A Pleasant Surprise
After several long hikes alone it was a pleasure hiking with my son Eli today. We hiked a 5 mile stretch of the Suffern-Bear Mountain Trail and the miles flew by. We started by climbing up to the Irish Potato, a giant free-standing rock on the top of the mountain. The trail then curves along a ridge overlooking the Pound Swamp (looks like a pond to me) before making a long descent to the stream and the Palisades Parkway.
I hadn't hiked this stretch since the 1980s and didn't have high expectations for it. I've also not been a fan of the SBM trail. It's the longest in Harriman Park at 24 miles and goes over many hills and it's quite rugged, in places needlessly so to my way of thinking. But this piece and one I did yesterday morning on West Mountain are certainly beautiful stretches of trail.
In many ways this is a classic beautiful hike in Harriman Park: several climbs, some woods roads, big rocks and a stream and a pond and some good views. With the trail full of brown leaves, it's a little difficult to find the footway and some of the turns were more abrupt than we anticipated. Still, it was a pleasant late afternoon stroll and a chance to walk off some of the excesses of Thanksgiving dinner.
