With the Hudson Valley abounding in parkland and gasoline expensive, downstate visitors and local residents have been making the most of the beaches, lakes and campsites available across the region.
Bear Mountain State Park, which straddles the border of Orange and Rockland counties on the west bank of the Hudson River, has been in continuous operation since 1913 and is now booming, its numbers up by almost half last year over 2009.
Bear Mountain”™s 5,000 acres offer everything from camping, swimming, boating and fishing to hiking part of the Appalachian Trail. Gas prices hovering at the $4 a gallon mark have also made staying closer to home ”“ even if only for a day ”“ a much more attractive proposition for families on a budget or families with breadwinners looking for work who are vacationing on a shoestring.
According to Dan Keefe of the New York State Parks and Recreation Department, Bear Mountain State Park had 1.8 million visitors in 2010, an increase of 46 percent over the previous year. Bear Mountain State Park employees say that, to date, they have seen the same number of visitors this year. The weather will play a factor in determining whether it will surpass 2010 numbers. Bear Mountain Park is one of the top three state parks visited.
The New York-New Jersey Trail Conference (NYNJTC), in conjunction with the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, has recently re-opened the 700 step hand-hewn granite staircase, as well as one mile of treadway supported by stone wall cribs, leading to highest point of the park on Perkins Drive, with plans to finish the project by 2013
“We saw 500,000 hikers visit Bear Mountain last year, so this is going to be a unique opportunity for them to see the renovation while hiking, and we are anticipating the number of visitors to remain the same to our trails or pass last year”™s mark,” said Chris Ingui, program coordinator for the Trail Conference. “We”™ve also made renovations to the Appalachian Trail to make it easier and more accessible.”
From 2006-2010, volunteers from The NYNJTC, Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC), Student Conservation Association (SCA), Rockland County Americorps, and the Boy Scouts of America, among others, have traveled to Bear Mountain to receive free training as part of Trail Conference”™s innovative Trail University program.
More than 700 individuals volunteered more 25,000 hours helping to build the most technically constructed stretch of the entire Appalachian Trail and the largest trail building project in the history of the Trail Conference. Last month, the Trail Conference opened a one-mile long loop trail at the summit of Bear Mountain, half of which is handicap accessible. This loop trail is accessible from Perkins Tower and is also a relocation of the Appalachian Trail. Work is planned to continue through 2013 on this project, according to Ingui.
Plans to connect the Appalachian Trail through Arrow Park in the Monroe-Sterling Forest State Park have been curtailed due to budget cuts but the Trail Conference is marching on.
Visitors who miss the Bear Mountain Inn won”™t have to wait much longer for it to re-open. Originally scheduled to re-open this May, general manager Michael Morris says the multimillion-dollar renovations on the historic landmark, which will feature a conference center, refurbished hotel rooms, plus a restaurant and lounge for the public will open Nov. 11.
