A Year's Worth of Trails

The love for the outdoors runs in my family, as my dad was an avid hiker, always looking to get out to the mountains. The first words out of my 8-year-old daughter, after getting down from our first scramble up Breakneck Ridge last year were, "papa, when are we coming back here?"

Over my nearly 20-year residence in New Jersey, I' ve spent some time hiking in the Hudson Valley region, mostly climbing up Breakneck Point, and taking the small loop out back to the car. The little loop totalled around 3 miles, with roughly 1500 ft elevation gain. Usually this hike was done with one or two of my friends. We would drive up to Cold Spring, get some trail mix at the nearby gas station, then head over to Breakneck Point where we would park our car and start on the rocky scramble up the mountain, over the 9D tunnel. The scrambles were always fun and considerably difficult, sometimes due to hot weather, and other times due to us simply being out of shape. Most of the time, given good weather, we would be rewarded with views of surrounding mountains and towns from the top of the hills. Once in a while we would bring with us a couple of beers that we would enjoy at the top.

On our ascents up Breakneck, we didn't bring map, compass, or any other navigational tools. I had no idea that there was anything more to the area beyond our little scramble loop. As I finally discovered last year, there is so much more to the Breakneck / Beacon trails then the Breakneck Point loop.

I always enjoyed getting out for outdoor walks and scrambles, but those trips usually were short, and far in between. Sometime around May last year this changed, and I started hiking more and more often, increasing distance of the outings. The main catalyst for this change was discovering Meetup and the Meetup hiking groups around New York area. Meetup groups were a life changing experience for me in more ways than one - meeting new people and making friends, finding out about new and cool hikes, and learning about such things as ice climbing, rock climbing, and mountaineering.