Sometimes hiking can be fun and adventurous. Other times hiking can be a very stressful time that makes it difficult to enjoy. Yesterdays hike was somewhere in the middle of it all. D and I had decided that we wanted to go out and enjoy a little excursion time. We had been Snowboarding the day before and even though we wanted to go back we had decided to mix things up and give something else a try. SO with a little bit of looking around we made a plan to go on the trail that lead to the Gorge. It was a ten mile hike and with it being colder we thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and hike the trail. Ten Miles in the 50 degree weather is ideal when it comes to the longer hikes. With that in mind we started on our path and very quickly we learned that the trails were not very well marked. We wanted to stay on trail 2 which would have taken us along the rim of the gorge so that we could see everything along our way. Then at some point the path then divides and goes back to trail 2 which is a direct line back to the parking lot.

But not even a mile in we realized that the trails were not well marked at all. They were in fact terrible and we were soon on trail 3 and 4 which was considered to be much more difficult then the other two. As we made our way down through the slush and snow we came to a spot in the trial where we started to see more ice. Quickly things started to get bad and D's sister made the decision to bail on us. We said our goodbyes and D and I started making our way down the trail ever slow slowly. The trick was to not slip while we were going down this hill and while we were making our way this guy comes through and just blasts through the trail like it was nothing. We talked to him a bit and he said that the trail was icy and that he was thinking of coming back around (probably to check in on us) in a little bit. We wished him luck and kept going. Once we got past the ice patch we kept going down towards the rapids. The path down to the rapids was mostly consisted of mud and dirt so we kept going down in that direction until we ran into a fence that said it was closed the rest of the way. Since it was only two miles into the hike we decided to turn around and make our way down the path that we saw the guy take. 

When we started down trail three it was pretty decent. The ice wasn't around for quite some time and there were parts of the trail that D kept questioning. We came across an old building that had some graffiti on it and D just stopped on the trail and stared at it while I went ahead and looked for the trail. I know New York isn't quite an amazing city and its not entirely safe but honestly D is more paranoid about things then I am. Once we got on the trail we kept going and eventually we started running into some old cars, shopping carts and an old TV. We made an assumption that there was a grocery store that might have been up on the ridge and one day it just collapsed and brought all the debri down there. 

 After some time of checking out the stuff we made our way further down the trail and quickly ran into some issues with the trail itself. Not only was it iced over but there wasn't much to hold on to that could help us make it across safely. Honestly it was a huge slip and slide and after a while I decided to put my camera away since it was getting in the way of my balance and control while I was on the trail. We did make it to the end of the trail but unfortunately it didn't end up in a place where we could head up to the parking lot. So sadly we had to turn around and head back on the icy trail that we came from. 

Half an hour later we were heading back up the trail and up towards the parking lot. The icy part of the trail was past us and we had finally gotten to a part where we could walk normally. Along the way we chatted, had some laughs and we both learned things about each other that we didn't know before. Honestly it was fun but it was also an insight to how certain boots do not do well on the ice. The whole trail was about 5.75 miles and it took us a little over four hours to finish. We were tired, sore but happy overall about doing something that we almost didn't do at all and yet because of my sense of adventure we had done it and got some awesome pictures because of it.