South Beacon

November 2011.

Before Andrew came home he said he wanted to hike when he did come home. I thought we would hike Friday or Saturday after thanksgiving. On Friday we played an early morning round of Disc Golf and was home by 10 am. Then I went to work and ended up in Port Chester. Outside on the back patio Bryan said he wanted to hike Beacon. The next day at 10am I texted Andrew "Awaken shit why do we can shit." At 10:30 am Sleeps in shit with Horizen Pimps." and at 10:46 am I texted him "Apples and oranges." At 12:43 pm Andrew texted me that he was "Coming to your home." By 1 pm we were driving on the Taconic. Route 9 at the base of Breakneck Ridge is endlessly lined with cars. The Beacon trailhead lot is full too but an empty spot or two is easy to find. Andrew has something called a cheeba chew which breaks apart like softer tootsie roll. Split it three ways. People file out of the woods as a couple and a dog follows me up the metal staircase and Andrew and Al are just behind them. I let them pass at the top of the stairs and we are just behind them when they stay on the north Beacon trail. We fork left off the white trail on the yellow trail and Andrew and I crack our first beers. Ahead in the leaves I find a heavy metal lamp shade that my head fits inside. I put that on my head. Then we look at the Cherokee that ran off the trail a long time ago. The junk and the service road-sized paths into the woods emerged from a neighboring property. The trail kinks to the left and into some more untouched looking woods. We stopped and had a baby carrot. The leaves were noisy. We crossed a stream, walked through mud.


 So when I'm walking up to this woman the beer is soaking my pockets. She's looking at my pockets and I ask how she's doing. And the beer spills all in my pockets. So I keep walking and the dogs are running around. Anyway I'm freaking out when this dog doesn't stop following us. Then the dog pounces at something and chases after it and we never see it again. It was a boxer.

"If we keep going you will like it more."

"Does this loop around?"

On South Beacon in the dark. The lights of the river town below shined bright in the dark valley. 9 total miles. Andrew and Alison were hungry. I had a sandwich on a bagel. I let them have a bite. They bought chicken parms at the appalachian gas station. Did not see them the next day. They flew back to Colorado.

Granite Peak, Snoqualmie, Wa we left from mercer island around 8:30am, after eating breakfast, gassing up and buying some bottled water. arrive at a ranger station in Snowqualmie around 9:20am and are on the trail hiking around 9:40am. the forest was dark and wet. the trail was very easy to walk on. the grade was moderate with plenty of switchbacks. there were lots of huge pine trees and some dead ones still stood quite tall. after an hour or so we started crossing some cleared out gaps in forest. slides. we crossed three or four slides. we emerged onto open meadow. a few pines stuck out of the hillside. the meadow was widespread and provided copious huckleberries. after a mile or so we started tasting a different berry, maybe bear berry. i picked constantly while attempting to keep up my pace. there was a deer i guess. we reached a bowl area, took photos, wandered off the trail briefly. we hiked on the trail along a ridge above the bowl. the trail winds up a valley into a wider bowl and where the watchtower is visible. the trail winds some more between a few large mossy pine trees. short switch backs take you up to the summit. clouds obscured the southern view. where we ate lunch just off the summit to the north the clouds broke enough to see a few peaks within granite peaks range. a chipmunk scurried around where we ate. i ate four cookies or something, a sandwich and an orange or something. we hiked back and the horizon laid out before us. the clouds vanished. we finished hiking at 4:20pm.

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.

The Timp, West Mountain Shelter, Cat's Elbow, Bald Mountain, Dunderberg Mountain

August 13th, 2011 between 10 and 11am I park my dad's car at the pull off near Jone's Point on 202 / 9w in Rockland County. The actual entrance into the 'woods' is about twenty yards south of the parking area. Initialy the trail winds through a blanket of what I like to call vine monsters or vine caves. Two asian men hike out and I step off for them and then at a small junction swerve around a lost couple's lunging husky. The grade becomes steep right after the vine monsters. The first switchback turns away from some heavily etched trees, showing names and signs people have left over many years. Just ahead of me a short stone tunnel sits below another switchback. A rock staircase or two and some exposed rock outcroppings and you are at the first junction. I will descend the trail that comes down off the front of Dunderberg later and end up at this junction. Taking the left fork, through some really great open forest area, I hike up the gradual trail. It fucking winds around and heads east for a bit. The trail generally aspires to the west though, into the park, along the ridge. The forest before The Timp is amazing. Out on The Timp is very pretty. A woman parked up there feeds her dog. I see more women comping up from the Timp's Pass. It's a short mile or so over to West Mountain. An older bro who wouldn't shut up just at the rising arc of West Mountain kinda tails my ass. Four asian's lunch on a rock and two bros smoke in the shelter, which kinda looks uninviting on the inside. I eat lunch. I head over to Cat's elbow, and it's real pretty over there. This is the thing to the south of West Mountain. After coming down of Cat's elbow and crossing the Timp Pass again the trail slopes east wart and then bangs north up an insanely steep grade. I took a break at the red-blue trail junction and consider heading back on blue, the way I originally came over Dunderberg. A deer with two small horns, not yet antlers ate shit out of the leaves about thirty yards from me. I try to sneak up on him and record him up close. The trail descends and then heads east towards Dunderberg. Oh first you come to Bald Mountain which pokes out towards Bear Mountain, then you duck back in on the ridge for a few miles of gradual slopes and thin forest (evidence of the forest fire a few years ago still existing in randomly burned dead trees). After what seems like the summit of Dunderberg you go through this little forest on top, like a covered trail, tunnel type section that fun walking through. Then I start heading down. I neglect the little look out trail cause my feet are really hurting me at this point. I think I've gone about 8 miles or 9 miles so far. I drink some stream water here. I'm on the graded section that was part of the old spiral railway project of 1890 or something. You go down this graded little ridge that awkward cause it's all stones for footing. Then you're back at the junction. Very fun hike. Saw a turtle, a frog, a deer with antlers.

a man-made cave intended to channel the spiral railway through the obstacles of natural dunderberg

















looking up at west mountain from the timp, the shelter is tucked in at the top there

















some of the pretty ass grasslands in the pass between the timp and west mountain























somewhere on cat's elbow maybe, inwards near the timp or past it you get this sweet peak of the hudson below verplank

Jay Range, Jay Mountain

Dateline: August 5th, 2011. Tom, Jamie and myself in Tom's FTC and Mike, Erika and Ruben (dog) in Mike's Honda Fit leave the Wilmington Notch campsite in Wilmington New York and head for Jay. We drive and drive, believing to be somewhat lost on a road that turns into a rough gravelly ride. We make a few split decision turns at two forks and come to cars parked on the side of a nice paved road. We hiked the Jay Range in an out and back, actually hiking out one peak further than Jay Mountain to a higher peak. The yellow marked trail rises at a steep grade for the first mile and a half with one down and up in the beginning. Once you reach the first look out where we ate apples, took pictures and rested there's a little more hiking steep grade until you break out onto the ridge. The trail along the ridge crosses a nice flat open rock area. There's a couple false summits. So many blueberries. Nice cloudy day, with sun breaking through.

Anthony's Nose

July 23rd, 2011. It was 99 degrees. I left late in the afternoon in my father's car. Parked at Bear Mtn Historic Toll House around 5 - 5:30pm. The blue blazed trail climbs and descends the several rock outcroppings of the mountainous rock between the toll house and the summit, above Bear Mtn Bridge. It's 6.5 miles, out and back to the summit. I ate a sandwich which I bought earlier from Edwin's deli on the summit. It wasn't good. There was no one else on the trail.

Sunk Mine, Clarence Fahnestock State Park

On July 2nd, Liz and I hiked into Fahnestock wilderness from the first parking location on route 301 heading east from route 9. We followed the red trail south and made a left onto the yellow trail. The yellow trail lead up past a giant boulder and down a narrow lane of bushes. It became swampy and buggy. The trail disappeared into a swamp, in fact, and we had to bushwhack around it. On the other side of a shallow march we found the blue trail and back tracked on that a bit. We found the blue / yellow junction and stuck with the blue trail, passing where we originally emerged from the whack. We detoured off the blue trail after a brief slope and bend to try and spot the cave. After not finding it we hiked the blue trail for a 1/3 a mile into a wide dead-leaf valley between open rocks on either side. The entire landscape exists under a canopy of a few giant trees. The trail banks left and after the rock walls become drastically higher the trail descends and the walls end. Here we got off the trail to look for the cave / mine. We had to hike up a ridge of the valley and descend the other side. We almost slid directly into the mine which would have killed us. We had just seen a baby hawk or something teaching itself to fly. Then we went up the ridge a little more to eliminate any possibility of that not being the biggest cave. It turned out to be the cave in my opinion. We pushed through swarms of tiny buggies and some pricker to find an easy few steps naturally existing in the jagged edges of the cave. Then we came to the dark mouth where a dead tree lies in the caves throat. I went in to the bottom of the cave. Liz stayed a little ways back. We hiked out onto a road which brought us around to a blue trail that skirts a little reservoir. Then we reconnected with the red trail, having to just cross over the yellow which would have been smart to avoid in the first place. Took about 3 or 4 hours. We gained about 400 feet in 3 1/2 miles. Nice beer, clams, and burgers afterwards.

Lambs Hill

when: may 28th, 2011

participants: elizabeth and i

travel: i drove my dad's car to the trailhead in beacon, ny

where: beacon ny

food: water, a cliff bar (peanut butter), another cereal bar composed of almonds, berries and other nuts in a partially clear wrapper

trail: the trail is the yellow trail. take the steps in the beginning and the left fork before the first switchback. there was a dog on the trail that seemed kinda bad at being social. other people were drinking bear and offering them which we didn't accept.

weather: good warm weather, i was sweating.

Bear Mt

where: orange county ny

participants: just the three of us

transportation: drove myself in my mom's car (she was outta town)

when: friday may 6th

food: can't recall at this point, just water i think

trail: started from the main parking lot, walked on the paved path along hessian pond, then up the trail with the white and red blazes: crosses the hill of the mountain and banks at the ridge; follows the ridge along the open rock portions then crosses a road. new gravel paths start near the top. lots of natural stone steps. the trail i used to descend is mostly this new gravel path with stone steps.

weather: there were clouds but it was warm. nyc skyline was viewable.

lambs hill, bald hill, south beacon

when: friday april 22

where: beacon, cold spring, etc

who: just the three of us

transportation: grand central --> beacon; cold spring --> grand central

trail: i think it goes white, yellow, white, blue, white, yellow, white, blue, yellow, blue for 8 or 9 miles sometimes gaining 700 feet in a 1/4 miles.

weather/view: it was calm but chilly at times, warm at times, chilly at the end. was able to see catskill range in the north and new york city buildings in the south.

animals: i think blue birds and some circling hawk type things. humans. asian guy and a goth looking guy with a staff.

pictures: (forthcoming)