Day 117-We Got Squeezed, and Ended up With a Great View

July 13-16.8 miles-Little Dam Inlet to West Mtn Shelter-AT mile 1399.9

Whew! That was a very long day! Lots of ups and downs. But, it was good to finally get some decent miles in. 

We started the morning making our way around Little Dam Lake. 

Beavers are apparently active here...didn’t see any evidence of said activity. 

We crossed Orange Turnpike, and NY 17 and into Harriman State Park. 

NY 17- goes to NYC



Didn’t see any bear evidence either

Sheesh! 12.5 miles still to go!

We climbed, then came down to a Little Rock feature called the Lemon Squeezer. Sadly, there was no lemonade to be had. Here’s a few photos. 

Approaching the squeeze. 

Sure Foot making his way through. As you can imagine, it was a tight squeeze!

Post squeeze for me. It was not easy, but I made it. 

Just after the Lemon Squeeze was a nasty straight up a wall climb. 

Sure Foot contemplates the wall. 

I watched Sure Foot try, and decided, nope, I would do the blue blaze around (which wasn’t all that easy).


Once we conquered the Lemon Squeeze, we were back to the ups and downs. 

Eventually we arrived at the William Brien Shelter. We had snacks, then, of course, had to climb up another side of a mountain. I thought it was Black Mtn, but no, we weren’t even there yet!


Sure Foot has done part of what we did today. He kept telling me it wouldn’t be as hard as what we had done this morning. That the climbs were pretty gentle. I’m here to tell you, Sure Foot’s memory is crap (and I told him so)! It continued to be steep climbing and descending the entire rest of the day! 

Once we did make it to the top of Black Mtn, we got our first views of the NYC Skyline and the Hudson River. 

Zoomed in for this one. We are actually about 50 miles from NYC. 

Not zoomed in (and the white blaze...the other Mark is for another trail).

Sure Foot with the Hudson River in the distance. 

We descended down Black Mtn to Palisades Parkway. It is a very busy divided highway. Fortunately, we only had to get across 2 lanes at a time. One comment in Guthook likened it to playing Frogger. We survived. 

We had our final climb of the day. It was basically .6 miles to the turn for West Mtn Shelter, then another .6 to the Shelter. We had to stop and get water on the way as there is no water at the shelter. So, we also had to carry the extra weight. 

We wanted to go to West Mtn Shelter because it has an awesome view of the New York City Skyline and the Hudson River. 

NYC is somewhat lost in the pollution haze. 

We are renting out behind the shelter. We are sitting at the shelter watching the lights come on. 

Zoomed in to the Hudson. 

The lights of NYC!











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Real Day 95-Just Taking My Food for a Walk

Image
June 21-15ish miles-Pine Grove Furnace to campsite-AT mile 1120 Last night Dusty and I made a “card” for Sure Foot for Father’s Day (except we said Happy Farter’s Day because...well...you can probably guess). I had breakfast at the hostel. The pancakes I had were...solid...kind of hard like a frisbee. But, I also had some yogurt and orange juice. I mean...it was only $5.00, so I can’t complain too much. Strangely, someone had stolen the eggs and bacon (uncooked), and a plate. It was weird... The first part of the day was pretty easy. Getting out of Pine Grove State Park was a flat bike path. We went by Fuller Lake.  Fuller Lake in the fog...eerie.  I met two women who were just out for a short hike. I walked with them until the AT turned off the path.  Barb and Becky. Nice gals! The AT climbed for awhile, but it wasn’t a steep climb. Braids and I caught up to Dusty and Sure Foot at a creek. We were just about a mile from the Green Mtn grocery store. Dusty asked if we were...
Read more

Day 35-A Spot of Beauty, and Adding Pee Bottle

Image
April 22-12.9 miles-Curley Maple Gap Shelter to Cherry Gap Shelter-AT mile 361.4 Today was one of our longer days with two major climbs. I got going at 7:50, and Sure Foot was just a few behind me. Before I left, I heard Tic Tac telling Papa Smurf and Pee Bottle that they should hike together, and she would just go slow what with her shin splint not doing well.  Sure Foot caught up to me before too long, and we continued on. Just after Indian Grave Gap (didn’t see any grave), we stopped for a break. We were 4.6 miles in, and it was about 10:30. While we were eating our snacks, Pee Bottle came walking up the trail. He said he’d been trying to catch us, and that Tic Tac and Papa Smurf were going to get a ride to Roan Mtn (the town), and would wait for Pee Bottle there. It would give Tic Tac some rest, so hopefully she can continue. Pee Bottle asked if he could hike with us. Of course, it’s no problem. He’s a nice guy, and fits in with Sure Foot and I just fine.  And Pee Bottle m...
Read more

129-Back to Mosquito Land...uh...I Mean the Trail

Image
July 25-11.7 miles-Great Barrington to Wilcox South Shelters-AT mile 1535.5 We actually planned to go to the Wilcox North Shelter, but decided we didn’t want to carry extra water for 1.8 miles up and over Mt. Wilcox. But, more on that in a moment.  Roger and Sandy took us back to the trail at 7:30 this morning. We took photos, and said our “see you laters”, then started walking.  Photo courtesy of Sure Foot.  The first bit seemed to just wind around corn fields and along the river.  Oh yeah, it was foggy.  We went out to a road, and across a bridge, just to get to the other side of the river, then seemingly made a u-turn, and went back along the river. All of that was flat.  We finally got back to trail-looking trail, and started the first of a few climbs.  Sure Foot asked if it was Fall already.  This was a crevasse that they were nice enough to build a bridge over.  We reached the first viewpoint of the day, and took a break.  When we ...
Read more