Suburban Mountaineering Part 1

You do not go to the New York City Metro Area for the wilderness experience, but that is no reason that you can not do some Suburban Mountaineering.
Websters defines suburban as: residing in a suburb. It also defines Mountaineering as: to climb mountains, as for sport. the comboniation deffinition is to climb mountains near a suburb.

It all started on Monday (10/17) when I realized that I had no school or work on Friday, Alright, I am going hiking!!!! But where? On Tuesday I looked at my map collection of places that I wanted to go, the first one that I looked at was Bear Mt. I checked out the SP page and decider that thats where I was going. Then I thought " I am not driving 2 hrs to hike 4 miles, so I hit the distances button on Bear Mt. and saw that Schunnemunk Mountain was real close I also have a map for that area so I decided I would climb both mountains.

The plan: My plans plans never go right, so I do not know why I bother making them.
Wake up: 5:00 AM to beat the traffic heading to NYC.
By 7 AM be at Bear Mt.
By 10:30 AM AT THE LATEST back at the car. Start driving to Schunnemunk Mountain.
By 11:15AM arrive at Schunnemunk Mountain.
By 3:00PM start driving home to beat traffic leaving NYC.

I did not set my alarm right so I woke up at 7AM not 5AM, damm 2 hours behind. At least I was all packed and ready to go, so all I had to do was eat and hop in the car. I was on the road by 7:14AM. I had gone 15 miles of an 82 mile drive and I was sitting in bumper to bumper traffic. At first I was seriously pissed-off about it, but then I realized that I was going hiking and that everybody else had to go to work. HAHA SUCKERS!!!!!!! The Traffic lasted about 30 minutes and I was able to make 70 MPH the rest of the way.
At 9:15 AM I pulled into the parking lot at Bear Mt Inn 2hrs and 15 min behind secedule. Damm. Lets go hiking.
I picked the Maj. Welch Trail aas the way to climb Bear Mt. The Maj. Welch trail was the orginal route fro the A.T. The A.T.'s first sections were cut on Bear Mt. State Park. So it is a historic trail.
There were some big rock faces (Pic. 1) with nice views on the Maj. Welch Trail.

The summit was kinda anti-climatic. The trail goes right past a pair of soda machines. The sky's were overcast and the great views I was expecting, sucked. The one good thing was that I had the popular summit of Bear Mt. all to my self for about 10 minutes, then a tour group 0f 50+ people came up by bus. I took that as my que to exit.
I started to decend via the A.T. and happend on a pair of White tailed deer, a doe and a fawn.

The decent was uneventful execept fot thr group of 50 freeking school kids climbing up the A.T. At least it gave me a chance to take a break and take a drink. The A.T is a very easy trail back down to the parking lot and I made very good time. It was around noon by the time I left for Schunnemunk Mountain, only 2 and 1/2hrs behind scedule.

For Part 2 Click Here