Hudson Highlands, Cornish Estate Trail, The Snow Lingers...

The past few days in the city have been beautiful, sunny and in the mid fifties, so with the hopes of clear trails we set off this morning for Clarence Fahnestock State Park to check out a section of the Appalachian trail, however, as we drove north on the Taconic State Parkway it became obvious that the snow from last weekend was still hanging around, two feet thick in some parts despite three days of sunshine and spring weather. We parked on Route 301 just as a very determined and equally prepared hiker emerged from the northern trailhead armed with trekking poles, dressed in goulashes and several sweaters, and carrying a day pack that was more along the lines of our overnighters. We hid our shamefully unprepared selves (one of us wearing shorts) in the car until he passed and then tested our luck with the snow...which looked something like this...

Swallowing our pride we snapped some shots of the beautiful scenery and headed out of the park on 301 toward the Hudson River, hoping to find a riverside path sans slush. After a quick stop in Cold Spring to walk along the water we headed north through Hudson Highlands State Park looking for a clear trailhead. A few miles up 9D on the right we found an old stone gate now serving as the trailhead for the Cornish Estate Trail.

By Train: Take the Metro-north Hudson Line to Cold Spring Station. From the station Follow Main Street east to Fair Street. Turn left onto Fair Street and continue to Route 9D. Follow 9D until the entrance pictured above appears on your right. According to Google maps walking directions the total distance is 1.3mi. Be careful on 9D though, there's a high speed limit and no real sidewalk!

The trail starts off on an abandoned road formerly used for access to an old estate, and slowly slopes up the ridge. It's a fairly easy stroll and many people had brought their dogs for a quick walk. We were able to get a ways up the ridge before hitting snow again, but it wasn't too deep and we had our hiking boots so we decided to press on. The views across the Hudson to the mountains beyond were spectacular and we could hear and see trains passing on the tracks below.

About a half mile up the trail we reached the stone ruins of the Old Cornish Estate that used to occupy the land now maintained by the park. We'll have to head back to explore inside. After a quick search for the trail on trails.com we learned that the estate had been occupied by a cornish family up until the 1940's and it was later destroyed by fire in 1956. Further up the trail there are remains of the Dairy farm that the family ran as well.

We continued up the trail which is apparently dirt at this point but there was no way to tell as the snow was getting really thick! We walked a few switchbacks and came upon some beautiful views of nearby Breakneck Ridge under a light coating of snow. By this point all was quiet and we took a few moments to pause by a stream and catch our breath. Hiking in snow uphill is not like taking an afternoon stroll! With no one else on the trail but us we could have sat for hours basking in the quiet and clear blue skies. We continued along the blue blazed trail until hitting an unused dirt road. Since we only had an hour to get back to the car and the snow was upwards of a foot deep at this point we promised ourselves to come back and decided to head back down.

All in all a great first hike of the season!