Spring (sort of) Hike

How did we know we were on our Spring hike?  Because it was cold, windy and snowing.  This was the third year in a row that our Spring hike was snowed on, and it is now a Troop 4 tradition.

Despite the conditions, or maybe because of them, we had a fantastic and memorable hike in Bear Mountain State Park.

We started in the Bear Mountain Inn parking lot and hiked along Hessian Lake until the trail took us up the mountain.  Up 1100 plus feet, across rocks, boulders, and unmelted snow.  

With most of our climb coming in just over a mile of hiking this stretch of the hike was by far the most difficult, but everyone managed and I was particularly impressed with our new scouts who went up the mountain close on the heels of our older scouts.

Once at the top we stopped for lunch, and the rest of the hike was an easy walk through the woods on nice wide trails with rock stairs carved into the mountain.  A much easier way down than trip up.

A total of almost five miles was covered in about three and half hours including rest breaks and our stop for lunch.

Our new scouts started to learn more advanced map reading skills and learned how to estimate hiking times using a map to count miles and elevation and turn that information into a rough estimate of the total trip time.

For the complete photo record of the hike check out our photo page at:

https://picasaweb.google.com/114081196567743974684/BearMountainHikeMarch2015

Now that it's finally Spring we are ready to launch into campout season.