India Brook and Buttermilk Falls Natural Areas, Mendham, NJ - 07/04/2012

[Daniela Wagstaff]

Keep this one in mind for a hot weather hike.  I had no idea until I finished around 1 pm that the real feel temperature was 100 degrees!  It was breezy and comfortable throughout this hike even with the heat and high humidity.  There were a few short sections through direct sunlight but just briefly before being back into the much cooler shade.  There were surprisingly few bugs - what a relief for a change!  The trails range from grassy woods roads to more challenging boulder hopping.  Some trails are well-blazed and well-defined, others not so much.  There are still many blow downs to climb over and under, probably from Irene and Snowtober, so not much trail maintenance going on but I was able to find my way through all of the trails and make a 6.6 mile hike out of what seems to be too small of an area for that length of a hike.  Click here for the hike details.

[njHiking.com]

I've had my eye on these little Mendham hikes for awhile, but hadn't gotten around to sorting thru all the little hike maps on hikemendham.org to create something substantial enough to justify the drive up for.... nice to see you managed a 6.6 mile out of them.

Dawn

[Daniela Wagstaff]

Same here.  I had been looking at those maps trying to piece together a longer hike and then my brain would start short circuiting...  We are spoiled by having NYNJTC maps that show everything on one page!  The kiosks have a map that looked to be more comprehensive so I took pictures of it but when I look at the pictures, I see it is actually worse because it does not show all of the trails where the online maps at least do show them pretty accurately from what I could tell yesterday.  I think I found a way to do an 11-12 mile loop connecting a few of the maps with minimal road walking.  Might give it a shot one of these days.