Ashokan High Point or High Point is a summit in the
Catskill Mountains
The Catskill Mountains, also known as the Catskills, are a physiographic province and subrange of the larger Appalachian Mountains, located in southeastern New York. As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined a ...
of
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
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* ...
. High Point is the loftiest part of a
massif
A massif () is a principal mountain mass, such as a compact portion of a mountain range, containing one or more summits (e.g. France's Massif Central). In mountaineering literature, ''massif'' is frequently used to denote the main mass of an ...
that includes the adjacent
Mombaccus Mountain,
Little Rocky and
South Mountain. The summit can be accessed via the Kanape Brook Trail, which ascends from Ulster County Road 42 to the saddle between High Point and Mombaccus. This trail, named for 19th-century farmer John Canape, was formerly a wagon track connected to the present-day Freeman Avery Road on the south side of the mountain, providing a route between Watson Hollow and
Samsonville in the days of the Catskills tanneries. The ''Gazetteer and Business Directory of Ulster County, N.Y. For 1871-2'' referred to the peak as "Shokan Point". It was also known as "Samson," after the Catskill tannery owner for whom
Samsonville was named, and is so identified on a 1942
United States Coast and Geodetic Survey
The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey ( USC&GS; known as the Survey of the Coast from 1807 to 1836, and as the United States Coast Survey from 1836 until 1878) was the first scientific agency of the Federal government of the United State ...
benchmark at the summit. Nowadays,
Samson Mountain is the name given to a nearby peak above the upper reaches of
Rondout Creek
Rondout Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed October 3, 2011 tributary of the Hudson River in Ulster and Sullivan counties, New York, United States. It rises on Roc ...
.
A lesser summit below the main peak affords an expansive view of the area. It has been called "Little Ashokan," "Round Mountain," "Ashokan Cobble" or "Samson's Nose"
).
References
Mountains of Ulster County, New York
Mountains of New York (state)
{{UlsterCountyNY-geo-stub