Hunter Mountain summit autumn
— — the week the maples beat the sky.
Not only on a wall.
“The summit of Hunter Mountain, second-highest peak in the Catskills at just over four thousand feet, with a steel fire tower rising another sixty feet above the spruce. From the top of the tower the view runs from the Devil's Path ridges south to the Blackhead Range east and into the Hudson Valley beyond. The first week of October usually pulls the sugar maples to their hardest copper, with the higher spruce holding green underneath. The trail up from Spruceton Road covers about three and a half miles, climbing roughly twenty-two hundred feet. from the studio
Hunter Mountain summit autumn, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Hunter Mountain rises to 4,040 feet in the northern Catskills of Greene County, New York, making it the second-highest peak in the range after Slide Mountain. The summit sits within Catskill Park and is crowned by a 60-foot steel fire tower, originally erected in 1917 and rebuilt in 1953. The mountain is part of the Devil's Path / Blackhead viewshed and is reached most commonly by the Spruceton Trail from the south, a roughly 3.5-mile climb gaining about 2,200 feet. The Hunter Mountain ski area occupies the northern slopes.
The northern Catskills usually reach peak foliage in the first week of October, roughly a week ahead of the southern Hudson Valley. Sugar maples on the lower slopes turn the loudest copper and orange, while red maples lean scarlet and the red spruce near the summit hold green underneath. Cold clear mornings after a hard overnight low give the sharpest colour. From the fire tower platform the view spans the Devil's Path ridges to the south and the Blackhead Range to the east, with the Hudson Valley flatlands beyond.
The standard hike from the Spruceton Road trailhead near West Kill follows an old jeep road for most of the climb to the summit, with the fire tower and a small observer's cabin at the top. Round trip typically runs four to six hours. The fire tower is open to the public when conditions allow; the observer's cabin operates seasonally as a small interpretive site staffed by volunteers from the Catskill Center. Parking at the Spruceton trailhead fills early on October weekends, and the upper trail can hold ice into late spring.