Date: 2018-07-05
From: NY 17 - Tuxedo Motel

To: Bear Mountain Bridge Motel
Miles today: 19.0

DAY 121Decided we should add that when we were at High Point State Park Beach,  we met an older gentleman in the water who was swimming laps along the swim line.  He's from New York, and asked if we were hiking the trail. We told him we were and he asked a bunch of questions regarding the trail. Then he mentioned that he had hiked Mount Rainier three times as well as Mount Kilimanjaro .  He thought we would be good candidates to hike Mount Kilimanjaro . He told us we would need to know one word in Swahili , Polepole (pronounced polly polly) , which means slow. He told us how he trained in New York by going into the taller buildings and hiking the stairs.  He would go in and get permission and they would look at him like he was crazy , especially when he came back with a backpack on. He said as he hiked on Kilimanjaro he would ask mother nature for permission to breathe. Her answer was " meh, go ahead." Then he showed us how he would take a deep breath. He said he'd take a deep breath then take a step, take a deep breath take a step. We chatted with him for quite some time in the water and then told him we needed to go have lunch.  Before we left the water, he asked us what word in Swahili we needed to know. Mary remember it was Paul something, but I couldn't remember what it was at all.  He told me to hold out my hand which I did, and he told me Palm side down. He slapped my hand and said polepole so I would remember it in the future. On another note, you should be careful where you sit at High Point State Park Beach. Apparently Mary sat in sand fleas, you can imagine what kind of havoc they wreaked on someone who swells whenever she's bitten by any kind of insect.Now onto today's Journal :We got up, showered and had some leftover pizza and then headed down to the bottom of the hill to see if we could either find a ride back to the trail, or call a taxi. There didn't really seem to be anyone around to give us a ride, so we ended up calling the other taxi listed in guthooks. Thankfully this cab rate was much more reasonable. The New York portion of the trail is a lot tougher than you would think, and is more like New England hiking. The climbs are not quite the height of some of the  presidential peaks, but still lots of ups and downs nonetheless. We got dropped off where we left off at the beginning of Harriman State Park. Harriman State Park is no exception, you begin with a steep uphill climb all the way up to a ridge. From there you follow the ridge along going down short little climbs and right back up again on little ledgey areas. It was at least a little cooler today, but still very humid. It was so foggy it was almost raining out and you could see the moisture in the air. We hiked today to the lake where we planned to go yesterday before we crapped out. It was nearly lunchtime by the time we made it, so it was good that we didn't try yesterday as we never would have made it in time. We enjoyed a swim and then had lunch, eating the leftover pizza that we had packed out from last night. When planning a couple days ago, we hoped to make it to Montgomery tonight, but that's before we bailed out. So, we were unsure where we were going to make it tonight. We were still optimistic we may make it tonight but things would have to go right.By lunch the sun had come out and it was heating up again. The trail was still rough so we were not making very good time, but we were charging on. As we came into William Bren Shelter we saw a doe with twin fawns off in the mountain laurel. Water is still real scarce, it's either jugs left by trail angels, or in this case William Bren has a spring that is not really flowing well, but there was water in it. We filled up our bottles there, after first drinking as much cold water as we could. At some point today we committed to making Fort Montgomery, but there were still three different ridges we had to climb up and over to get to town, and it was heating up again.From West Mountain we called the motel, they had one room left so we booked it. We  still had 6 miles to go, so we told him that if they could pick us up it probably wouldn't be till 9 at night.  They said that was okay, so we went for it. We got out our remaining snacks and put them in our pack pockets. We still had to get down West Mountain and climb up Bear Mountain and get down Bear Mountain, this is after climbing at least four other peaks earlier today. After finally getting down West Mountain we started up Bear Mountain. We climbed nonstop, the trail has many stone steps that have been  built into the back side of the mountain. When we finally made it to the top the sun was beginning to set. We took a quick run up the tower to get a couple pictures then started down the mountain. We realized we were going to be later than we thought, so we called the motel back and they said no problem, just call us when you get to the bottom.The climb down begins on a short road walk, and soon there are a series of stone steps.About halfway down it was too dark to safely walk, so we donned our headlamps and continued downward. At one point towards the bottom we saw a couple pair of eyes glowing in our lights. We soon realized it was a family of raccoons. As we got close they scurried off into the woods. When we finally got down we were exhausted not only from the long day, but also from having hiked the last 3 hours pretty much non-stop. We called the motel owner and he quickly arrived and put us into his air conditioned vehicle and brought us back to the motel. It was now well after 9:30, Allan, the owner, was gracious enough to give us some ice cold bottled water which we quickly drank. We showered and I ran across the street to the gas station and grabbed a couple way too expensive pre-made sandwiches. We ate, and off to bed we went.