Breakneck Ridge at Sunrise

A friend once said, don’t live just for the weekends, learn to love the weekdays. In the Northeast, we tend to pack in as much as we can on the weekends when most of us are chained to our jobs during the week. I have been wanting to do a mid-week sunrise hike to Breakneck Ridge for over a year. With a short window of opportunity when the time of sunrise would allow me to summit and still be at my desk by 930, my options were limited. When a meeting got pushed back from 830am, I knew it was my opportunity. I wasn’t going to miss it.

I hit the road heading towards Cold Spring a little after 4am on a Tuesday, cold brew in hand. I was excited. It would be my first time since February at Breakneck, and my first summer sunrise hike at the mountain. I began my ascent a little before 5am. It was dark and quiet except for the sounds of grasshoppers and the beginning chirps from some nearby birds. I made it to the first outlook, the sky bright enough to see without a headlamp. Across the River, Storm King’s Summit was still covered with thick white fog.

With the trail to myself I continued up to the next outlook hoping to reach the third outlook by 5:32am in time to see the orange sun peak over the tree line. As I reached the last outlook I could see the stream of orange penetrating the white fog, as it slowly disappeared.

I headed to work with that post-hike high ready for the day. It didn’t matter what the day would throw at me. Starting my day on top of a mountain would make it easy.