Day 7 - Friday, January 22, 2021

We are resuming hiking today after a 2 day hiatus. This week was both our birthdays so we treated ourselves with some rest. Not much of a break for me though, lol... I went hiking locally one day and x-country skiing the other day. Both times at Highland Forest. We got 8” of new snow and skiing conditions were great!



Friday  morning temperature was 34° and it was cloudy when we started. We continued hiking where we left off at Seven Lakes Drive (1394.6 NoBo) and went to Orange Turnpike  (1384.9 NoBo) equaling 9.4 miles. 


We started hiking at 9:28 am. 





NYS Route 17 and New York State Thruway in the background. 



This was 1/2 way down the next picture....



We just came down that rock-castle covered with ice...




Crossing the NYS  Thruway. Looking southbound.  





The bottom of “Lemon Squeezer”... you haven’t see anything... this was wild!! 






The middle section of  “Lemon Squeezer”.  The pictures do not do it justice. This crevice is nearly 20 feet high X 3 ft wide (maybe) X 50 feet long that you have to crawl and climb up through. Not for the well nourished person LOL... and it’s much steeper than the picture shows.  

The upper section consist of a 10 foot high vertical rock face that you have to find foot holes and then pull yourself up. There’s no way one could traverse this in the other direction on the trail without a rope and carabiner and or belay to rappel down.  We are getting a piece of rock climbing rope and a couple extra carabiners. 



Had lunch at 1:16 pm at the Fingerboard Shelter... 3.3 miles to go. 


Sun hasn’t come out yet. We actually had a pretty good snow squall for 20 minutes which turned everything white... and slippery. 


We finished hiking at 3:01 pm, then had another 1 mile walk to where the car was parked. The temperature was 35° and the sun did finally come out for about 15 minutes.  


Today was an unexpected arduous day - there were many more rock slopes to traverse and climb that we have not experienced in our previous hikes and  the “Lemon Squeezer” was our first real challenge that we have encountered. We know there are more to come... 


Till next time... Happy Hiking ðŸ¥¾


😋

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