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Safety and the trail code
Heat, terrain, signal, and how a shared path works when half the people on it are on bikes. Plus the rules we do not set and cannot change.
Summer lightning over the river, photographed from Cold Spring. · Juliancolton, via Wikimedia Commons
Information
Demonstration content
The trail code below is drafted by us for this prototype to show the template. HHFT's own code, when written, replaces this text without touching the page.
The Fjord Trail code
- Sunrise to sunset. The corridor is unlit and there is no lighting planned. Work out your turnaround time before you set off; the planner will do it for you.
- On a shared path, people on bikes give way to people on foot, and everyone gives way to people using a wheelchair or a walker. Call out before you pass.
- Stay on the path. Much of this corridor is steep, unstable, or actively being restored, and some of it is above a live railway.
- Carry your water and take your rubbish home. There are no bins and no drinking fountains on the corridor today.
- Do not park on the shoulder of Route 9D. That congestion is the reason this project exists.
Heat
The exposed sections of this corridor face west across the river and get the full afternoon sun with very little shade. We publish the wet-bulb globe temperature on the Conditions page in summer because it is a better guide to whether strenuous activity is sensible than the air temperature is. The National Weather Service issued Heat Advisories over this corridor on consecutive days in August 2026.
The connecting trails are not the Fjord Trail
Take care
Breakneck Ridge is a rock scramble
The Breakneck Ridge Trail, which starts within a few hundred yards of the future Fjord Trail entrance, is a strenuous hands-on scramble with a long history of rescues. It is not a walk, it is not signposted as an easy option, and it is not ours — it is New York State Parks land.
Roughly 30% of it is at or below a 5% grade; the rest is steeper, and parts of it are vertical enough to require using your hands. A large part of the reason the Fjord Trail is being built is to give the many people who arrive at that trailhead a different, safer choice.
Phone signal and getting help
Coverage is patchy through the Highlands and we do not publish a coverage map because we do not have one we trust. In an emergency call 911. Save the offline pack before you travel so that the map, the trail data and your route still work when the signal does not.
Rules we do not set
Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve is New York State parkland. Its rules on dogs, fires, drones, camping, swimming and everything else are made by the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, not by HHFT, and they apply to a large part of any walk you take here.
HHFT has not yet published its own rules for the Fjord Trail — including whether dogs will be permitted on the main trail, and on what terms. We are not going to guess on this page. When there is a policy, it will be here, dated.
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