April 2012 Blog Posts (7)

Sometimes you get so familiar with a place that areas go overlooked.

I was flipping through 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: New York City, yet again, but this time a spot on their Cheesequake hike map caught my eye - "Steamboat Landing".

Part of the allure of Cheesequake for us is that we can go without having to plan a route or look at the map and…

Back in July 2010 I hiked the entire Splitrock Reservoir loop but at that time the blazing was so horrible that the trails were almost impossible to follow.  In fact, I gave up, cut over to Charlotteburg Road, a dirt road that runs along the reservoir, then found a nicely blazed orange trail that connected me back over to the white-blazed Four Birds Trail, which was not as badly blazed as the blue trail but still very hard to follow.  I heard recently that the white and blue trails had been…

This warning at the foot of The Giant Stairs (trail) which skirts the Palisades Cliffs along the Hudson River is an understatement. 

We've done some bouldering and similar rock assaults as this one, but never over such a prolonged distance or precariously close to sheer drop offs - some w/vertigo-inducing distances to the rocks below or the river's edge.  …

An avid day hiker with 10+ years of footpath experience, averaging 3 hours on the trails per outing frequently within the Delaware River Basin and adjacent regions. The basin has hundreds of trails with a variety of terrain, the foot paths ranging from easy (smooth with gradual elevation gains) to challenging (scrambling over large rocks / boulders, with steep elevation gains).

I took advantage of a beautiful day on Friday and decided to head to Fair Hill NRMA in Maryland (actually right across the MD and DE border on Rte. 273) GPS told me it would take about 90 minutes, however, I under estimated the crappiness of the NJ Turnpike and I-95, and it took close to 2 hours.  Anyway, I have wanted to do this hike for a while as it is a beautiful area with primary rolling hills and a mix of open fields and woods trails. I decided to start on the orange trail which is a…

My wife and I are considering a tandem ride on the Columbia Trail this weekend.  Will we need a chainsaw or lifejackets?

Not too long ago there was an article in the local paper about a nature preserve in Cape May County that has received very little publicity, so I decided to check it out. I pulled it up on google and printed out the directions, which I soon learned were wrong ( I will give you the correct ones at the end.) This would be a very good hike to combine with Belleplain SF, as it is in the same forest area. No signage on the way there,  the first sign you will see is actually the parking area.…