HIKE EVERY CITY: Chapter 2

Central Park was just the beginning

Since New York is where Frederick Law Olmsted emerged as the GOAT of American landscape architects (he created Central Park, Prospect Park, and more) adding NY to the lineup for the northeast HIKE EVERY CITY tour was a no-brainer. The city oversees more than 28,000 acres of parkland. That’s a lot of municipal green space to sew into a scenic urban hiking route. But how do you approach urban trail-building in a city as enormous as New York? Especially when you’re only visiting town for a few days?

I leaned into the I ❤️ NY tourism playbook and started with Central Park. Visitors often assume that Central is the most epic New York park, due to its prime location and bounteous recreational features. But Central Park doesn’t even crack the Top 5 list of Biggest NY Parks. The real juggernauts are located beyond Manhattan, across the other boroughs, and The Bronx boasts a rather hefty share of that rustling acreage.

Unlike my recent journey through Philly, a single long day hike wasn’t going to cut it for New York. After a week of research and fiddling around with online maps, I finally came up with a tangible idea for a two day thru-hike that would clock in at 27 miles! With nearly 2,000 feet of vertical elevation gain! (CLICK HERE for the full trail map.)

I decided to call this hiking route the “Ramble In The Bronx Trail,” as a salute to the underappreciated Jackie Chan movie Rumble In The Bronx. And like a Presidential Traverse in the White Mountains, half of the effort here would simply be reaching the titular environment. I would begin with a full traverse of Central Park, climb through the parks of Harlem and the Heights, and cross into The Bronx on the Henry Hudson Bridge. That would be Day One—13 miles . From there, the thru-hike would involve a traverse of Van Cortlandt Park (NY’s fourth largest park), a passage through Bronx Park (home of the renowned zoo), and finally, a long march down a greenway to the crown jewel, Pelham Bay Park (more than three times as large as Central Park.)

After taking the train from Philly to Penn Station, I charged my batteries with six hours of slumber at an Airbnb in Morris Park—a charming Bronx neighborhood, where you’ll find great caremalized onion festooned burgers at the Morris Park Inn dive bar. The following morning, I joined the orgy of commuters on a sequence of clattering MTA trains to Columbus Circle. Running on caffeine and one of those energy bars whose turd-like appearance belies its impressive nutrient content, I decided that I would treat the initial Central Park traverse as a warm-up and enjoy a second breakfast near the park’s north end, before gaining the vertical elevation in the hillside parks afterward.

Part of the genius of landscape architecture is creating spaces that appear natural, and one of my favorite Central Park gems is “The Ramble,” in the park’s midsection. With its winding dirt paths, dense greenery, cascades and creeks, and rugged stone stairs, The Ramble was designed to offer the sensation of being in a place like the Adirondacks or Catskills. (The fallside stone steps, in particular, reminded me of a similar “staircase” alongside New Hampshire’s Champney Falls.) But after I reached the northern half of the park and walked along the lake-like reservoir, sharing the path with joggers and dog walkers, I found two additional rustic space that were quieter. First there was The Loch, a reedy pond whose waters spilled down a jumble of rocks. And as I chased these falling waters into a thick pocket of forest, I entered the verdant North Woods, where birders were armed with DSLR camera and bazooka-sized lenses.

At the park’s north exit, I took a pit stop for a ginger scone, espresso, and a generous bathroom break at Cafe Amrita. (Bathrooms are the trickiest part of urban hiking, by far.) From there, it was time to slather on sunscreen and begin the climb through Harlem and the Heights. The topography of Manhattan’s northernmost neighborhoods is more elevated than first-time visitors might expect. As I hiked through Morningside Park and Saint Nicholas Park, both of which are built into very steep hillsides, I found immense cliffs and exposed rock faces. Every so often, partial glimpses of adjacent apartment towers through the trees indicated how high I was climbing above the city.

This was especially apparent at Highbridge Park, where I popped out from a literal tunnel of trees to find a stony overlook of the Harlem River. I was a bit surprised to see a guy with a motorcycle parked on the overlook, but minutes later, the dirt trail merged with a paved bike path through the park, which is clearly used more liberally. A brutally steep wooden staircase that seemed hundreds of feet tall provided an exit to Washington Heights’ Little Dominican Republic (where the musical In The Heights was set) and here, I recovered with a 20 minute stroll along St. Nicholas Avenue past produce and ice cream vendors. Temptations abound! But I had a particular craving.

If you’ve been on a backcountry hike, you know how erogenous it would feel to be able to reach the summit of Mount Moosilauke and order a bowl of Hakata style ramen with an ice-cold draft Sapporo. But of course, you can’t do this when you’re in the backcountry. So I felt a moral obligation to avail myself of the option while hiking the Ramble In The Bronx Trail through New York, with lunch at Tampopo Ramen. The marinated soft boiled egg that garnished the ramen was so delectable that I almost asked the server if I could order a few more for the rest of the hike. But I decided to be gastronomically cautious, as I was expecting a punishing climb to Fort Tyron Park.

Fort Tyron is a wonderland of wildflowers perched on a towering hilltop that overlooks the Hudson River. And to get there from Washington Heights, I had to descend to Broadway first and then make the ascent to Fort Tyron. But here something funny happened. The maps that I had studied revealed a pedestrian access route, but what they hadn’t shown is that my down-and-up sequence could be done with technology!

From the Heights, I veered into 191st Street Station, rode an elevator several stories down, and traversed a long, richly tagged tunnel to Broadway. Moments later, I entered 190th Street Station (whose entrance is built into a cliff at the bottom of on the hill where Fort Tyron is located) and I rode another elevator up to another long tunnel that brought me to a set of doors. I pushed one open and was standing on a breezy, sunny terrace at the gates to Fort Tyron Park. Is this cheating, so far as urban hiking goes? Skipping the elevators would have meant a long detour. But should I have taken one?

In any event, I paid the price for this deus ex machina with my quads and hamstrings. A dreamy flowering foray through Fort Tyron brought me to an endless set of winding stone stairs that I followed down to the neighborhood of Inwood. And dead ahead, through the trees, I could see another huge hill looming before me. Inwood Hill Park. This was the hill from which the Henry Hudson Bridge would take me into the Bronx. But my lower limb muscles had been working for hours already, and the romance of ascending and descending through Manhattan was burning off. You know you’re 10+ miles into an urban hike when you see a tuffet-like mound of greenery in front of you and your first thought is not “oh, what gorgeous knoll that is” but rather, “aw fuck.”

Curiously, Inwood Hill Park was the most raggedy of all the green spaces on my hike. I skipped the hilltop and followed a crumbling paved path through the park’s forested core. Ancient lampposts rusted alongside the trail. Glacial boulders and caves were visible nearby in the woods. It felt like a space through which the occasional large reptiles still wandered. But modernity reared its head as I trudged around a corner and saw the huge metal supports of the Henry Hudson Bridge rising from Spuyten Duyvil Creek. The bridge looked impossibly high, but sure enough, a path that passed under the bridge took me up the hill to a protected passage for pedestrians and cyclists! Cars roaring past me, sweat soaking through the back of my shirt, I crossed the water, leaving the familiar realm of Manhattan behind and finally entering THE BRONX.

The coda to my hike involved a sidewinding amble past sunbathers in Ewen Park and a final streetside push through Kingsbridge to 238th Street Station. For perspective, I had begun my hike at 62nd Street. 176 streets later, I was done! And I would kick off Day Two here, at the doorstep of Van Cortlandt Park, entering immense green havens I had never laid eyes on. If the first day of hiking the Ramble In The Bronx Trail was tinged with nostalgia, Day Two would be a prolonged act of growth and edification. But it was already 5pm, and I still had to take the MTA back to Morris Park, shower, eat another one of those burgers (which was ideal fuel for Day One) and get my butt to sleep before getting it up and doing it all over again. The crucial difference from a rural thru-hike is that in New York, I wouldn’t have to break down camp in the morning.

I could just roll out of bed, jump on the train, and resume my cross-city journey.