Extreme Mountain Expeditions: Breakneck Ridge Tune-up Hike

Tne Xtremeteam kicked off the Memorial Day weekend with an early morning hike up the Breakneck Ridge trail, by far the most challenging and scenic route in the Hudson Highlands trail system network. With just two weeks to go before the team's "March on Marcy" Adirondack expedition, the hike would be a good opportunity to road test some of the new gear scored over the extended Northeast winter as well as to check out our own fitness levels.
Getting There
Following our usual formula, the plan was to hydrate on coffee and water, travel light and complete the trek before breakfast. That lasted until we spotted a Farmer's Market underway in the parking lot of the Julia Butterfield hospital in Cold Spring, NY. Feeling just a hint of hunger we decided to make a quick pit stop for perhaps a piece of fruit or maybe a mineral water. Entering the market though we were surrounded with the aromas of fresh baked bread and muffins, cheese danish's, homemade extra spicy salsa with tortilla chips, sausage & pepper stuffed croissants, ham, egg & cheese mini-pizzas, and so much more! Recognizing the value of being able to improvise under extreme conditions we decided to buy pretty much one of everything and spent the next 30 minutes knocking down about 4000 calories each. Re-fueled, we headed back to the Honda to navigate the final couple of miles up Rt 9D to the trailhead.
The Hike
Exiting the tunnel we saw that the small parking lot closest to the trailhead was already full, so we proceeded another quarter mile north and parked at the bigger lot. It was 9:21 AM when I pressed the start button the new Casio Triple Sense Pathfinder watch we were testing out for the first time. Out of the gate the altimeter was way off as it was displaying 80 ft below sea level! Fortunately I was carrying my trusty Magellan Sport Track GPS for backup, so we would still be able to measure our ascent.
Although no special equipment is needed to climb Breakneck, it is basically a 50-60 degree rock climb up a series of steps. Fortunately there are an abundance of good hand holds on the steep sections, so making steady progress is no problem. Unlike the Casio, there was no disappointment with my Merrell Moab GTX Low's, which I was also trying out for the first time. They offered excellent traction and support in this section. After the wettest, coldest Spring in recent memory, this warm, hazy day had brought out the hikers in droves, so there was a little congestion on the lower part of the ridge. Confident in the traction I was getting from the Merrell's, several times we took a steeper, more direct line to pass the slower groups.
After stopping to take pictures at each of the three false summits, we finally reached the true summit, marked by a bullseye painted on the rocky peak. The Magellan showed a distance of about a mile and was reading pretty close to the official 1260 ft altitude. The Casio was displaying an altitude of over 200ft lower and would consistently understate the altitude vs the GPS for the entire trip.
Rather than scramble back down the steep ridge, we kept following the white trail in an easterly direction. After about another mile it merged with the blue trail and gradually started heading more north-westerly. During this entire section we only seemed to descend a few hundred feet. Eventually the blue trail split off to the West, so we took that until we hit the yellow trail which turned south-west.

Snake Alley
A few minutes into the this section, while stepping off a rock into some ankle deep grass, a frenzied staccato erupted at my feet, causing an instinctive leap to the side on my part. As I regained my balance I spotted a 4 ft rattler slithering into the underbrush. Not 5 minutes later we encountered a 3 ft copperhead lounging in the middle of the trail. After encouraging him to move on with a tree branch, we christened this section "Snake Alley" and kept our eyes peeled a little more carefully from that point on.
The Descent
Eventually the yellow trail started a steep descent down to the Hudson. This section was over a mile and truth be told, our knees and quads were really feeling it. It was definitely a lot tougher than going up. With 3hrs & 21 minutes reading on the timer and 4.5 miles registered on the GPS we were back at our car, tired, dehydrated but with the last symptoms of cabin fever washed from our psyche.

Product Reviews
As you would expect the timekeeping functions on the "Triple Sensor" worked flawlessly and the compass seemed to be pretty good as well. The Altimeter was judged to have some limited usefulness in terms of providing relative measures of altitude change, but it is wildly inaccurate in terms of calculating the actual altitude. We didn't spend any time checking out the barometric pressure function since, to quote Bob Dylan " you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows".

The Merrell Moab GTX lows get an A+ for both comfort and traction. We didn't get a chance to test out the waterproof qualities as there were no sections on this hike that required slogging through more than an inch or two of mud.