Parking: 40.946667, -74.388167

We found a geocache along the way, although for some reason we never logged it. Putting together some clues, we figure it must have been this one: https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GCQKBF_bare-roke-ii although the cache title doesn’t sound familiar to either of us. It can’t have been https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC6A2B_bare-roke because that was archived in 2003, long before we were there. And it must have been in the Bear Rock area just based on the timestamps of the photos. There are no other geocaches, archived or otherwise, in the area that could have been it. Also, you can just about see the beginning (and end) of Rich’s log in the logbook I’m holding in a few of the photos, and it looks like it begins with Howdy, BS! (referring to BrianSnat, the owner of Bare Roke II).

In an email dated Wed 5/30/2007 8:16 AM, I wrote: “I keep forgetting that I should probably log that “Bear Rock” cache we did at Pyramid Rock a couple weeks ago.”

We hiked on to Tripod Rock, where I had noted in an email to Rich that we had looked for a different geocache (Tripod Rock) but we were unable to find it. Rich wrote: “I just took a look at it. The most recent cacher logs showed no real problems with finding it. I still don’t see how the hint was of any help to them. But one log mentions it being a clever hide.”

I also found this reference in an old email message:

What were the names of the benchmarks in the 50 Hikes book that I was going to search for? (Or at least the names of the features?) I think one was called Bear Rock but I’ve forgotten the other one.

I don’t know what the names are exactly. One is near Pyramid Mountain, at Bear Rock. The text only mentions that the rock itself has been used as a boundary marker for years, and that there are old survey marks near the highest points.

The second one is at Ringwood Manor. The book says here that there’s a large rock to the left of the trail and that it had a BM on it. Further it mentions that it’s a remnant of the Cooper Union Camp.

We think this is the route we took: from the parking area, follow the blue trail to the white trail (on NYNJTC maps; on the map below it is shown as orange), to the ruins and then along the creek (where the skunk cabbages were) to Bear Rock. Then we continued on to Tripod Rock before heading back to the parking via one of the blue routes, but we don’t recall whether we took the higher or the lower route.

I can also check some of our hiking books to see if we might have been following a particular route based on something in a book.

https://www.kinnelonboro.org/documents/PyramidMountainTrails.pdf