To mark its 50th anniversary in 2019, the Catskill Center published a book, Natural Resources: 50 Stewards of the Catskills, which celebrates 50 stewards of the Catskills, chosen for their contributions to the region’s environment, economy and culture. Heather Rolland is one of those stewards.

“I’ve gotten hypothermia three times — once was in July.”

Heather Rolland has been known to hike all the Catskill High Peaks in a ball gown.

Admittedly, she’s done it to raise money for farmers affected by Hurricane Irene. But she didn’t need much encouragement to get out there again recently on a cold winter day. Rolland moved to the Catskills for a guy – her husband Tommy – and jokes that she moved for his “proximity to trail heads.”

Until that point, she had been “a fairweather hiker.” She had never bushwhacked before or done any particularly demanding hikes. But early in their relationship, she and Tommy joined the Catskill 3500 Club, an organization that pro-motes hiking in the region by requiring aspirants to climb all 35 Catskill Mountain peaks over 3,500 feet in elevation, and then four of those again in winter.

About half of those peaks have established trails, the rest are wild and trail-less. All are quite difficult. Only when you summit all 39 climbs do you become a full-fledged member of the Club. Between 2007 and 2008, they hiked every one of the peaks. “There were times when we didn’t bag the peak, when we got totally beaten up, scratched up, filthy, injured, clothing ripped, stuff missing.”

But, Rolland shrugs it off. “It’s just part of the experience. Failure along the way is absolutely part of the experience.” And they did succeed. So they did it all over again in winter, “because that’s what crazy people do,” Rolland says. They’re not alone. The Catskill 3500 Club offers a winter patch for those who climb all 35 peaks in the ice and snow. And Rolland was hooked. She went back to the beginning and did them all again, alone.

“I see hiking leadership as kind of a spiritual service to the community, to be the conduit for other people to have these really profound experiences.”

“In terms of the responsibility of getting myself into the woods and out again safely, I wanted to do it on my own,” she explains. Once, midway through her solo round, she experienced summit disorientation on Doubletop. “It’s a psychological thing that happens sometimes. I wasn’t lost. But I panicked. It had rained the night before. I was climbing through soggy vegetation. It was very misty, cloudy. I couldn’t see anything. The GPS reading did not agree with the compass reading, and I was terrified. I ran around in circles for a while. My GPS tracking from that day looked like a plate of spaghetti.”

She grounded herself by sitting down, eating food, drinking water, calling Tommy and listening to his voice on voicemail. Finally, when she was calm, she got out her compass and map and found her way back down. Rolland says, “It was a really good life lesson and I’m glad it hap-pened. It has made me a much safer and better hiker.”

Some people think it’s not possible to get too lost in the Catskills, that these mountains are gentle and hiking is less rigorous than in the Adirondacks. Rolland bristles at that notion. “You’ll hear that comparison with the Adirondacks: We’re not as big, we’re not as tall, we’re not as dangerous, we’re not as remote.” Maybe true, she says. “But people radically underestimate the difficulty of the trails, the conditions, and the challenges. You can easily get lost when there are no trails.

There are tricky weather conditions that are remarkably Catskillian – forty degrees and drizzling. My first Catskill hike was in June and when I got to the summit there was freezing rain. I’ve gotten hypothermia three times – once was in July.”

Why do people do it, some might wonder. “Because you just grow into loving it at this crazy deep level that is visceral, almost mystical,” Rolland says. “It’s a very special thing.” The Catskill 3500 Club was founded in 1962. It took decades to reach 1,000 members. Five more years to reach 2,000. Then only two years to reach over 3,000 members. “The Club’s popularity has exploded. People are hungry to collect experiences, to capture Instagrammable moments. That might be part of it. If they get through it, it really lights them up, turns them on, and they become ambassadors for the Club.”

Rolland is the Catskill 3500 Club’s president, and an evangelist of sorts. She has led many hikes for the Club, the DEC, and for Lark in the Park. She says, “I see hiking leadership as kind of a spiritual service to the community, to be the conduit for other people to have these really profound experiences.” Her obsession with the Catskills does not stop with the 3500 Club. Over the past several years, she has been a fire tower steward for Hunter Mountain. For five years, she was a volunteer for the New York New Jersey Trail Conference, maintaining The Devil’s Path on Indian Head. She has personally solo-stained “more lean-tos than anyone else in the Catskills,” carrying a ladder and a can of paint out into the woods herself.

She has also taken on a volunteer service agreement for three state forests outside of the Blue Line where she is responsi-ble for thirteen miles of trail maintenance. This involves clearing debris, weed whacking, clipping branches, and clearing water bars. She is in the woods every single day, no matter how wet, rainy, cold, or miserable. “The forest just wins you over,” she says. “Something fundamental hap-pens with the differences in ecosystem as you gain elevation. When you step out of deciduous hardwood, mixed hardwood forest, which domi-nates the lower areas, and you step into the balsams, it is overpowering. You don’t get that anywhere else. You have to go hike a High Peak.”

More about Heather can be found on her website / her blog / on Instagram / on Facebook

Natural Resources: 50 Stewards of the Catskills

The newest publication of the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, Natural Resources: 50 Stewards of the Catskills, was created in 2019 to honor the Catskill Center’s 50th anniversary. The book celebrates 50 stewards of the Catskills, chosen for their contributions to the Catskills’ environment, economy and culture.

Get your copy here.