Agile Trekker: High Tor State Park, South Mountain County Park

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
3/24/2018	9 miles

Map: NYNJTC Hudson Palisades Trails, Map 112

Parking: Route 33

Directions: Hike east on the Long Path. Take white blazed side trail to Little Tor. Return to Long Path and continue east. Pass over High Tor. Take white blazed side trail to High Tor Vineyards. Return to Long Path and continue east until road crossing (see map 111). Turn around and head west on the Long Path. At parking area, cross the street and enter South Mountain Park. Continue west on the Long Path until you pass under power lines and approach a view of a communications tower. Turn around and return to parking area.

Our goal today was to do a 9 mile hike. We headed to the Palisades to do an out and back. The hike starts off on an easy gravel path. Many people were out going for a walk. We kept Trek on leash because of all of the people. We heard our first peepers for the year! Glen keeps telling me its spring, but I haven't believed him. But peepers mean spring!

We headed up to Little Tor, which has a view of Haverstraw and Garnerville. So close to where I used to do dog agility - and I never knew there was hiking there. There was a lot of graffiti and trash unfortunately. This is an urban area. After we passed Little Tor, we saw far fewer people.

We continued on to High Tor, which also has a view of the Hudson River. So far the hike had been pretty easy. Then there was a steep rock scramble down from High Tor. It was steep enough to make me think, really? Trek couldn't do it. There were a lot of leaves which made it slippery. I eventually made it down, after carefully figuring out where I could hold on. It turns out this was an old route. The trail was re-routed and the re-route is so much easier (I noticed the re-route on our way back). We continued on, and got confused in another spot where the trail appears to have been re-routed. The old blazes are still around, just more faded. We had quite a few times where we went the wrong way. We took a side trail to High Tor Vineyards - which has a sign explaining the history, as well as the ruins of an old building. I wonder if there are old grape vines still there. It was hard to tell, because there aren't any leaves on anything yet.

We still wanted to get more mileage in, so we continued along the Long Path. We didn't have a map for this area, so we weren't sure what we'd come across. We eventually hit a road, and decided to turn around, rather than do a road walk. We walked back to our car. We still needed more mileage, so we crossed the street and entered South Mountain County Park. There is a woods road that parallels the trail which we saw some people walking on. It looks like the woods road goes directly to the communications tower. We took the hiking trail instead. This side of route 33 had a lot more snow than the east side. We hiked until we passed under some communication lines, at which point we turned around and headed back to our car.