Father of Hiking Passport
July 11, 2010
There were six names on the thank you list of Nature You website, not many of us knew who Ray Lin was. Ray was the voluntarily webmaster of the Club and actually also Father of our Hiking Passport. It was his initial idea of giving out a record book to hikers to put down the trip they joined and a souvenir after the event. I modified and beautified his idea into an information booklet and implement the stamp collection game. It was Ray and Sarah’s first trip with Nature You this year. Another new hiker was Eric who came from New Jersey. Others included Ken, Anthony, Ray Ray, Leon, Magdalene, Emily, Chung Kwong, Rose, Esther, Philip, Kelly, Sam and Moon.
We hiked on most part of Cornell Mine trail before but we had the mission to go through the full course today. It was because Ray and Sarah started being the volunteers of maintaining this trail this year. It was Nature You’s pleasant to co-maintain this trail with them. It was a new era for the Club as we could contribute to the New York hiking community and claimed we had a trail called Cornell Mine Trail.
We started at 9:45 am along Blue Cornell Mine Trail targeting Bald Mountain. Ray and I were discussing about what else should be done on this trail in next trail maintenance trip. The trail was actually very clean except the water pool closed to the parking lot. Eric carried a huge camera bag because he had brought a complicated camera. Ken told him he also had a good camera but Emily banned it on all hiking trips because it was too heavy. I asked if Ray knew where Cornell Mine was since the trail was named by it. He said he would prepare the map and brought us there next time. It was very steep at the last portion of the trail. We had to climb 900 feet within 1 mile. It was not easy for new hikers. Ken joked were there any trails which had no up hill or down hill slopes. Ray Ray and Leon were at the front for 30 minutes but couldn’t keep up to the top. Once again, Moon was the first one touched base on uphill slope. I was the third because the 15 pound watermelon pulled me back. Kelly sweated liked shower. Sam enjoyed the tough exercise. Magdalene was faded to know we finished only 1.25 miles of Blue Trail so far.
Even I was almost cramp because of the watermelon, I decided to cut it at the Bald Mountain as we would have a better viewpoint. I brought the team climbed up more on R-D and reached the best viewpoint of the day. We could oversee the Bear Mountain and Hudson River with Bear Mountain Bridge at the far end. I served everybody a cold and sweet watermelon included 2 other guest hikers on site. Eric was first too shy to take since he never enjoyed a cold watermelon at the mountain top. The scenery was so pretty that if it was a cloudy day, we would probably take a nap here. My plan was to take lunch at Bear Mountain Recreational Area where Magdalene could use the civilized restrooms. I brought the team left the viewpoint and returned to the R-D. It was my fault that I didn’t realize a few photographers were still shooting, only half team could follow me with the correct direction. I found Ken, Emily, Philip, Chung Kwong, Esther and Rose were missing after 15 minutes. I waited 10 minutes which was enough to eliminate all the hopes. When I was ready to go back to search them, I got the phone call from Chung Kwong. He knew they went to the wrong direction so he would bring back the missing team. As we had waited too long, I asked Ray and Sarah to wait and bring them on an unmarked trail while I would lead others to hike according to the plan. We stopped at the intersection of R-D and 1777. I thought it was the point of meeting them so I told my teammates to take lunch. I realized I was wrong after 30 minutes, so we wrapped up and hiked along 1777 until another junction where cut an unmarked trail. They were there for almost 15 minutes. Rose said there ought to be some drugs in the watermelon so they lost conscious and went into the wrong route. It was disastrous that Chung Kwong hurt his knees again because of running back too quick on the return trail.
We continued with the lunch break. As we had spent extra time on waiting and taking lunch and extra energy on bonus miles, I didn’t think we had time to visit Bear Mountain Recreational Area. We hiked down slopes along 1777 which was easy and relax because it was full of shades. We passed Doodletown remains and spent photographic time at Doodletown Reservoir. The mile on 1777E was almost flat. When we reached the intersection of 1777E and Blue Trail, we had a decision to make. Most people thought it was too hot, too tired, too important to know the World Cup soccer final game and too curious to know what Moon had prepared us the after-hike treats, we decided to finish the trip by hiked along the last quarter mile on Cornell Mine Trail. We finished 5 miles at 2:30 pm. We were clear about our 2 miles Cornell Mine Trail and would be back in October to do some maintenance jobs.
