Storm King on Black Friday

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Tom Rankin

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Shunning the shopping malls, we get a late start and headed down to climb the Black Rock Forest Fire Tower. Busted! In hunting season, no hikers allowed, no exceptions! Aren't hunters hiking?! :confused: :eek: :mad: Ok, so off we went to Plan B. We found a trail head for Storm King and began heading up around 11:00 from Cornwall, about here. We started out across a field following little markers on sticks, until we hit real trail markers at the edge of the woods. From here, the mountain goes UP! Fortunately the trail has a lot of switchbacks, and we found the going relatively easy. We chose the South/East approach. There were several great view points along the way. We stopped just below the summit of Storm King for a snack, and some great views of Break Neck and the Mt. Beacon Fire Tower. Continuing on, we started meeting tons of people who came from other trail heads. There is a big network of trails from 9W, Mountain Road, 218, etc.

We made a loop out of the hike, heading over to Butter Hill and coming back down the South/West side of the mountain. From over on this side, we could even see the original goal, (barely), the Black Rock Forest Fire Tower.

There are lots of old ruins up on the mountains. We checked out a few of them.

I did a little bushwhacking but I later found out that is not a good idea, as there could be unexploded ordinance anywhere starting 25' off the trail! :eek:

I had not expected Storm King to be much of a hike, but if offers about 1300' of ascent along a 4 mile loop. Definitely a nice place to check out! :D
 
Storm King is definitely a nice hill. I think I read somewhere that Butter Hill was the original name of Storm King.
 
Storm King Pump storage station???

There's lots of great hikes closer than we think. Did the power companies ever build that Pump Storage Station on top of Storm King? I seem to remember back in 70's all the resistance against that proposal. :confused:
 
There's lots of great hikes closer than we think. Did the power companies ever build that Pump Storage Station on top of Storm King? I seem to remember back in 70's all the resistance against that proposal. :confused:

Nah, never happened. According to wikipedia:

In 1965 the mountain became the focus of a landmark environmental battle when local activists formed the Scenic Hudson Preservation Coalition (today known as just Scenic Hudson) to fight against plans by utility Consolidated Edison to cut away part of the mountain near the river and build a pump storage power generator complete with transmission lines across it for an ambitious power generating scheme which would also have entailed creating a reservoir in much of what is now Black Rock Forest. In a lawsuit brought by the coalition, a judge ruled for the first time that aesthetic impacts could be considered in such projects. In 1979 Con Ed finally abandoned even a greatly scaled-down version of the project, and settled a parallel lawsuit brought against their Indian Point facility by agreeing to endow the Hudson River Foundation with $12 million.
 
The closing of the Black Rock Forest to hiking during the hunting season is one of those oddities in the area. That has been the policy for as long as I can remember.

Storm King is a great mountain and a favorite of many NYC area hikers and was a good plan B.

I did a little bushwhacking but I later found out that is not a good idea, as there could be unexploded ordinance anywhere starting 25' off the trail! :eek:
The army (West Point) believes they have cleared all of the ordinance even off trail, but they did a more thorough clearing near the trails. Of course many of us hiked through that area for many years without injury before the presence of the unexploded ordinance was known. It was from decades of target practice by West Point cadets and other army units. Apparently they were not aware that the ordinance had traveled so far into what is now the Hudson Highlands State Park property, but was a privately owned estate at the time of the target practice. It was not discovered until a forest fire burned through the area.

Storm King is definitely a nice hill. I think I read somewhere that Butter Hill was the original name of Storm King.
Yes, the Dutch had called in Boterberg (Butter Mountain) which became Butter Hill to the English. It does resemble a lump of butter, more so than the Sugarloafs look like mounds of sugar. Henry Hudson had earlier called it Klinkesberg (wrinkled mountain), but the name did not stick as they were apparently lacking butter. One reference is this Summit Post entry.

Storm King is also a good name as storms do brew over the hills. The Dutch also called another mountain at the southern edge of the Hudson Highlands Donderberg (Thunder Mountain), today spelled Dunderberg.
 
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The Dutch also called another mountain at the southern edge of the Hudson Highlands Donderberg (Thunder Mountain), today spelled Dunderberg.

Dunderberg is another great hike in the Hudson Highlands. The story of the spiral railway is pretty fascinating. Many of the trails on Dunderberg follow the old right-of-way. On the Ramapo-Dunderberg Trail you even get to hike on the ballast. Speaking of Dutch names in the Highlands, the former hamlet of Doodletown, nestled between Dunderberg and Bear Mountain (Bear Mountain was once called Bare Mountain) means something along the lines of Dead Town.
 
One of my favorite hikes ! We've been back there several times and I never get tired of the views up and down the Hudson . Also not to be missed is the drive around the east side above the river on the road that's carved out of the cliffs [218 ? ]. Not bad when you're on it , but when I first saw it from across the river....:eek:

Dave
 
One of my favorite hikes ! We've been back there several times and I never get tired of the views up and down the Hudson . Also not to be missed is the drive around the east side above the river on the road that's carved out of the cliffs [218 ? ]. Not bad when you're on it , but when I first saw it from across the river....:eek:

Dave
Yeah, that's 218. We circled Storm King before we hiked it, and the views from the roads are awesome as well!
 
Not only was the proposed power plant stopped, it was also the birth of Scenic Hudson, a non profit that has continued to fight for the preservation of the Hudson River Valley- they have become very powerful and thwarted many other forms of industry.

Storm King is a great hike! The trail gets a bit sketchy and hard to follow on the southwest side.
 
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