Strapped into climbing harnesses and braced against the chilly wind, my daughter and I peer over the ledge to track a pair of peregrine falcons – the fastest animals on earth – swooping and gliding on the thermals. We’re so high up on this section of a via ferrata, a protected climbing route with fixed steel cables, that it’s us who have the bird’s eye view. Beyond is a palette of green stretching as far as we can see, a breathtaking view of deciduous and evergreen forest and mountains that few outside New York are really aware exist. It’s certainly not what most people imagine when they picture America’s Empire State.
My family are spending a weekend in the Catskill Mountains, a 1,000-square-mile subrange of the Appalachians just west of the Hudson River Valley, a couple of hours’ drive northwest of New York City. Our temporary home is the Mohonk Mountain House, a huge Victorian castle-style hotel built in 1869 as a getaway for New York City’s glitterati (famous guests have included John D Rockefeller and the Clintons) and whose 85 miles of private hiking trails include the Pinnacle Ledge, which my daughter Scout and I are precariously negotiating.
