*Rory, Patrick, Michelle, Gina, Orin
So, back to the mountain we go. Michelle, Orin and Patrick (who are now officially referred to as "hiking buddies") came along with me on this trip up. We met up with Philip, the man who started my little mini-hikining obsession, and one of Orin's many model friends, Gina.
Anyway, we parked on the western side of the Bear Mountain Bridge and the trail head was litterally, right there. This hike started off steeeep. Not even 20ft up trail head and it turned into a hand over hand scramble very quickly. The ascent wasn't the most difficult, but it was consistently steep and very rugged. After about 10 minutes of hiking, we hit the first landing and the view was simply one of the best I'd seen at such a low elevation.
Anyway, we reached the top in less than an hour. Someone anticlimactic given the "epic" nature of some of the other hikes of done this year, but still worthwhile. If I lived in the area, I would take this route again and try one of the different branches, but its just too short a trail for a two hour round-trip drive.
