Mohonk Mountain House

A day at Mohonk: a lake among the cliffs, Sky Top Tower, and the famous Lemon Squeeze rock scramble — with an easier route for anyone who’d rather skip the tight squeezes.

Mohonk Mountain House is a Victorian castle of a hotel on a mountain lake in the Shawangunks. We come for the day: walk around Lake Mohonk, through the gardens and the little gazebos perched over the cliffs, and climb to the stone Sky Top Tower for views over the Hudson Valley and the Catskills.

The main event is the Labyrinth and Lemon Squeeze: a route through a jumble of giant boulders with ladders, crawl-throughs, and a crack you shuffle through sideways. The whole day is about 5.5 miles (9 km) with roughly 1,000 ft of climbing. Good to know: once you are in the Labyrinth, there is no turning back, only forward and up. Anyone who isn’t into that walks up to the tower on the carriage paths and meets us at the top.

We leave early in the morning and get back late in the evening; entry to the grounds is by day pass, bought in advance. The scramble is harder than average: you will use your hands, need decent shoes, and should be calm about heights and tight spaces. The walking route suits almost everyone. The scramble is open roughly from late March to late October.