Suburban Mountaineering Part 2

For Part 1 Click Here

On my drive from Bear Mt to Schunnemunk Mountain, I got lost.
I missed one turn, but I saw a back way on the map and decided to take it insted of backtracking. I ended up taking a nice 1/2 hour tour of the backroads of the towns of Highland Mills and Central Valley NY. BY pure dumb luck I found my way to where I missed the turn. I finaly made my way up State Road 32. I arrived at the trailhead for the Highlands Trail at 1:00 PM only 1 hr and 45 minutes behind scedule.
I took the Highlands Trail to the aproach trail for the trails in Dark Hallow. I passed up and over the railroad tracks and in to the woods. I made my over the the Dark Halloe Trail and started to climb. The first part of the trail had a few gentel switch backs, but those soon ended and made life hard on my blisters. After the switchbacks, the trail took to a pattern, 100ft. of climbing then flat for a while. Eventually I reached the top of the ridge. Because the ridge is extreemly flat every high point along it could be the summit.

There are about 5 false summits along the ridge.
Just before I reached the summit I took the side trail to see some huge exposed megaliths of rock. This rock used to be part of a sea floor. The best views are form the Megaliths. You can see from the Delaware Water Gap to the Catskills. The views from the summit are a little less impressive then the earlier. Agiain the sky was hazy and overcast. From the summit I turned around and hitailed it back to the car. Of course by the tim I made it back to the car the sky was bright and sunny. The fall colors were beautifuI.

I left thetrailhead arround 4:00 pm only 1 hr behind scedule and I was prating that I was lucky with the traffic. I was lucky with traffic while I was in New York. When I was in Jersey, at the same spot where I got out of traffic in the moring I hit traffic at night, and I got out of the night near where I hit traffic in the moring. I got home by 6:30 PM still 1 hour behind scedule.