Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
A Few NYC Winter Hikes
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2019 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
I'm better when I hike more often. It nourishes me to clamber around rough trails and navigate and be among trees.
You actually can use city transit to get to parks within NYC for a short or daylong hike.
The other day, as it warmed up in the afternoon, I took the subway to Woodhaven, then a bus to Forest Park, yes, that is its actual name. Trail guide, map. The orange-blazed route took me about an hour and a half, including a little bit of getting lost and backtracking. There are substantial chunks where I couldn't hear or see cars/streets nearby. I needed that.
Another reasonable winter hike is the Greenbelt Yellow Trail (I did it from the northeast trailhead), which:
Traverses the entire Greenbelt from its Northeast corner in the community of Todt Hill to its Southwest corner in New Springville; access Moses' Mountain at Rockland Avenue and Manor Road behind bus stop....Depending on where you're starting in NYC, you can take a combination of subway, bus, and ferry to get to the northeast trailhead. For me it was a full day's hike. At the other end I stopped in a strip mall restaurant for dinner before taking another combination of transit home.This moderate-to-difficult 8-mile long trail brings hikers through Reeds Basket Willow Swamp. It ascends Todt Hill, then parallels the Blue Trail. Moses’ Mountain is located off the Yellow Trail off Rockland Avenue near High Rock Park.
The NYC Parks site lets you search the parks and filter for the ones that have hiking trails. That's how I found Forest Park.
