First hike of the season; up Sugarloaf Mountain

Last Friday morning we had our first hike up a hill. We made the 2 mile round trip up Sugarloaf, a couple of miles north of Cold Spring. Joe and I had gone up the 900 foot high “mountain” last May. Tom Faranda’s Folly: Tom and Joe’s Sunday climb up Sugarloaf

We decided it would be a relatively easy first hike of the spring, just to see how we’d go. It turned out well, with Karen Riner, her daughter Lauren (who’s graduating in a couple of months from Johns Hopkins with a BS in nursing), and first time walker-with-us (but otherwise experienced outdoors maven) Hallie Flanagan Wolfe. Lauren was along to get the average age of the group down … but it was still the wrong side of 50.

Again, Tom with four women. It’s a tough gig, but somebody’s got to do it.

Here’s Karen and Lauren. Or is it Lauren and Karen?

After walking uphill for only a few minutes, the Gang of Four decided they had too many layers on …

A serious crowd –

Here we are at the top, along with the Riner dog, Emi.

At this point, there was a interesting discussion between Hallie and Karen. karen is a fitness instructor, so Hallie asked her about how to do a proper push-up, and Karen asked hallie about composting…

Karen then demonstrated how to do a push-up – not the ladies variety from your knees, but the full-fledged masculine variety, with only your toes and hands touching the ground. She did a number of them, and Hallie then followed suit.

Here are some views from the top of Sugarloaf, taken by Karen. The first being the dead tree which is kind of the signature image from the top, ~~as well as Emi’s tongue~~, and then a view south down the Hudson. the large hill across the river is Storm King.