Annie's Nature Journal: It's All Downhill From Here!

This is by far the most challenging hike I've done so far. This was a new group on Meetup I had just joined, called "It's All Downhill From Here." They were a group of co-workers who were hiking together regularly, and they had decided to post their activities on Meetup to invite other people to join them. The problem is, they were going at a VERY fast pace, to keep the hike under three hours. They were used to that pace, but newcomers weren't. Some turned around after twenty minutes. I consider myself a good hiker, but I had a hard time keeping up. They would stop once in a while to catch their breath, but because I was last, as soon as I caught up with them they would be on the move again. Man! On top of that, the trail was tricky to follow, with turns that were not obvious and could easily be missed, and in a part of Harriman State Park I wasn't familiar with. The trail started with a very steep rock scramble, and was pretty much up and down all the way, to culminate with the hardest climb twenty minutes before the end. I survived, but barely!