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| View to up the north of the Hudson River |
I started in the parking lot and noticed a lot of people out enjoying the lovely weather and nice view of the Hudson. Young and old a-like were strolling or picnicking or just lounging around. Basically doing what people do. I was rather confused at first as to where I was supposed to go. I checked my book again and realized that the trail actually began in the back of the parking lot.
Confession time, I may seem like I go on these hikes with a plan in mind-- like I know what I'm doing. The reality is that I basically never follow any set trail. This time was going to be different though. I was going to go the distance and not get lost. So I set off down the Ski Trail.
From the here there were a few turns to take through the woods and then I made it to some stone stairs. Pardon the shitty phone camera quality. For some reason I found it annoying to keep snapping shots with my real camera and thought my phone camera could pass. Lesson learned. It doesn't.
First notable section of the hike was descending down many sections of these stone stairs. I happened to notice that most people seemed to be going in the opposite direction as me, but I wasn't deterred. By the end of it, I was a little relieved to be honest. I'm the type of person who much prefers going uphill, rather than downhill. I guess I was so relieved the I tripped over a little dip in the trail and took a lovely tumble. I figured, that it was honestly the best place for it in the end. If I had tripped down the stairs I would have been screwed and I still had several miles to go.
I got up, dusted myself and continued on my way until I reached a wall of boulders. At this point, I was pretty confused. Where did the trail go? Was I supposed to go around the boulders somehow? And then I saw the blazes on the rocks. I had to climb onto them.
Once I got past the first "scramble" I realized there was a series of them. People I passed were super friendly and really impressed that my dog was keeping up with me. He was climbing rocks like a champ. I couldn't have been more proud.
(An aside, I am pretty sure at this point, I probably come off as a crazy dog lady. This only partially worries me.)
Eventually the series of boulder scrambles cleared and I encountered a very different landscape.
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| So much green |
Even further along the trail was the remnants of an "Italian Garden," devised by the sculptress Mary Lawrence Tonetti. The area had featured a picnic pavilion and a series of pools surrounding the small waterfall known as the "Peanut Leap Cascade."
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| Ruins |
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| Lovey trickle of water. |
As I continued along the trail, at this point I was at least 3/4 through the hike, I noticed a sign. After reading this, I officially acknowledged that the way I was going about this hike seemed seriously backwards. For real, why wouldn't they post this on either side of the rock scrambles?
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| Oh. Good to know. |
I was essentially done when I crossed back over the NJ/NY state border and followed the trail back to the parking lot. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the stone monument showing where the state line is.
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| Little snake |
I can't even explain how much fun this trail was. As far as the rating of strenuous? I'd say definitely. I think a little bit of difficulty made that much more fun though. To anyone in the area considering going on a longer hike, I'd highly recommend checking this one out. The series of trails I followed is laid out on the NY-NJ trail conference website here.
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