Hiking Van Cortlandt and Tibbetts Brook

Well, today was the second attempt at doing this scouting hike and failing. The smart day to do it would have been Saturday, which was beautiful. Sunday I had to work. The forecast for today was rain, but it didn't look that bad initially.

But by this morning, it was an 80% of rain and thunderstorms, and I didn't want to be stuck out in the middle of Harriman if it got ugly. I am something of a weather wimp when it comes to day hiking alone. If I'm backpacking, I'll keep going, barring unsafe conditions (so, for example, I opted to wait it out instead of going up the Long Trail's Burnt Knob with major storms coming in). But if I'm going out alone, I'll probably be lazy.



So instead, I took the subway up to Van Cortlandt Park. I walked up the Putnam Trail and onto the South County trail, then around the east side of the lake. It started raining as I rounded the north side of the lake, so I bailed out on a bus. It was 5.6 miles, mostly flat, although the elevation gain came out to a surprising 400 feet.