile, after getting noticeably overgrown (however, you could still drive this if you were allowed to) it just up and ends in a clearing. This is where the men get separated from the boys. You can see Mike's game paths beginning from the end of the clearing. Both lead to the slight rise with some higher trees you can see ahead and hope is the highpoint. While their treads can usually be clearly followed, and the rocks (perhaps placed there?) often give them away, the shrubs here grow over them at thigh, chest and sometimes head level. You will have to push through in quite a few places. I would definitely think long and hard again before doing this one in shorts. Once you do, you will eventually see the swampy area in a depression next to the tree copse that crests this area. You will also have no trouble seeing the true highpoint rise beyond it. How you get to it is problematic. My solution was just to work my way down to the swamp and walk right across it; you may prefer to work your way around the edge, which is a little harder but can be done with less wetting of feet. In any event, the paths in the immediate area of the swamp that might allow you to circumnavigate it are very densely overgrown and of dubious reliability. Once you get out on the way to the true highpoint, you'll find at first that it's easy due to a clearing just above the pond, but then as you get to the group of trees that mark the highpoint, the brush will become much less penetrable. Choose the path of least resistance wherever you can find it.

And then guess what? Amid the trees it becomes obvious that the highest ground is still a little further ahead. I groaned as I headed once more into the brush, dear friends, once more into the brush. I expected a very tight, overgrown HP with no views and/or certainty about whether I had hit the exact highest ground. I was wrong. After thirty feet or so, the vegetation abated and I was at another low, almost bare, clearing, the undeniable highest point of Lackawanna County, the x marking the spot elevation.

I breathed a sigh of relief and took in the view, such as it was, as I noticed that another rain cloud from across the valley seemed to be working its way over here with a few advance teams of droplets finding their way to the ground. It was exhilarating to have reached this highly difficult-to-access point, but doing so nonetheless brings to mind the reported first thought of a Japanese climber upon reaching the summit of Everest: How to get down.

I didn't waste much time beginning to get back. I found some better game paths that led back to the same clearing and swamp edge after some scratchy moments. In the swamp, rainfall was becoming more evident and more persistent. Thunder rolled. The cloud from across the valley had now swallowed up half the sky. I set myself the task of getting back to the main road before the looming storm hit. This time I worked my way along the edge of the swamp. As I got back to the corner where I had first reached it, lightning stabbed across the sky and the rain grew a little more intense. I began trying to speed things up as much as I could. Finally, after several hundred more feet and the lightning developing a bluish tinge, I yielded to safety, found a group of trees slightly higher than I was tall to squat beneath, and a flat rock on which to do so. Pulling my hood over my head, I prepared for the experience of being caught out on an open ridge top during an electrical storm. I have visited other CHPs in similar weather conditions (CT Hartford, NY Chemung) but this was by far the worst. Fortunately (or perhaps not), I have had to duck weather in similar situations once before, so I didn't get too panicky. The rain grew very heavy but fortunately it never started hailing. The lightning got pretty close at one point (I counted a mere two seconds between flash and boom) but the center of the squall never quite went to directly overhead. As it moved away, the rain kept coming pretty good even though the sun had peeked through. I finally decided to take my chances with it and got up, not having any idea of my exact location but finding paths in the general direction of the main road through lower, more passable brush which I trotted through. I used as a landmark a pine tree, about the only tall one around here, near the end of the woods road (you can use this too if you get lost in this brush). Somehow I actually got on the far side of it and only found the road again by circling back, again sort of unintentionally.

Once I did return to the main road I began to breathe easier. The storm seemed to have headed off to attack Scranton, and although rain was still falling it was now scattered enough to take my hood down as I loped back down to my car. As I got in to it and took off my rainshell, it began to fall a little more intensely again.