Oh, Agony!

Oh, Agony!

The description of the Appalachian Trail in the trail guide for Harriman State Park ends something like this (quoting from memory): "The trail passes by the Elk Pen parking area, crosses over the New York State Thruway, and reaches Rte. 17. Agony Grind lies just ahead."

The description ends there because it's the park boundary. And what an ominous sounding conclusion!

Last Sunday (May 9) Bro. Tom Higgs and I accepted the challenge. It was a lovely day for hiking, tho very windy (winds continuing from the day before--see the previous posting--but not as strong). Having been to Saturday evening Mass, we left the house a little after 8:00 a.m. Sunday, stopped at the bookstore on the Palisades Parkway to purchase a trail map for Sterling Forest ($8.62 with the tax), dodged some fallen branches on Arden Valley Rd., and were at the Elk Pen a little after 9. There were about 5 other cars there. (There are no elk at the parking area. It's just a name.)

We got ourselves organized and were on the trail at 9:15. Easy going across the Thruway, the Ramapo River, and the commuter railroad by bridge, and a short walk to Rte. 17--which we had to cross without benefit of a bridge; but at least traffic was light. Then into the woods--and the ascent began almost at once.

At first it was moderate; but then the great cliff came into view. And the real climbing began. It wasn't as bad for us as one hiker has described it in his blog (http://www.thebackpacker.com/articles/inspir/art32.php), but we could see how it got its name.

We were overtaken on the 1st ascent by another day hiker who was kind of zipping along. Later, when we got to the Arden Mt. register, we think he was the guy who was heading to Wildcat Shelter for the day--which would be about a 20-mile round-trip from the Elk Pen. Nice little jaunt!
Thru the leaves you can see a little bit of the guy who breezed past us on this ascent.

So we huffed and puffed our way up to the 1st viewpoint and got a nice look at Arden Road and the buildings there, the Arden Valley Road bridge that we'd crossed 15 or 20 minutes previously, and the hilltops of Harriman Park to the east.

And we climbed some more. And some more. If I read the trail map correctly, the total elevation from Rte. 17 to the top comes to some 500' of ascent in less than half a mile of distance. But there were some more spectacular views of the Thruway, especially southward, before the trail sort of leveled off (still a lot of ups and downs) and headed into the woods.You come to the top of one cliff and figure you've done it. Then you look ahead and--oy vey! Yes, we had to get up (not directly, but indirectly) that THING behind Bro. Tom.

We'd figured on catching an unnamed blue-blazed trail that heads south from the AT and runs down to the Indian Hill loop trail in Sterling Forest. It seemed to take a long time before we came to our 1st marker, the Sapphire Trail (also blue-blazed) running north from the AT. Then another good while before we finally came to a large cairn and the blue trailhead on the south side of the AT. The Arden Mt. register was just a few feet farther down the AT. I registered us.

And then we met our 2d and 3d hikers of the day--a couple coming up the blue trail. They were out for the day with their very large poodle--large enuf to be geared with saddlebags! Too bad I didn't take their picture! But they obliged by taking one of us.

Are we there yet?

By this time it was 11:30--way longer than we'd gauged to reach this unnamed trail. We forged on, downhill (and I'm thinking--oh boy! we have to come back up this) till after about 15 minutes we finally reached the yellow trail blazes. By then we were looking for a spot to sit down and eat our sandwiches; we went a distance along the Indian Hill Trail before finding something suitable (a fairly level rock in my case, a large boulder to lean against in Bro. Tom's case) and enjoyed a slow lunch. And I read a few pages of the paperback I'd toted with me.

No way we were going to be able to do the Indian Hill loop and get ourselves back home in time to clean up before Evening Prayer--maybe not even for prayer. So we made our return--considerably faster than we'd come up, and with fewer rest breaks.

Back up to the AT, we sighted one hiker at the register, and then 2 others at the trailhead. One with a full pack moved right on. The 2d stopped to chat with us; he told us the other fellow was from Norway and was going to be hiking for a month. He observed that while lots of people park at the Elk Pen, almost all of them go the other way (staying in Harriman). Sure enuf, when we got back to our car, Bro. Tom counted 28 other cars in the lot. And we met a grand total of 6 hikers, 2 of whom had come up from Orange Tpk. and 1 obviously wasn't parked (the month-hiker).

It took us maybe a little over an hour to hike out (after lunch). But, as we always find, it was in a sense harder to go down a steep climb, being careful not to lose one's balance and fall, looking for good foot grips on sharply sloping rocks, and straining one's knees a lot. (I really expected to be sore on Monday, but wasn't.)

For some excellent photos of the climb up Agony Grind and the views from there, as well as some shots taken further than we went, see http://www.danbalogh.com/agony.html

Those have the advantage of having been taken in late winter, without foliage to get in the way of the vistas. (Of course foliage adds a lot to vistas, too.)