Dorothy's group consisted of Dorothy herself, and two younger guys, one of whom was shooting a hiking documentary video for his school project. I caught up to them at the flag pole (the first vista point). Sticking with the group all the way to the top (or in our case the 3rd vista point), I ran down, and did another lap. One of the guys decided to take it easy and was relaxing by some rocks, I passed him on the way down while doing my 2nd lap. As I was going to go for the 3rd lap, I got in touch with Dorothy and decided to join her and the film student for some breakfast in Cold Spring. It took me a little while to find the place. I had a couple of eggs over easy with home fries, bacon, and sausage. We talked about hiking, mountaineering, and climbing. Stav, who was shooting the video, was 20 years old, and seemed very eager about all the outdoor activities. I convinced the two to join me for a "baby dike" scramble. After finishing with breakfast, we jumped into our cars, and took a ride to the Little Stony Point parking lot.
It took about 20 minutes to walk up to the start of the scramble, and we got up to the rocks, avoiding Poison Ivy, and climbed up.
Another group of about 5-6 people was watching our progress, and asked whether the scramble was a difficult one. I asked whether any of them rock climbed, to which they said no. To play safe I told them that the scramble is not easy - which I think was the right call, since there are a couple of places on the way up that I would consider somewhat "iffy", especially for someone that doesn't have much hiking and climbing experience. The party decided against climbing up, which was a good call on their part.
On the top of the climb, we took a few pictures, and walked down, following the top of the cliff. We got down to the cars and parted ways.
At this point I thought about my options on where to go next, and considering possibility of continuing to do Breakneck laps. This seemed to be a somewhat boring endeavor, and I decided to do the small Beacon loop (17 miles). I parked the car at the same place as in the morning and started to scramble up. It was 12:45pm and I set 6 hours as my round trip goal for the hike. Few hundred feet after the start I passed a couple of cops chatting with two other hikers. It looked like the cops were just taking a hike up, rather than responding to an emergency call. I kept going, and got past Beacon Casino only meeting a couple of small groups of people.
The weather was refreshingly cool, and not too humid - which was a blessing, considering that almost the entire previous week was close to 100F, with high humidity. Around the mid-point of the hike I saw a message from Brendan that he's in the Bear mountain area. I messaged back telling him that I was thinking of camping out and asking if he wanted to join in. He replied affirmatively and we agreed to check back around 6 pm, which was the time I told him I should be finishing up. I was making good progress, and I figured that there's a chance I can finish by 6 pm. I also put on my headphones, turned on the mp3 player, and picked up my pace. I find it that listening to hard rock, such as Breaking Benjamin or Disturbed makes me go much faster than usual. I literally was flying up and down the hills, going at roughly 3.8 - 4 miles per hour the rest of the way.
After hiking past the broken down tractor, I entered the blooming part of the park, with white and pink laurels all over the place, which looked really beautiful.
My "almost done" point this time around was the 1st stream crossing, that put me around 3-4 miles from the exit to the road. It took about 25 minutes to get to the 2nd stream crossing, and under 20 minutes to get to the creepy tree on top of Sugarloaf. The time was about 5:25pm. I ran down, passing the mid-point around 5:32pm and finally exited to the road by 5:40pm. I ran the rest of the way to the car, getting done a minute under 5 hours, at 5:44pm.
I called up Brendan and he was already in Cold Spring, in the supermarket. We met up at Whistling Willy's and had a meat/veggie nachos plate and a few beers. We figured that we'd camp out somewhere towards Breakneck area, and I made a U and started driving towards the Little Stony Point parking lot. I noticed that a cop car was following me, probably right after the I pulled a U turn. I pulled in to the parking lot and the cop parked on the other side, watching me. I wasn't over the limit, but still felt a bit nervous. Brendan pulled in on his bike and parked it alongside my car. I started talking out my hiking gear, and the cop left after a few minutes.
We took Brendan's tent, and he put it into my Camelbak pack. I took my large green bag, put my sleeping bag, sleeping mat, and a few waters in there - and used that bag as a backpack. We hiked up to the Baby Dike area, and set up the tent there. I was about 9pm - I brushed my teeth and went to sleep after a few minutes, while Brendan spent some time reading his book. I woke up a few times during the night, and eventually we got up around 6:30am.
We spend about an hour looking around the area, and found a rusty door to the left of Baby Dike, which opened easily and had a hollow area in the rock behind it, probably used as a storage area. We packed up the tent and sleeping gear, and headed back to the car, where we parted ways with Brendan biking his way to the Cold Spring station, and me driving back home.
No comments:
Post a Comment