Hiking on Slide Mountain

Booked a "moderate" hike thru Groupon for Slide Mountain, the highest peak in the NY Catskills in mid October, 2014.  By the first rocky hill climb, I was out of breath, my face was red, and I had removed my jacket and hat because I was sweating from the effort, even though a brisk wind was blowing and it was cold.   "I'm too old for this shit," I remanded myself.  What was I thinking?  It'd be easier to just roll back down the mountain into the parking lot and wait in the van until everyone was done.  There were 13 of us, and the guide insisted that had been the steepest part of the hike.  It evened out, but not for long, and then once again I was stepping up slopes and over rocky ledges.  It had rained on the drive up, and wet autumn leaves carpeted the forest slopes and made the footing more treacherous.  Glad I'd had the foresight to purchase trekking poles from Amazon just a few days before.  Everyone else, except me and two others took off effortlessly and reached the summit long before everyone else did.

The hiking group I was with claimed they'd serve gourmet meals and snacks:

We’ll serve (and carry!) gourmet meals & snacks while on adventure, food few people expect to see in the wilderness and delicious items of our own invention...  Vegetarian and vegan option available; we’re glad to accommodate allergies; restrictions

Maybe because several people had come because of Groupons, this is not what happened.  My gourmet meal was peanut butter on flat bread that I made myself.  The guide made a hot cocoa mix, which I only drank because it was so cold, but I wasn't happy to know that he had gotten the water from a stream and was boiling it in a beat up Teflon pot that looked toxic.  People just grabbed what they could out of cheese, sausage, bread, cookies and a nut/seed mix that everyone was dipping their bare hands into.  No thanks.  Glad I had brought my own snacks.  The only prepared item was Jiffy Pop.  Looked like everything had been leftovers from previous hikes.

As we neared the summit, a cold wind licked my face and hands, and it began to snow.  Various hardwood trees thinned out and were now mostly evergreens.  It was like wintertime.  Snow covered the path and leaves.  It was quite beautiful.