This is Breakneck Ridge, and last weekend my husband and I climbed it. It’s right on the Hudson River, about 40 minutes upstream from our house, and it’s popular with Millennials who climb the rocky face.
You park on the side of a road down by the river’s edge, then head for the rocks. Which is exactly what we did.
Once you hit the rocks, it takes over an hour to scramble up them to the peak.
Decisions, decisions! Where do you put your hands? Where do you put your feet?
You get to a leveled-off place and think you’ve reached the summit, but then there are more rocky cliffs behind you to surmount.
Pre-Columbian graffiti? Don’t think so.
When you finally reach the top, the views of the Hudson Valley are spectacular! This is looking south…
…and this is looking north.
To get back down to the road, you walk along lovely trails in the woods.
If you need to rest or seek shelter for some other reason, there’s always this airy lodge.
These stones form a foot path across a dried river bed. When crossing them, I realized that I was doing mentally the same thing I did as a kid: I don’t look down at my feet and watch them as they step from stone to stone. Rather, I look three or four stones ahead of where I am, and somehow my body programs itself to move my feet correctly on their own, from one stone to another. As a kid I thought that was an amazing phenomenon…and as an adult I think so, too.
After a four-hour hike, my body was crying out for a mojito.
Here’s where we went for drinks and a late brunch: Hudson House River Inn. It’s in the town of Cold Spring, right on the river…
…which twinkles and glistens in the afternoon Parking Sun!
1st photo at the top by Daniel Case, Wikimedia Commons
