Catskill High Peaks - Potential High Peaks

Potential High Peaks

Without the aforementioned "AND" ruling of the Catskill 3500 Club, the unnamed summit west of Thomas Cole (unofficially referred to as "Camel's Hump") sits within the 3,520-foot (1,070 m) contour and is more than the required distance from that peak's summit. No one has yet considered it a High Peak, however.

The inexact nature of past USGS surveys of the region have led to speculation that two 3,480-foot (1,060 m) summits in the western Catskills might prove to be High Peaks if measurements were redone with more modern technology. GPS readings on some summits have consistently suggested higher elevations than those given on the maps.

Mill Brook Ridge, the named summit of the pair, would displace neighboring Balsam Lake as the westernmost Catskill High Peak were any of the land in its summit contour found to exceed 3,500 feet. However, much of that land is as flat as the map suggests and the peak may come close to that height but not over it.

The other is "East Schoolhouse Mountain," the unofficial name for the higher of the two peaks on the ridge between Balsam Lake and neighboring Graham. Digital Elevation Modeling (DEM) data in some mapping software suggests its summit may just exceed the limit.

There is also a tiny 3,500-foot (1,100 m) contour indicated more than a half-mile east of West Kill's summit, right next to the drop into Diamond Notch, but exploration of that area has cast doubt on whether it actually exists.

Read more about this topic:  Catskill High Peaks

Famous quotes containing the words potential, high and/or peaks:

    Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves.
    Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)

    Brutes are deprived of the high advantages which we have; but they have some which we have not. They have not our hopes, but they are without our fears; they are subject like us to death, but without knowing it; even most of them are more attentive than we to self-preservation, and do not make so bad a use of their passions.
    —Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1755)

    On the secret map the assassins
    Cloistered, the Moon River was marked
    Near the eighteen peaks and the city
    Of humiliation and defeat ...
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)