Anthony's Nose
Region: Hudson Valley
Level: Moderate
Anthony's Nose is another quite-frequented mountain hike among New Yorkers coming from the city, and for good reason. It is a relatively moderate hike in terms of difficulty, and has great views of the Hudson River with a great lookout over the Bear Mountain bridge.
A friend and I started this hike actually on the Camp Smith trail, which is about 2.5 miles south on US-202 than where one might normally park to start the Anthony's Nose hike. Our plan was a bit side-tracked because of some poor planning with regard to train times, so instead of getting off the Metro-North at Manitou, we got off at Peekskill and made a long trek on the road, past the entry to the National Guard base, up a hill and finally hit the start of the Camp Smith trail head. You're better off calling an Uber or getting a cab at Peekskill rather than trying to rough it all the way to the trail head. It took us 45 min to an hour just to get to Camp Smith trail. Once we got to Camp Smith, we were informed of the importance of not going beyond the clearly lined, roped-off section of the mountain. Beyond the ropes are National Guard training grounds, and entry into this area could cause you to become target practice for some of America's finest.
The Camp Smith trail is nice and relatively easy in the beginning. Pretty wide open forests, simple climbing and some good terrain. My friend and I hiked this trail as one of our first Hudson Valley hikes, and so we actually didn't think we would end up taking it all the way to put us at the summit of Anthony's Nose. Fortunately our guessing on where to go next lead us to trek all the way up to the summit of Anthony's Nose, where we caught some amazing views of the Hudson river overlooking the Bear Mountain bridge. Again, another great hike in this region, with plenty of nice views for a relatively moderate price, but still enough to get your blood flowing and your legs sore. Be smarter than us, our trip down was a debacle. We went down the north side of Anthony's nose, got off trail somewhere and bushwhacked up through a few residential areas till we found a road that took us to the Manitou train station. We waited for about 45 minutes for the next train to come, and ended up back in Manhattan at around 7:30 PM, having left earlier that day at around 12:40 PM. For hikers that aren't as aloof as we were, it's a 2.5 hour round trip from Camp Smith up and over Anthony's Nose. The Map below has the start at Camp Smith. Good luck!
