IrvingD

Ever since my parents used to drive up to Bear Mountain for one of our Saturday outings, I wanted to get off the road and explore the woods and rugged terrain beyond old Route 17. The Ramapo Hills looked high to me. I called them mountains and I wasn't incorrect since they form one of the lower ranges of the Appalachian chain that passes through downstate New York. Nevertheless, they filled my ten-year-old imagination with wonder and a desire to climb them. That time finally arrived when I joined my high school's hiking club six years later. An avid outdoors man, Brother Keane organized a group of boys on a trip to Harriman-Bear Mountain State Park where we climbed Bear Mountain from whose summit you can see the Manhattan sky line rising like spikes at the end of a long winding tail that is the Hudson River. Brother Keane also taught eleventh grade English and Freshman Religion at Power memorial Academy, my all boys Catholic high school on Amsterdam Avenue and 61st Street in ...

At 1,284 ft. above sea level, some would say that Bear Mountain hardly qualifies as a true mountain. That's if you compare it to one of the looming ranges of the Rockies, or even the modest, yet formidable, peaks of New York's Adirondacks. But to me and to many, Bear Mountain is a mountain and it can proudly take its place in the Appalachian chain to which it belongs. For one thing, Bear Mountain hosts the oldest portion of the Appalachian Trail which is the way to hike up it from behind the Bear Mountain Inn. You can drive your car up the mountain on the winding Perkins Memorial Drive. June 30th was a hot, sunny day when Janet and I decided to meet some friends and, with Cinnamon our dog, climb Bear Mountain. The hike is light to moderately strenuous. The ascent is 1,000 vertical feet at a distance of eight tenths of a mile. An easy Saturday outing? Not. With the temperatures in the nineties and a sun staring down hard, the light to moderate hike went up a notch or two on th...