Hiking Devil's Path

I have had a wonderful trip to Devil’s path in upstate New York. We hiked the “classic” eastern section which is usually considered to be more difficult. There are four peaks spanning across the entire 12 miles trail, Indian Head, Twin Mountains, Sugarload and Plateau.

The day started at 5:30am for people living in the city as the drive from New York city to the trail is around 2 hours, and around 1 hour and a half from the place I live.

We started around 9:45 after parking one car at the other end of the trail. I felt a bit sore on my legs from the tennis practice the day before, but the excitement of hiking this really scenic trail quickly makes me forget that. It didn’t take us too long the get to the top of the first peak, aka. Indian Head because the first section was mainly even terrain. The height is around 3500ft which is quite remarkable.

We didn’t stop too much before we were marching to the second peak, aka Twin Mountains. I couldn’t exactly remove how we got there because we were pretty tired as the steep ascending followed by descending was quite challenging. We had to take several water breaks, and a relatively long lunch break.

We almost ate everything we got and at around 1:30, we started conquering the third peak. It is not the hardest and we even didn’t realized we were at the peak before moving too far ahead.

The last peak was considered most challenging because we were pretty tired after previous 3 peaks and also we have to ascend around 1200ft in around 1 miles, followed by 2 miles easy plateau(I guess this is where its name comes from). Finally, descend around 1 miles until destination. People were running out of water. Luckily, a quarter miles from the hollow, a good spring can be found. Someone brought a water filter so everyone’s bottle is filled.

This is the hardest hike. Some people in the group had to go very slow since our knees were almost giving in. The scene from the top of the plateau was just amazing. As can be seen in the picture, you can climb up to a big rock which can give you a really good view of the whole area. But finally after multiple rests breaks, we reached the destination. It felt so rewarding!