![]() ![]() If you’ve never been, or maybe even if you have, you should put this hike into your rotation. My only regret about hiking Bear Mountain is that I didn’t do it sooner. Humans: So cool sometimes, so not cool sometimes.īut even with the sea of humanity that you may find elsewhere at Bear Mountain, and the all-too-frequent litter, the trails and scenery here are truly beautiful, are quite secluded in many spots, and should be on every local hiker’s to-do list. My pack and pockets were full of other people’s trash by the end of the day, and I only scratched the surface. Once you’re on the trail system, too, you may find some depressing reminders that some people just aren’t as cool as you and me. The park opens at 8am year-round, so if you’re visiting on a nice weekend, you’d be well-advised to get there as close to 8am as possible. Some families were picnicking in the median! Definitely do NOT try to do this hike on the Fourth of July, unless you enjoy having the worst time of your life.) Dudes were dragging coolers across three lanes of traffic. People were parked illegally all over the place, including the center of the roundabout at the Bear Mountain Bridge, and were being ticketed accordingly. (I drove by Bear Mountain on the Fourth of July, 2017, and it was a madhouse. You may do better to hit this hike on a weekday – the parking lot can fill up on nice weekends. There’s plenty to do here, so whenever you visit, expect to have some company. Many people just lounge on the lawn and enjoy the views of Anthony’s Nose looming across the river, too. You could also take a short walk to the Popolopen Creek Suspension Footbridge, or rent boats on Hessian Lake, swim in the pool, go ice skating in the rink (current rates for those activities on the Bear Mountain homepage), or grab some grub at the restaurant or the hiker’s café at the Bear Mountain Inn. When my family visited Bear Mountain several years ago (we drove to the top that time, because, well, we had little kids and, hey! Stop judging me!), we also visited the Trailside Zoo and the rockin’ carousel. (According to this Bear Mountain Trails Project page, it was the always-awesome New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, in cooperation with several other super-cool groups, that made all this awesomeness happen.) To everyone who created this trail, thank you for making the Hudson Valley a better place to live, visit, and explore!īesides the awesome hiking, this park also offers many other activities. ![]() This trail section is a marvel of ingenuity, engineering, and backbreaking manual labor, and we are all indebted to the people who did this work. This is a phenomenal hike with fun rock-clambering, multiple wonderful views (some more secluded than others), and some of the most insane trailwork I’ve ever seen.Īccording to signage along the trail, the section of Appalachian Trail that you’ll traverse on your descent features over 1,000 stone steps, each one painstakingly installed without the use of heavy machinery. If you skip climbing Bear Mountain just because of the parking lot, you will be doing yourself a terrible disservice. It deserves to draw crowds, and there’s plenty of room on that rocky bluff for everyone. And really, why shouldn’t there be? What an amazing place. Sharing the summit at Bear Mountain with your fellow humans is a part of the deal with this place. “Shhhh, buddy, time to stop calling them ‘ cheaters’ now,” I whispered. We’d only seen a handful of other hikers on the way up, but the summit was teeming with humanity. “Look at all the cheaters up here!” my eight-year-old son said, dripping with sweat, as the trail led us into the parking lot. (Okay, maybe the vending machines are okay.) While the views here are undeniably, famously gorgeous, it was hard for me to build up too much steam to write a trail guide for this hike, for this reason: right beside the beautiful view, there’s a big, fat, busy parking lot.Īfter you’ve spent the afternoon busting your hump to climb a mountain, you know what you don’t want to see at the summit? Minivans. Background you can feel free to skip: For years, Bear Mountain State Park was a notable omission on, serving as arguably the most quintessential Hudson Valley hike not yet documented here.
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