View of the Catskills from the Hudson Highlands
The best north-facing views the author has seen in the Hudson Highlands are from Storm King Mountain, Beacon Mountain, and Bull Hill. These are along the northern escarpment of the Hudson Highlands, and they look directly down onto Newburgh and the Walkill Valley. A view of the Catskills is also possible from various places in Harriman State Park, and the Sterling Forest Fire Tower.
The Shawangunk Ridge cut across the field of vision directly in front of the Catskills, a low but massive, dark, flat ridge. A rock outcrop forms a horizontal white stripe near the top.
Behind them, a little lighter in color due to the haze, the peaks of a large mountain range loom, steep in some places and rounded in others. Slide Mountain is the first to catch the eye, a head taller than the rest, with its distinctive steep eastern slope and gradual western ridge. Its neighboring peaks surround it like waves on a choppy sea: Wittenburg, Cornell, the so-called Bushwhack Range, Peekamoose and Table Mountains.
On the right, further to the northeast, and lighter in color in haze, the sharp notches of the Devil's Path range stand out against the sky. From right to left are Indian Head Mountain, a notch, Twin Mountain, deeper Pecoy Notch, Sugarloaf Mountain, still deeper Mink Hollow, and Plateau Mountain. West of here, the range twists and turns and from this angle devolves into lumps.
Scanning to the left, passing back across Slide Mountain and its neighbors, a few more distant peaks trail off to the west, receding into the flat continental vastness Allegheny Plateau: Doubletop, Grahm and Balsam Lake Mountains.
Viewed from the small sun-baked craggy scrub-oak ridges of the Hudson Highlands, the bigger, colder Catskills covered in spruces, firs, and lush northern hardwoods are exotic and mysterious, especially after coming from the city. To look upon them without desire and longing seems superhuman.
The Shawangunk Ridge cut across the field of vision directly in front of the Catskills, a low but massive, dark, flat ridge. A rock outcrop forms a horizontal white stripe near the top.
Behind them, a little lighter in color due to the haze, the peaks of a large mountain range loom, steep in some places and rounded in others. Slide Mountain is the first to catch the eye, a head taller than the rest, with its distinctive steep eastern slope and gradual western ridge. Its neighboring peaks surround it like waves on a choppy sea: Wittenburg, Cornell, the so-called Bushwhack Range, Peekamoose and Table Mountains.
On the right, further to the northeast, and lighter in color in haze, the sharp notches of the Devil's Path range stand out against the sky. From right to left are Indian Head Mountain, a notch, Twin Mountain, deeper Pecoy Notch, Sugarloaf Mountain, still deeper Mink Hollow, and Plateau Mountain. West of here, the range twists and turns and from this angle devolves into lumps.
Scanning to the left, passing back across Slide Mountain and its neighbors, a few more distant peaks trail off to the west, receding into the flat continental vastness Allegheny Plateau: Doubletop, Grahm and Balsam Lake Mountains.
Viewed from the small sun-baked craggy scrub-oak ridges of the Hudson Highlands, the bigger, colder Catskills covered in spruces, firs, and lush northern hardwoods are exotic and mysterious, especially after coming from the city. To look upon them without desire and longing seems superhuman.
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