All Blog Posts (324)

I just returned from a Hike up Buttermilk Falls and Along the AT. The Falls are the best I have ever seen them, the Blue Trail up to the AT is clear with no visible damage from Hurricane Irene. However, the trail is presently very wet in many spots and totally covered with a sheet of water in other spots. All wet areas were easily passable, but we had warp up several of the narrow rocky parts.

Note:

The Lower Road (Mountain Road coming from Dimon Road) to the…

Some really lousy weather forecasting almost foiled my weekend hiking plans.  Initially Sunday was the better day so that was the chosen hiking day.  Woke up Saturday morning to find the forecast had changed making Saturday the better day and Sunday the rainy day.  I had already made other plans for Saturday so Sunday had to be the hiking day.  Loaded up rain gear and stayed close to home just in case it became a total washout with thunderstorms as forecast.  It had been a couple of years…

I'd read that Cheesequake State Park had taken a decent hit from Irene. There were lots of down trees visible throughout, but the park staff had already done a terrific job cleaning up the trails. In fact, it looked like many had been raked clear because there was so much debris that the trail would be hard to follow otherwise.

One large section of boardwalk was…

We've created a page with reports and resources for trail damage caused by Irene:

http://www.njhiking.com/hurricane-irene-trail-damage.php

And if you have a link or article to share, post it to the Irene forum discussion:…

Yesterday I Spoke to Rangers at Stokes and Worthington for a status report:

Stokes: Cabins are fine, No Power yet, They have not ben able to inspect Trails

Worthington: No Power Yet, Many Roads closed by downed Trees and Power Lines

I did the reverse of this hike: http://njhiking.ning.com/profiles/blogs/dunnfield-creek-sunfish-pond

just a little over a year since I hiked to Sunfish Pond the day of the fire, 8/7/10.  It was a very foggy morning, which was actually kind of neat. (Better fog than…

Check out NJ Hiking's August Newsletter. Featured are Merrill Creek Reservoir, a Mt. Tammany and Sunfish Pond challenging hike, and the latest hiking news.

You can also subscribe to the newsletter here.

We were poking around our GPS data for Harriman State Park, looking for an area that we hadn't done and ended up doing a loop from Lake Skannatati.



The highlights of this loop are: a nice viewpoint of Lake Skannatati (right in the beginning), view of Lake Askoti from some rock slabs, the Hasenclever Mine (large deep hole filled with water), and a small cemetery…

Two boys injured by yearling bear encounter.

The thing that caught my eye was that there have only been 16 sightings this year? I had four just on my trek across NJ on the AT in 2008. I suppose most people don't report them. Anyway, I guess this bear was aggressive and a warden fired a shot and hit it, but I don't know what happened to the bear.

The boys did…

It was about 10 degrees cooler at Wawayanda State Park (80 degrees versus 90 degrees in central NJ) so I headed out there to do the NJ Hiking Pumphouse-Red-Dot-Hoeferlin Loop with a couple of modifications.  Instead of parking by the park office, I parked half a mile away at the pullout along Warwick Turnpike to save the $10 parking fee (been spending WAY too much on gas for hiking here lately) and I added…

With the recent heat, we were looking for a mostly shady hike and ended up in the Delaware Water Gap at the Pocono Environmental Education Center. There were also strong thunderstorms possible in the afternoon, and we wanted a route with options to bail if need be.



The parking lot of PEEC sits in the center of the area's trails so a hike can be cut short if storms…

Yes, I did this hike twice, both on Saturday and again on Sunday.  For several reasons...

• Early on in the hike on Saturday morning my camera broke - had very few pictures of the hike
• I had done 17 and 14 mile hikes the last two times and 10 miles just didn't seem like enough
• It was a very easy, pleasant hike
• The weather forecast for Sunday changed for the better and it turned out to be nicer than Saturday
• It's only an hour drive for me and…

So, originally I set out to hike the South loop of the Pinchot Trail but ended up on the North loop. Part of my mission for the day was to scout potential overnight spots on trail. The problem is the maps. Once I finally reached Bear Lake Road (2 1/2 drive up the PA  Tpk! Yuck!) I only found one parking area at the trailhead for the North loop. Even the PA DCNR map fails to point out the parking area on Bear Lake Rd at Tannery Rd (1/2 mile down) for the South loop. The map…

We combined the Coppermines Trail, the AT, and Rattlesnake Swamp Trail to make a big loop, which serves up a bit-o-everything: streams, water cascades, mines (closed), ridge hiking with views of rural Jersey, a fire tower, lush trails, rhododendron tunnels, a swamp... very nice.



Coppermines Trail follows a stream for a lot of the way, and heads gradually…

We needed a moderate-yet-pretty trail to do with some friends who were getting back into hiking shape, so we headed over to Jenny Jump. We hadn't been there in just about two years exactly.



There are several nice scenic viewpoints, including of the Delaware Water Gap. The hike leads to Ghost Lake, which is a small but pretty lily-pond filled lake. The trails are…

With the weather not looking so good for the weekend, I choose Saturday to hike as it seemed to be the better day. I did not want to go somewhere with a lot of views on such a dreary day and I was pressed for time so I had to pick a place somewhat close to home.  I headed back to Allamuchy Mountain State Park where I had been last month to hike some different trails in the north section.  What a difference a month makes!  Even on an overcast, occasionally spritzy day, the new green leaves…

Our spring hiking so far was getting tripped up by weather, weekend obligations, and a vacation spent tooling around the Yucatan in Mexico (where the vast, flat expanses of trees reminded us of Jersey's Pinelands!).



Finally we got some time free, and with some recent rain decided on two hikes with plenty of waterfall action. First up, a quick 2.0…