[Journal entry for March 8, 2017; Blauvelt Mountain, Harriman State Park NY]. The afternoon is sunny and warm, with temperatures in the high fifties, Fahrenheit. I decide to revisit Blauvelt Mountain, for the cold overcast of my visit last weekend made it seem a rather too bleak a place. Once again, I parked at the end of Johnsontown Road in Sloatsburg NY and took the White Bar Trail (blazed in white) north. I went all the way to the Dutch Doctor Shelter, near the intersection of with the Tuxedo-Mt Ivy Trail (TMI, blazed in white with a red bar), north of the Mountain. I then bushwhacked up the north flank, crossing Spring Brook by stepping from stone to stone and passing several substantial sub-vertical rocky cliffs that are the products of long-gone Ice Age glaciers. I passed a set of moss-covered ledges that marks a spring and was soon high enough to view the lower, tree-covered mountains, such as the Dutch Doctor, to the north. The summit area is a set of open ledges of grey gneiss, with fields of grasses and shrubs between, punctuated by a few solitary trees. It is much prettier today than on my last visit, for the low afternoon sun is making the grey rock and the yellow grass glow, and the still-bare trees make picturesque silhouettes against the blue sky. I walk all around the summit area admiring the views and getting rather too pricked up by raspberry bushes as I cross the fields. I can see a blue sliver of Lake Sebago between hills to the nort. The views in the other directions are wide, beautiful and wild, too. I hunt around for a view of the Phragmites marsh that its along Spring Brook, a little south of Dutch Doctor Shelter. I could not find one, which surprised me, for the bare summit of Blauvelt Mountain is plainly visible from the marsh. I then began a long bushwhack to the southeast, that took be down the eastern flank of Blauvelt Mountain, down a ravine that cuts another prominent rocky cliff, across the TMI trail and into the valley of Spring Brook. The woods are open and easy to traverse and very picturesque, with the now-setting sun lighting up the tree trunks orange. I crossed the brook at a marshy spot that is full of grass hummocks and then walked back up to the White Bar Trail, which parallels the brook on its eastern side. The ground here is full of round boulders, one to two feet across; they too are lit up orange by the sun. I then follow the trail back to my car. At one point I pause to listen to a Barred Owl, calling in the distance Hoot hoot ah whooo, or as some folk understand it, Who cooks for you? 1:45.