The Hudson Highlands Blog

On an odd Sunday in July, I wasn’t working for a change, and the weather was good. After having driven through three monsoons in five days, I was ready for a day in the woods. I kicked around various destinations, including the Schaeffer trail up Gore, and the Taconic Hereford multiple use area.

Waking up at 6:30 put the kibosh on Gore. Decades ago, I’d climbed Breakneck Ridge near Cold Spring NY, and as I finished my coffee, I decided I’d check out Hudson Highlands State Park.

I followed my nose to a small trailhead just off Route 301 outside Cold Spring. Unloader brace? Check. Heart rate monitor? Check. Hydration vest? Check. Off we go.

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Growing up in the Hudson Highlands, for me, has been a gift. There’s something about those peaks plunging down to the mighty Hudson River. I have enjoyed trips to far off places, but there is nothing quite like coming home. Not too big, not too small and never short on adventure, they always deliver.

Freebird grew up here and knows this place too. He was on a brief visit from his home in the North Country so, with good weather and a full moon, we decided to go on a mission. The plan was straightforward. Paddle across the Hudson from Cold Spring, climb Storm King Mountain, paddle across again and climb Breakneck Ridge, then paddle back. With two climbs and two crossings we decided to nickname it the Double Double.

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“What can be more imposing than the precipitous Highlands, whose dark foundations have been rent to make a passage for the mighty river?” — Thomas Cole, 1841

When driving east across the iconic Bear Mountain Bridge, a towering, rocky peak looms overhead on the eastern shore of the Hudson River. If you look closely, you can just make out the tan and gray rocky outcropping marked with an American flag often whipping in the wind. Dwarfed in its imposing shadow on a cool summer morning, one cannot help but feel the same sense of awe described by the famed Hudson River School artists and writers in the mid nineteenth century.

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