[Journal entry for March 15, 2006] Minnewaska State Park, near New Paltz, New York.

I arrive at the park at about 9:30 AM, the drive up from Tappan, NY taking about two hours. The day is partly cloudy and blustery, with temperatures in the mid-thirties Fahrenheit. The road west of New Paltz has a spectacular view of Shawangunk ridge. It also passes wetlands, full of ducks, Canada geese and redwing blackbirds. I park in the Peter's Kill area, and first walk a short loop trail that descends down to the Kill, follows it upstream a bit, and then ascends a bare stone pavement back to road level. Peter's Kill is quite lively, with many small rapids and cascades.

I then cross Highway 44/55, and take an informal trail over to Trapp's Carriageway. This is a well-maintained woods road that heads eastward through the trees. It crosses Coxing Kill via a solid looking bridge with stout stonework abutments. The area has lots of mountain laurel - a welcome green beneath the browns and beiges of the leafless trees. The Carriageway crosses the Highway via the steel Trapp's Bridge. I cross over to the eastern side, to admire huge quartzite boulders that have fallen off of the Shawangunk ridge, towering above. But I then cross back, and walk the Millbrook Trail westward, all the way to Gertrude's Nose, four miles distant. This part of the trail is very reminiscent of the Long Path along the Hudson Palisades.

The trail hugs the cliff-edge, so the views are fantastic. Southward lies the Wallkill valley, with its farms, orchards and meandering streams. Mohonk Tower, built on a high point of the ridge, is visible to the east. Highland woods, together with a second ridge, are visible to the north. The view westward is poor, as the trail is rising in that direction. The ridge has fairly sparse forest cover, which consists mostly of pines, some growing on very little soil atop the white quartzite rock. The evidence of ancient glaciations is everywhere. Glacial scratches, and more rarely, glacial polish, adorn many rock outcrops, including the highest. Most of these scratches are parallel to the strike of the ridge. I guess that the glaciers were steered by the topography, which is substantial

The ridge rises at least one thousand feet from the valley floor, and reaches fifteen hundred in places. The trail ascends Millbrook Mountain, one of the high points on the ridge (or maybe this whole ridge-segment constitutes the mountain). The spine of the ridge, especially at the summit, is quite narrow. The rock strata, which dip fairly steeply to the north, create impressive overhangs. I cautiously peer over the edge. Green pine trees grow from cracks in the white face of the cliff. Lichens cling to its smooth surface. A large pile of boulders litter the ground at the cliff's base.

The area west of the ridge has many tension cracks. Some parallel the cliff-edge, suggesting that large slivers of ridge will someday separate and plummet downwards. They are several feet wide in places, and very deep, so much so that their bottoms are lost in darkness. One crack can be seen edge-on, at a place where the trail descends into a gulley (a power line crosses the ridge there). A substantial sink hole has formed where lose rock and soil have slipped into the crack

The trail makes a sharp right turn at Gertrude's Nose, where the ridge appears to be offset more than a mile northward. This area is especially beautiful, as there is a wide shelf of white quartzite rock, sparsely adorned with green pines and reddish-brown bushes. Near its edge, it is all broken up into huge white blocks. A small stream, Palmaghatt Kill, flows down the funnel-shaped re-entrant of the offset. Across it, the ridge continues westward. The trail joins up with Millbrook Drive, another carriageway, about a mile northeast of Gertrude's Nose. One prominent overlook is marked by a dazzling white boulder called Patterson's Pellet

Lake Minnewaska is another mile of so down the carriageway. It is a smallish lake, perhaps a half-mile or so long, and less in width. It seems to have been made, or at least enlarged, by a dam built at its southern end. High cliffs of white quartzite surround the lake. It reminds me of Pine Meadow Lake in Harriman park, though here the cliffs are higher and more continuous. I climb to the top of the highest point on the east side of the Lake, which has been cleared as a picnic area. The view is particularly fine from this vantage. I then stroll through this fairly heavily developed part of Minnewaska State Park. Just north of the picnic area, the park road cuts between two vertical walls of stone. I’m unsure whether this cut is natural or anthropogenic. A highly-arched footbridge, the Dry Bridge, crosses the road there.

I then walk the Sunset Carriageway, which follows Peter's Kill in its eastern, downstream direction. The road passes Awosting Falls, which is impressively high and very wide, too. It plunges into a wide pool in which a large iceberg floats. I suppose that it was from ice that originally adorned the face of the waterfall. I follow the carriageway, paralleling the course of the meandering Kill, until it veered off to the north. In another mile of so eastward, I meet up again the informal trail that leads to the parking lot, thus completing the second, and largest, loop of my hike. My face feels rather wind-burned, as the wind had been strong all day, and with occasional flakes of blowing snow. The car thermometer reads 37F as I drive off. I have hiked, more or less continuously, for six hours and twenty-five minutes.