Ramapo Dunderberg, Tuxedo Mount Ivy, and White Cross Trail Loop, Harriman

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
3/12/2021	7.1 miles	4 hours 55 minutes	1,111'	1.6	15.1

Map: NYNJTC Harriman-Bear Mountain, Trail Map 118
Parking: DEC parking area next to Tuxedo train station parking area.
Directions: We parked at a small DEC parking lot next to the pay parking lot. There is a .6 mile walk on pavement until you reach the trail. Head uphill on the Ramapo Dunderberg trail. Turn right onto the Tuxedo Mount Ivy Trail. Turn left (north) onto the White Cross trail. Turn left (sourth) onto the Ramapo Dunderberg trail, and return to the parking area.

I took a Friday off, and as luck would have it, it was a sunny 70 degree day in March. Perfect timing! We had a lot of snow meltage this week, so I figured it was safe for me to venture out in Harriman. I brought microspikes just in case, but was really hoping not to need them. Today is almost exactly 1 year since my surgery from my broken ankle. And 3 1/2 months since my meniscus surgery. The plan is that I'll be done with physical therapy in another week. I've been seeing a physical therapist for the last 10 months!

We decided to do our loop with the White Cross Trail section first. It passes by two swamps, and I wasn't sure if the trail would be passable with all of the melting snow. So, if we did this earlier during our hike, we could easily re-route to a different trail if needed. It turns out this wasn't a problem at all. We have done another hike in Harriman, where a swamp submerged the trail with water above my knees. We did encounter very wet trails today. I was just wearing trail runners. Several times I ended up just wading through shoe height water. It was chilly, but tolerable. The map only shows one water crossing, but we had lots of seasonal streams. Krummholz loves watching water and grabbing things he sees floating in streams, so he found this trip very entertaining. We did see more people than we expected for a Friday. My guess is a lot of people were playing hooky due to the incredible weather. I'd say 90% of the trails were clear of snow. There were some sections with snow and ice, but we were able to skirt around the ice at least, so I never took out my microspikes. There was a water crossing at Tri Trail Corner on the Ramapo Dunderberg trail which was wide and not entirely possible to rock hop across. This was followed by a waterfall. This hike passes by 2 mines, but we weren't looking out for them, and didn't notice them.