Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Hiking Black Rock Mountain

Labor Day weekend was spent with our friends up in Cornwall, New York on the Hudson River. They live in a beautiful 1800's farmhouse perched on the top of Black Rock Mountain (eerie if you're a LOST fan!!!!) The scenery is breath-taking so we decided to hike up the mountain. I can honestly say I've never "hiked", especially on a "official" trail. So this was a first for me. But, unlike when I accidentally brought my Prada on the kayak, this time I was very well prepared and calm. As we climbed (on our hands and knees at times), I found serenity in each, cautious footstep. We reached the first peak and looked down into the Hudson Valley:



Happy hikers with our walking stick



Once we had relaxed and drank a few beers, we decided to head back down to reality. We followed the yellow trail dots for what seemed like hours until we came upon a stream. Unfortunately, we had not crossed a stream on our ascent! Somehow, we had ended up on a different trail than we came up on! Regardless, we kept walking and were all in pretty good spirits. After back-tracking a few times, checking the photos from our trip up to see if they matched our current location, nearly panicking since not 1 of us had brought a cell phone.... after all of this, we realized we were LOST!!! Naturally I asked myself, "What would Bear Grylls do?" Then it came to me: "All water leads down the mountain... Let's get off the trail and follow the stream to the bottom!" TO my surprise, the group agreed....That is until about 5 feet later when they realized how long it would in fact take us if we got off the trail. So, we backtracked about an hour, and finally realied the massively obvious, embarrasingly well-displayed turn that we clearly were too intoxicated to notice and that turned our 2 hour hike into a 5 hour one! Good thing we work out!





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