Columbus Day weekend is the traditional end of the high season in the Catskills, and it's the end of our Catskill Fire Towers badge season as well. So get outside, enjoy the glorious weather, and earn your badge. If you need a few ideas for outdoor activities -- including fire tower hikes -- check out our special Lark in the Park section, with its calendar of over 50 guided Catskills activities, many happening this weekend. -- Julia Reischel
Left: Our brand new Catskill Fire Towers badge. The last day to earn yours is October 14, 2013.
Badges: They're not just for Boy Scouts anymore. You, too, can get out, do neat stuff, and earn badges for it. (And bragging rights.)
The Watershed Post is proud to present our 2013 Catskills badge: The Catskill Fire Towers Badge.
It's a real-deal embroidered badge that you can sew on a sash, a backpack, or your favorite pair of Carhartts. We're partnering with Morgan Outdoors in Livingston Manor to get them to all stalwart hikers who make the climb to one or more of the five Catskills fire towers this hiking season.
Once upon a time, 23 steel fire towers dotted the high peaks of the Catskills. They were staffed by fire tower observers, who scanned the horizon for smoke and filled their downtime with shimmying up the steep steel struts, keeping tame bears, and sharing space with pet snakes. (Those stories and other fire tower tales are collected in Fire Towers of the Catskills, by Marty Podskoch, published by Purple Mountain Press.)
Today, thanks to the efforts of many volunteers of the Catskill Fire Tower Project, five of the fire towers remain in the Catskills today. They are:
- Balsam Lake Mountain in Hardenburgh (3,723′)
- Red Hill in Denning (2,990′)
- Tremper Mountain in Shandaken (2,740′)
- Overlook Mountain in Woodstock (3,140′)
- Hunter Mountain in Hunter (4,040′)
All of them command fantastic views of the hills and are open to the public.
To hike them, it helps to have a map. Lucky for you, the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference just released a line of maps of the hikes to each of the five fire towers. All of them will be available at Morgan Outdoors this summer. You can also get them straight from the NYNJTC on their website. Here are links to each fire tower map: Balsam Lake; Hunter; Overlook; Red Hill; and Tremper.
Earning the Catskill Fire Towers badge is simple, but it requires a little elbow grease:
- Hike one (or more!) Catskills fire towers between May 11 and October 14, 2013
- Log your hike on a Morgan Outdoors Fire Tower Passport (see below)
- Turn in your passport at Morgan Outdoors by 6pm on Monday, October 14
The first 100 fire tower Passport hikers get a badge. They also get entered into a drawing to win prizes, including Nikon Travelite Binoculars, a Kelty Day Pack, and (every hiker's dream) lots of Darn Tough Socks.
So are you still sitting there? Get out and hike those hills!
(And if you missed our 2012 badge, you can still earn it by clicking here.)
To download the Morgan Outdoors Fire Tower Passport, click here:
PASSPORT Front and Back Five Fire Tower Hikes 2013 (Morgan Outdoors)
