Silvermine Lake Loop, Harriman State Park, NY

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
3/25/2017	3.9 miles

Map: Northern Harriman Bear Mount Trails (map 119), NYNJTC
Parking: Silvermine Lake, Seven Lakes Drive
Directions: Take the yellow blazed Menomine Trail following the edge of Silvermine Lake. Just past the Letterock shelter, turn left onto the white blazed Appalachian Trail. Follow it for .95 miles and turn left onto the unmarked Silvermine Road (woods road). Follow this to the end where it hits Seven Lake Drive. Turn left and follow Seven Lakes Drive back to the parking area.

We were eager to get out after 3 weeks of not hiking. These past 2 weeks I've had a painful hip, even with no hiking. The first week I have no idea what triggered it. The second week it was triggered by sitting on the floor grooming Moxie. I've finished 8 weeks of PT, and am taking a break for now since there has been no improvement. My PT recommended trying a cortisone shot again given by a different doctor, to see if this time I get a better result. I spoke to my surgeon's nurse, and he agreed it was worth a try. I'm waiting for the approval, and then will schedule this one at their hospital in the city. If the cortisone shot helps, they feel that I'll be able to go further in PT. Stronger muscles hopefully leads to less pain. I talked to my PT about surgery, and he was the first person who explained to me why having surgery at "your age" is not always ideal. He was saying any time you have surgery on a joint, especially if there is already some arthritis already in the joint, you increase the chance of causing more arthritis sooner. This means that there is more risk for needing a hip replacement earlier. And I'm way too young for that. This will be something I'll need to discuss with the surgeon next time I meet with him.

I didn't go hiking last weekend because of all of the snow we got. I figured I'd need snowshoes, and I have a feeling snowshoeing would aggravate my hip more, so we took the weekend off from hiking. The weather was iffy today, so we did a short hike in Harriman. Although the snow is melting nicely in our yard, it hasn't melted in Harriman yet. We didn't bother with microspikes, but saw others wearing them. There was still a lot of slushy snow on the trail. I usually don't like hiking near Silvermine Lake, but it's nicer in the winter. Being a lake with a large parking area, it tends to attract too many people. The area right near the lake is usually very trash filled. Today was not bad. We picked up an empty water bottle we found. Near the end, there were a couple of nice spots near the lake that everyone finds nice - thus broken glass all around. Otherwise no trash on the trails. The trail near the lake is wet, no matter what time of year you go. Since I'm interested in doing some camping this year, we were wondering what the area near Letterrock Shelter was like. It didn't really look like a good tenting area. We did see a large group of people who were camping in the shelter and had a nice fire going outside. I'm looking forward to doing some camping this year.

Lake at start of the hike

Woods Road

Demoing his waterproof boots