It seems to be a bit of a tradition for us, hiking Sterling Ridge during the fall foliage season. Almost to the day, we did this exact hike five years ago. Here's how I described it back then: This is a slightly shorter version of Western Hudson Hike #3 ("Ridge and Shore Loop") from the book Take a Hike: New York City (1st edition) which is also the Hike of the Week for 9/19/2002 as described on the NY-NJ Trail Conference website. The difference is that we skipped the visit to the fire tower, which we have visited several times in the past. So instead of continuing west on the Sterling Ridge trail when we intersected with the Bare Rock trail, we made a left on that trail and took that south to Sterling Lake.