Panther Mountain

Panther Mountain, Harriman State Park (4/17/2010)

Today's hike was a lollipop of my own invention. I've always been intrigued by the two viewpoint "stars" on the NYNJTC map for Southern Harriman on a hill called Panther Mountain. So today we headed there, parking in the lot of the Ramapo Equestrian Center. It was raining when we started out at the trailhead of the Pine Meadow trail, which actually begins behind one of the horse pens. This we took to the Suffern-Bear Mountain trail, making a right, and reaching those two terrific viewpoints after a bit of climbing. After the second viewpoint, we made a right onto an ill-defined path (the map marks it as a woods road, but it's more like an unmaintained trail, if that) which headed down back to the powerline and gasline cut. Forunately there were cairns to guide us on this stretch. It would have been much more difficult without them. And there were at least two places where huge blow-downs further obscured the path, but the cairns were still visible in the midst of the storm damage. Once we reached the powerline cut, near the Dilitz Road parking area, we made a right and headed back west to the horse stables.

Total distance hiked today was probably about 3 or 3.5 miles (my pedometer's battery ran out). It took us about 2 hours, and there was a fair amount of climbing during the first half, but it was all downhill (and fast) during the second half.

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