Agile Trekker: Racoon Brook Hills/Pine Meadow Lake/Diamond Mountain Loop, Harriman

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
11/4/2017	6.5 miles	3 hours 10 minutes	1,207'

Map: NYNJTC Southern Harriman Bear Mountain Trails
Parking: See directions
Directions: Modified version of https://www.nynjtc.org/hike/raccoon-brook-hills-trailpine-meadow-lakediamond-mountain-loop

Today we needed another local hike, so we headed to Harriman. The weather was great! We really enjoyed the sun. I took a look at the NYNJTC site to find one of their listed Harriman hikes that we haven't done, and came up with this one. We probably have been on all of these trails before though. Glen sort of sounds interested in redlining (hiking all of the trails in a park) Harriman. It's not a goal I particularly feel like working on, but I suppose it would be good to get us on some trails we haven't hiked on in Harriman (there aren't many I'm thinking).

This hike starts at Reeves Meadow Visitor Center, which usually means its going to be a more crowded hike. The parking down the road was outrageously long, but we managed to get a close spot on the road. We planned a modified version of the hike on the NYNJTC site. Rather than take a short segment on the orange blazed Hillburn-Torne Sebago trail , we replaced that section with a short segment on the blue blazed Seven Hills trail (which had 3 stars on the map indicating good views). And yes, we liked those views.

The beginning of this hike was crowded. We found ourselves regularly getting stuck behind groups of hikers. The trail is easy, and there were many, many people out. The trail is very level near Stony Brook - so this was the crowded part of the hike. Once we hit the white blazed Kakiat trail, we left the crowds behind. I really liked the Racoon Brook Trail - this was a nice section.

We hiked by Pine Meadow Lake, where Trek went swimming. He entertained other hikers who were taking snack breaks. He was so happy to swim! After 15 minutes of swimming he got too cold and was shivering like crazy. Silly dog that he wanted to swim so much in the first place. I had a bandana on me, and used it to wipe him down the best I could. We got moving so that he could warm up. At the other side of the lake, we saw a "No Swimming" sign. I'm assuming that's just for humans. It's not a reservoir, so I'm assuming dog swimming is fine.

We saw someone with a drone at Harriman. I'm not too excited about drones in parks. Trek almost stepped on the guy's fancy toy. Oops.

We continued on, eventually hiking next to Stony Brook again. At one point I lost the blazes and was going off the trail through a particularly rocky area. It was really funny, because at least a dozen people that were behind me followed me (not on the trail)! Don't assume other people know the way! We weren't lost or anything (because we knew we had to follow the stream), but we were probably 75' off the trail for a ways - and they all followed us. Ha!

Although parts of this hike were crowded, the parts that were away from the stream had some really nice views. Unfortunately, I did get groin pain during this hike, despite it not being that hard. Uphills were worse, but even on level ground I was getting a pinching feeling in my hip when walking. After my last cortisone injection into my psoas bursa, I've had a lot improvement in pain reduction when not hiking. For example, driving used to be painful just from the sitting position, and now no longer is. Some days hiking are okay, some days I get pain.