william brein memorial shelter to canopus lake shelter

just a quick update today. did the 30 i planned without much fanfare. the morning was spent hiking out of harriman state park, which is a beautiful place that i’d definitely come back to.

i went up and over bear mountain. the ascent was up a ton of small stone steps to some nice but unremarkable views. the trail continued on and got flatter and wider as i approached the tower at the top. i also encountered a deer that couldn’t have cared less how close i got to it.

trash started appearing. i decended the other side which was a series of wide stone staircases which were pretty awe inspiring.

at the bottom was the bear mountain recreation area at hessian lake. it was totally trashed. about every 50 feet was a trash can that was overflowing, and trash was spread out in a 15 foot circle around each can. my guess is that the sunday folks overfilled all the trash cans and then animals got into them over night. it was disgusting. there was even a vulture trying to clean up the mess, but desperately outmatched.

i was interested to see the zoo the trail goes through, but it was closed. apparently it used to be open all the time, but someome did something stupid and now it’s only open certain hours. i took the bypass trail which ended at the bridge over the hudson river.

around lunch the trail passed a deli where i stopped and got a great ruben. they had some resupply stuff, so rather than getting a hitch into pawling tomorrow, i stocked up. sadly this meant knorr sides and not anything i’d identify as real food.

a mile from camp i caught the toe of my left shoe and the sole peeled back almost halfway. it tripped me a few times just in the mile left. potentially pretty dangerous. when i got to camp i dug out my needle and thread and tried to secure it. hopefully it’ll last till friday.

some additional images from today: