Highland Lakes State Park, NY - North

ABOUT THE PARK:
Highland Lakes State Park - New York State Parks
Highland Lakes State Park - Orange County, NY
Highland Lakes State Park - Palisades Park Conservancy

Although this park is still shown as a no hunting park on some online sites, that is no longer the case.  Hunting is allowed during the week, not on weekends, although I was told by someone who has ridden horses there since 1989 that he does sometimes run into illegal hunting on weekends.

The aqua-blazed Long Path ran through this park prior to 2013 so the only blazed trail is the former route of the Long Path.

DIRECTIONS:
GPS Coordinates 41.503942, -74.333791

Parking lot off of Tamms Road.

TRAIL MAP:
Highland Lakes State Park Map - New York State Parks (there are more trails than shown on the map)

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The yellow part of this track was a bushwhack.  The trail does continue but as I was running out of daylight, I decided to shortcut back to trails directly to the parking lot.

HIKE DISTANCE:  14.25 miles

THE HIKE:
The trails were surprisingly well-maintained, presumably by mountain bikers (thanks!) although I only saw one riding the entire time.  Although the map shows trail names, there are no signs indicating the names.  Where I did see a sign with a name, that name was not on the map.  Other than the former Long Path, trails are not blazed.  I relied heavily on the paper map together with my track on the Gaia app (which also does not show all the trails) to navigate around.

Facing the kiosk, we started on the woods road to the right.

A sharp left (we had come in from the left side) on a footpath.

An old Long Path marker. 

There are also horse trail markers on occasion.

We kept left heading towards the Upper Ridge Trail.

The first of many ruins we would see on this hike.

Also the first of many balloons.  This is #57 of the year.

The Upper Ridge Trail follows a ridge with winter views on either side.

At the far end, the trail turns right and heads back the other way at a lower level.  This whole section is a series of long descending trails each at a lower level.

Numerous stone boundary walls throughout.

I won't count this as a balloon find since I could not locate the actual balloon but packed it out as litter.

Heading out on the Lower Ridge Trail which runs along a swamp.

Heading back on the lowest level.

It was about 4 miles of hiking covering the Upper, Middle and Lower Ridge Trails before turning left on a woods road just before Tamms Pond.

It's along the woods road around Tamms Pond that we found litter.  Brodie packed out what he could.

Continuing around the eastern side of Tamms Pond.

Tamms Pond from the southern end.

We continued around a short distance ...

... then turned left on a woods road heading towards Highland Lake.

This nice man on his very adorable horse passed us and we would run into them again.  He had been riding horses here for 30 years and had a wealth of information about the park.  Where Brodie would normally kick into prey mode at the sight of a horse, he has apparently gotten over that as he was very calm around this horse.

On Pufftown Road along the eastern side of Highland Lake.

Ruins with steps to nowhere.

Highland Lake

A couple of other horses out on the trail.

He loves climbing those steps to nowhere.

The sounds of water off of Camp Orange Road made us detour a bit in search of a break spot.

This would be it.

Continuing along the creek to meet back up with Camp Orange Road.

Back on Camp Orange Road ...

... to balloon #2 (#58 of the year).

We turned left on to Spano Road ...

... where we found this disgusting mass of ribbons and petrified vinyl balloons which was stuffed into Brodie's already full pack.

There go our friends again who we stopped and chatted with for a bit.  They know ALL the trails here!

Continuing on Spano Road.

At the end where the horse trail marker says to turn left, we turned right.

This leads to the intersection  noted as "Tire Tree" (none seen) and the former Long Path.

We turned right on the former Long Path, Oak Road on the map.

This turns into a footpath just before ...

... a left on Camp Orange Road ...

... then left on "Rd 1".

Rd 1 starts out as a woods road ...

... then becomes a footpath.

On my own I probably would have had a hard time following the trail covered by leaves but Brodie led the way and did a fine job keeping with the trail.

Shouldn't he be hibernating?

When this trail ends at a woods road ...

... I looked back to see a sign with a name not on the map.

A left turn would have been on the map.  A right turn was not on the map.  So which way did we go?  Well, right, of course.

This came out on Van Amburgh Road where we made a left ...

... and road walked a bit to where it looked like we could reenter the park on a trail shown on the map.

At the top of the hill there was an entrance to a parking circle ...

... and indeed a woods road, just not the one I intended to find but it was going in the right direction so that worked.

It was Spano Pond I was looking for so keeping in that direction ...

... we eventually met up with the former Long Path where we turned right along the northern side of the pond.

Leaving the Long Path we continued left around the pond (not on the map).

Spano Pond

Somebody lose a tent?

Meeting back up with the old Long Path after circling the pond, we turned right, headed back to the "Tire Tree" intersection and from there tried to get pack to Tamms Pond but I got off on other mountain bike trails (not on the map) only to meet up with the old Long Path again, where in retrospect, I should have stayed as it would have led me right back to the parking lot, but I did not know that at the time.

Because the old Long Path appeared to be heading in the wrong direction, we turned left on a mountain bike path to find ...

... balloon #3 of the day.

It was after this random orange blaze that we lost the trail and started to bushwhack.

Bushwhacking wasn't very hard since the forest floor was clear of growth.

That is until we hit the swamp which was soggier than it looks in the picture.  I had to tightrope walk across that log on the left...

... while Brodie had to be cut loose for a minute to find is own way.  He had been trying to tightrope walk with me and that was treacherous.  For me.

Then up a really steep incline on loose rocks.

Finally nearing Tamms Pond and our track from earlier in the hike.

After looping around Tamms Pond to the right, taking a woods road ...

... by a little pond ...

... back to the parking lot.

Brodie's litter haul of the day.

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