After breaking his neck on the Nose, hiker completes 1,429 treks in a year
On Oct. 31, Tom Javenes completed his 1,429th hike in a year up Anthony’s Nose, the 900-foot peak in southern Philipstown overlooking the Bear Mountain Bridge. That’s not bad for a guy who broke his neck there in 2015 when he fell 40 feet during a 5 a.m. descent.
After the fall, a doctor told him he was lucky he hadn’t been paralyzed and that he would never hike again, recalls Javenes, 54, who lives in Stony Point. Javenes says he thought in response: “Let me see if I can prove this guy wrong.”
The accident occurred on July 5. The previous evening, Javenes had taken a steep, unofficial path. “I could zip up in 13 minutes to enjoy the sunset,” he says. At the peak, he met four men hiking the Appalachian Trail. He brought them water before heading to the Fireside Steak Pub in Stony Point, which he owns.
Near closing time, Javenes says he “got the bright idea to bring these guys some pizzas and beers.” He made the delivery at 3:30 a.m. About 90 minutes later, with a headlamp, he started down the trail. Halfway down, he stepped on a loose rock.
“I looked to the left and there was nothing there,” Javenes recalls. “I started falling. I threw my arms over my head. I pulled in my legs, bounced off a bunch of rocks and landed on my chest.”
That’s where he remained, motionless, legs protruding over the ledge, bugs crawling up his nose. “I thought I was paralyzed,” he says.
At 8:15 a.m., Chris Callagy, who lives in Croton-on-Hudson, started up the trail. Halfway up, he heard what he thought might be a bear. Then someone yelled, “Help!” Callagy called 911; a helicopter eventually came to the rescue.
Two months later, after neck surgery, Javenes threw himself into rehab. As a highly competitive athlete — back in the day, he was a star centerfielder for the North Rockland High School baseball team — Javenes leans into physical challenges. He also is driven by the memory of his wife, Kathleen, who died in 2014 after a nearly 10-year battle with brain cancer. “I was inspired by her will to live,” he says.
Before the end of the year, he had returned to Anthony’s Nose, wearing his neck brace. He hiked a safer route, starting at the Route 9D trailhead in Philipstown.
“I’m sure my surgeon didn’t want me up there,” he says. “My feet and legs and hands felt like they were on fire, but I made it.”
Eight years later, Javenes still has limited use of his right arm and right leg and uses hiking poles. He says he refuses to take painkillers and sleeps only one to two hours at a stretch. “I’m in pain 24 hours a day.”
Nevertheless, he started routinely hiking Anthony’s Nose, often multiple times a day. During the pandemic lockdown, Javenes began a friendly competition with a hiker he met on the trail, Will Cook, a psychotherapist from Mount Kisco who began hiking to relieve pandemic burnout.
Cook recalls once doing nine trips in a day. “The next thing I know, I looked on Tommy’s Facebook page and he had done 16,” says Cook, who did 730 hikes up the trail in 2022. He credits Javenes with helping him through a challenging time. “He’s an inspiration,” Cook says.
Meanwhile, Javenes’ competitive drive shifted into high gear. He made 1,155 trips to the peak in 2022, more than double the previous year, including 284 in November and December. He began to wonder how many ascents he could complete if he kept up the pace for 12 months. He got his answer last week: 1,429, or an average of about four per day.
Javenes isn’t sure what’s next. “It’s getting monotonous,” he admits.
His girlfriend, Diana Cassese, is supportive, “but she’s had enough of the hiking stuff,” he says. Perhaps he could stop at 1,000 hikes annually, “and still have 100 days to do other things.”
