A Rockland hiker remains hospitalized following a fall on an Orange County mountain.

A New City man was still in the hospital yesterday after being injured Wednesday in a hiking accident in Orange County that killed another man.

Daniel O'Rourke, 62, of Goebel Road, was one of two hikers airlifted to the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla after a rock supporting another hiker broke and sent him tumbling down Schunemunk Mountain. State police were directed to the mountain by a 911 cell phone call placed by one of the hikers at about noon.

Troopers were still investigating the accident yesterday. It seemed, police said, that other rocks had previously loosened.

At O'Rourke's request, the hospital was not releasing any information on his condition, but he was expected to be discharged in a few days. Likewise, no information was being made available on another hiker, Gunvor Satrai, 70, of Wayne, N.J.

Killed in the accident was Nicholas Styranovski, 76, of Queens.

"I wouldn't consider this to be a rock slide," said Gloria Lewit of Scarsdale, a hiker who was not injured. "I think that what happened was that the person (Styranovski) took hold of the rock, and the rock gave way."

She said she didn't see the fall, but assumed that other hikers near Styranovski had fallen with him.

"He had reached the top of the incline," Edward Goodell, executive director of the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, said of an account of the incident by other hikers.

"He was going back to help guide people up," Goodell said at his Mahwah, N.J., office, "when a large piece of rock, attached to the face of another rock, broke away."

A trail on the mountain is part of a network maintained by the conference between Hunterdon County, N.J., northward through Orange County and into Ulster and Putnam counties. The conference has 7,000 members and more than 80 hiking clubs.

Goodell said that the accident occurred in an area that was not part of the trail on Schunemunk Mountain, which rises as high as 1,700 feet and is the western boundary of the Hudson Highlands.

"The route they took," he said, "took them across a boulder field and up a steep incline."

Styranovski was a 35-year member of the group of mostly retired people that followed a regular schedule of Wednesday hikes. O'Rourke is a longtime member of the trail conference.

Two other hikers, Holger Nissen, 76, of South Salem, and Justin Sullivan, 25, of Mountainville, were released after treatment at Cornwall Hospital.

"I've hiked Schunemunk since I was 15 years old, and I'm now 68," Lewit said from her home. She said she and others had left the marked trail to find an unmarked one to reach a different part of the ridge.

"He was a lovely person," Lewit recalled of Styranovski. "He was a very thoughtful, very considerate hiker who was always willing to help others on the trail. He loved hiking and he loved the outdoors."

Larry Wheelock, the conference's trails director, doubted that the recent rains contributed to any instability of the mountainside.

Rains or melting snow could make rocks unstable when groundwater reaches levels close to the surface, but the drought preceding the rains made that unlikely, he said.

"This had nothing to do with the groundwater," Wheelock said. "It was caused by an unstable rock that sheared off, and then caused a cascade of rocks."

Wheelock said it was not unusual for hikers to leave marked and maintained trails, particularly if they were familiar with the area.