Went hiking in a new park. We’ve passed it several times over the years and have never stopped in to check it out. Pretty silly considering how massive the park is and the closer proximity for the drive. Of course weather conditions were not ideal. It had rained in the overnight into the morning and a constant mist was present. The trails were muddy and some parts were iced over from previous snowfalls and hikers compacting the trail down. The hike felt more like a mental game for foot placement rather than the enjoyment of being outdoors in nature but was still fun! Made mental notes for future hiking and exploration with Harriman park.

We started the journey from the hikers parking lot on Elk Pen. A footpath led through some tall grass fields now browned and matted down because of winter. The footpath was soggy and muddy so stayed as close to the edges to avoid sinking in. We finally made it to the edge of the woods after a short walk and came upon a sign outlining points of interest and distance. Our goal was to hike to Lemon Squeezer so off we went. Within the woods the previous snowfall had not melted which made for interesting and quite difficult navigation due to it being frozen over. Wish we would have taken more photos but much time was taken to calculate foot placements so as not to fall on the slippery mess.

The path was much too slippery so we found where the path met closer to the road and hiked up Arden Valley Road until we could find the next “path” that we could take to get to Lemon Squeezer. We totally passed the footpath to get back onto the trail. Thank goodness for the Avenza app with the map of the park downloaded that we were able to see we had passed it up. We turned back around and could now see some pink flags tied to some tree posts that we obviously had missed earlier. Good thing we didn’t have to back track too much.

Again, maybe not the best time to have gone for this hike but we pushed forward with determination. And we finally made it to Lemon Squeezer. We will definitely have to revisit this in warmer weather so we could actually attempt doing this part of the trail the proper way. Being iced over proved to be too dangerous to even attempt it. Just take a look at the picture. Not much room for error in such a tight spot to begin with.

Ice on the side walls and the ground beneath. We did manage to find a way around to reconnect to a trail and continued on our way. Maybe because of the trail conditions it felt like our usual pace was drastically slower and seemed like we got no where. We attempted to book our pace faster when the opportunity presented itself. Tried to walk where it was less snowy and icy as much as possible.

We continued the loop we had originally planned and came to a point where we had to decide to keep struggling through or take the easier way back to the car. As much as we had both wanted to just keep trekking though, we had to make a smart decision to walk the road back to the hikers lot. But that did not stop us from taking a little detour to view the lake since we were right there. A nice surprise to see how calm everything was. Just took a moment right there to just close our eyes and listen to nature around us. A moment of silence that was much needed for the soul.

All in all wish could write more about the trail but this is definitely on the list to re-hike in some more favorable conditions. But I must say we didn’t do a bad job, we hiked just shy of 7 miles even though we didn’t do anything that was planned 🙂

Can’t wait to revisit!

-Chris & Ola