Hiking to Popolopen Torne

Popolopen Torne is a nice alternative to the crowds at Bear Mountain, particularly on a nice fall day when half the city descends upon the park. It may not be as easy as I had told my friend D (a somewhat regular hiker) and his friends (not hikers), though.



From the Bear Mountain Inn, you hike past the lake and get to the tricky part of the hike. In their infinite wisdom, the trail designers started the Popolopen Gorge trail right by the side of the road - not near any place to park - requiring hikers to cross over some busy highways. The only reason this is doable is that the highways are all converging on a traffic circle here.



The trail itself roughly follows a creek. I had described it to my hiking companions as "mostly flat," but that turned out to be not as true as I remembered. (Plus, "flat" to a non-hiker is flatter than to me.) But it's a very pretty trail with views of the water and the Torne.



After crossing the creek, the trail starts to gain elevation. You have two potential routes up that, put together, make a nice loop. We opted to take the western side of the loop both up and down, however. Either way, the hill turns into a scramble.



At the top, there are great views of the Bear Mountain Bridge over the Hudson and Anthony's Nose behind it. There is also a West Point soldier's memorial.



We retraced our route, getting to the Inn about ten minutes before the bus was to arrive. When it did, there were too many passengers and a second bus had to be called, which arrive about 90 minutes later. This part was not delightful.

However, it was a beautiful fall day with great views!

North Staten Island

It was one of those days where none of my plans worked out thanks to the MTA, so I ended up just hiking on the north shore of Staten Island, a very flat 5.6 miles. It's all sidewalks, ranging from very scenic to very much not. Also, sadly, much of it absolutely fails to be ADA-accessible, thanks to overgrown and crumbling sidewalks (and random mid-block street side changes). Here are a couple of the more scenic images.

Hiking for animals in Harriman

On Sunday, I led a hike in Harriman State Park - the fauna hike. A friend and I had come up with a list of silly theme hikes in Harriman, of which this was one. The idea was to explore as many features with animal names as possible.

It turns out that the majority of animal names are in the southern part of the park, and we visited most of them. We started at the Pomona Heights entrance on the eastern side, and made our way over to Sloatsburg on the western side, hiking 15 miles in the process.



Despite the theme, I couldn't guarantee any actual animal sightings, aside from perhaps chipmunks and squirrels. Nevertheless, the trail provided. While at the head of the group on Conklins Crossing Trail, I nearly tripped across a rattling rattlesnake - thankfully, another hiker warned me. Eventually, the very fat snake slithered off. We came across a very long garter snake not much later, but much more safely.



We were blessed with cool weather - although some sun would have been nice, I can't complain. I'm ready for the summer heat to be behind us.

The hike had surprisingly varied terrain and views given that it was planned based on names, not sights.

Hiking South Mountain Reservation

I've been to South Mountain a few times before - it's a surprising oasis in the middle of New Jersey. On this hike with a friend, we saw Hemlock Falls, but went to it via a different route. Here's a small cataract on the way.

Exploring City Island

I'm (slowly) visiting all the islands of New York City - or, at least, the ones that have bridges, ferry service, or other regular transit to them. I'm not going to kayak to all the little ones. So, I cooked up the idea of leading a hike to City Island and Pelham Bay Park. It would at least give me an excuse to scout it.

I started from the Pelham Bay subway stop. Now, I've visited Pelham Bay Park twice before. For this hike, it was more of a place to walk through than a place to explore. Below is a view from the bridge from Pelham Bay to City Island.



City Island itself is small, and it has a lot of restaurants, especially seafood restaurants.



While it was interesting once, I didn't think it would make a great Ramblers hike, so I've put that idea on the back burner.