Breakneck Ridge Trail
http://www.nynjtc.org/hike/breakneck-ridge-trail

This trail is not for the faint of heart, but worth every minute! The website above gives you great information about the trail itself, but as most information about trails, seems to be dated. There are two different trail heads the breakneck (WHITE) and the Wilkinson trail head (YELLOW). I have now done this trail three times and each time a different way. This trail is on 9D right before the town of Cold Spring about ten minutes outside Beacon, Ny. You will see a large tunnel and the trail head is directly before this tunnel. If you go through the tunnel you have missed the trial and gone too far. 

All photography done by Eilis Petrosino

I recommend starting on the white trail for breakneck, then following that all the way up the steep rock to the flags, the views up and down the Hudson are great as well as the mountain across the Hudson called storm king (which is another great hike). After you have scaled the rock mountain you will continue to follow the white trail markers along a few more look out points. After about 2 hours worth of hiking you will come across the blue trail markers and you will begin following the darker blue trail markers (do not confuse the pale blue with the dark blue). At this junction you would also be able to continue on the white trail which would bring you all the way through the fishkill ridge to Mt. Beacon (another hike on my blog). The blue trail is a left hand turn, and you will continue to follow this now to the yellow trail. The blue trail is about an hour and follows through well shaded tree lines. You will pick up the yellow trail that winds down the mountain and along a creek bed, be sure to stay on yellow and not turn left at one point up toward the red markers. ***SIDE NOTE: If you see the red trail headed toward 9D earlier in the hike (while you are still on white) you can take a hard left and use this trail as well to cut off about an hour and a half of the hike. You will take the red trail all the way to the yellow trail, but when you get to yellow make sure you take a left and not a right because they you will loop all the way back around adding hours back on your trail.*** Continue the yellow marker to 9D, you will start seeing hearing the traffic. This yellow trail is the Wilkinson trail and you can park here at the base and start your hike from here as well and miss the steep rocks of breakneck. There are a ton of really neat hikes through this ridge, including short and long. The long hike http://scenichudson.org/parks/fishkillridge is the entire fishkill ridge which is 11.5 miles (my suggestion is to drive two cars and park one at breakneck and the other in mt beacon or vice versa) or the short being only the breakneck hike cutting off at the red, our moderate hike we did today was the white breakneck, to blue trail, to yellow wilkinson which was about a 4 hour total hike. Beautiful day with some beautiful views and some really fun wildlife! GET UP GET OUT GET MOVING...its summer people!!! :)

                       

                                                        

 What would be a hike without a meal or some drinks after! I have done a different spot for eating each time I have gone on this hike so I will reveal each and believe me all three were note worthy spots!

#1- The Tomato Cafe: http://www.tomatocafefishkill.com/ Fishkill is a great little neighborhood about 15 minutes up 9D from this hike. We had sandwiches, smoothies and dessert. Egg white on a hard role with spinach, pesto and roasted red peppers, Tropical fruit smoothie with mango, banana, soy milk and honey, and mint chocolate chip gelato with a chocolate chip cookie underneath! Everything was so good, great service and a really cute outdoor seating area which was just what we needed after that long hike.

#2- The Patio: http://www.roundhousebeacon.com/the-patio.php Beacon is a great little town right on the Hudson about 10 minutes up the road from this hike. I had a caprese sandwich that was really light and delish as well as a local beer on tap called crossroads from Athens, NY. http://www.crossroadsbrewingco.com/Home_Page.php I had the Outrage which is a Pale Ale...really nice!

#3- Thai Food @ Sukhothai Restaurant: http://www.sukhothainy.net/ Beacon again, and this thai restaurant is to die for. We went on a later hike so we ate dinner here, Pad Thai with shrimp which was very good. And for dessert a sticky rice with ice cream...who would have thought that was good?!? It was amazing...

Take some time out and find some great local restaurants in your neighbor hood, so many people stick to that one restaurant they know they like...try a new kind of food genre. You never know you might actually find yourself liking it. Be active and you can indulge in most anything<3