Bald Rocks Shelter loop, version #3, Harriman State Park

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
4/8/2017	? miles	?

Map: NYNJTC Harriman North
Parking: Kanawauke Road at White Bar trail
Directions: Cross the street from the parking area. Take the white blazed White Bar trail. Turn right onto the yellow blazed Dunning trail to the Bald Rocks shelter...
This was our third scouting trip to find a Moxie friendly route to Bald Rocks shelter. We decided this route would be okay for her. I was kind of horrified to see the number of people camping. We passed by the shelter at 3:30 pm, and there were already more than a dozen tents set up. Most tents were very close together. This was my idea of hell. If I'm going camping, I don't want to be on top of other hikers. There were over a dozen bear bags hung, which seemed odd, because it was so early in the day. And the bear bags were very close to the tents. No one seemed to bother with hanging them 200 feet away. We were wondering if it was some sort of group outing. We continued on. We didn't have Trek with us today, because he had a foot wound and needed to heal. We managed to miss turns multiple times on our trip - probably because he was not with us. He is awesome about pointing out trail intersections. We never got lost per se, but we didn't take our original intended route. We passed the shelter again on our way back. There were even more people now. We also saw a couple of park rangers on an ATV. I was surprised they could get to the shelter using an ATV. We saw a couple tented away from the crowd that the rangers were talking to. I'm wondering if they were made to move closer to the crowd (stealth camping is not allowed in Harriman). So yes, this would be a nice place to go camping for an older dog, but not my kind of place if there are always this many people there.