Hiking Photos

This was my second visit to the Stephen & Betsy Corman AMC Harriman Outdoor Center. The Appalachian Mountain Club is a non-profit established in 1876 "to protect the mountains, forests, waters, and trails you love in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions".

My previous visit to this AMC site was only a day trip. This time I got the full experience of a Friday to Sunday overnight trip. There were 14 of us and we stayed in one of the 16-person cabins. Our cabin was split into 4 rooms that slept 4 people each, with a large community area in the middle.

On Friday night, we mapped out a route of approximately 10 miles, with a few points of interest to hit along the way. We started our hike from the cabins at Breakneck Pond around 10:45a, taking an unblazed trail from the outdoor center up to the Breakneck Mountain trail (white blazes), an ascent of about 120 feet. We turned left to follow the trail a short distance to its end where it meets with the Suffern - Bear Mountain trail (S-BM, yellow blazes).

We followed S-BM south approximately 1 mile, then switched over to the Tuxedo - Mount Ivy trail (red blazes), which descended about 500 feet over a half mile. When we reached the area of the power lines, I missed the trail to Limekiln Mountain and took the group further east than we wanted to be. When we realized the mistake, we backtracked, found the correct trail, and started our journey to the Limekiln Mountain lookout.

The ascent was about 500 feet over a half mile. The views at the top were amazing! We could see for miles in several directions, including a view of the Hudson River to our left and the Manhattan skyline in the distance straight ahead of us. We stopped for a snack break here, taking in the sun and the amazing scenery.

After our break, we made our way back down to the power lines and followed the unblazed trail to the west, eventually connecting with S-BM again at Panther Mountain. The views there were quite obscured; however, we stopped for another snack break and some group photos.

Now it was time to plan our journey home. We didn't want to be late for dinner, so we decided to continue following S-BM north, then switched to Tuxedo - Mount Ivy trail to continue taking that north. At some point along this journey, we spotted a mama black bear with three cubs in tow! When they heard us coming, they darted up the trail ahead of us and we never saw them again.

After about a mile and a half, we made a right onto the Breakneck Mountain trail and followed that back to camp. We made it back with about 20 minutes to spare before dinner.

Overall, this was another great hike through Harriman State Park and I got to explore a few more areas I hadn't seen before. The rest of the weekend, we played games around the campfire and went swimming, canoeing, and kayaking.