west mountain

on saturday around 2pm bryan, ben and myself left my parent's house and drove to the parking area on 9w just passed the bear mountain park access. signs at the trail head to doodletown said it was closed. we stood on the road where it crossed a swelling hudson tributary. a snake swam up stream out from under the bridge. after consulting the map we drove back up to the palisades circle and out towards seven lakes drive which turned out to be closed due to flood damage. we continued down the parkway to the anthony wayne recreational area. about five or six cars were parked at the edge of a gigantic parking lot. we parked and walked into the woods at a trail head next to the unmanned booth on the park entrance road. a turkey vulture flew into a tree next to the trail. ben walked ahead and bryan and i stayed behind to shoot it with our cameras. bryan put his camera away and took a twisted tea bottle out of my pack. bryan drank the tea and hiked. we took a right at the first fork onto the beechy bottom bike trail. a snake or rodent moved around in the grass next to us. we heard it move up into the bushes. i told them we were walking the wrong direction. we turned around walked in the other direction. back at the junction we took a red trail up an immediately steep grand and then a quick flat ground. from there it was gradual and rocky hike a long a ridge. we stopped and had more teas on a rock from which you could see the ridges to the west and bear mountain to the north. we hiked the rest of the way to the west mountain summit and ben and i opened the last two twisted teas and drank them. we saw one guy at the shelter. he said the shelter was a shit hole. the whole trip took about 5 hours, including driving. we maybe hiked 3 miles.