8/27/17 Monksville and Hewitt with Agnese Drzymala, Jennifer Berndt, Jack Lowry, Tomas Petruccio, Laura Allen Cunningham, Ken Quartarone, Edward DiSalvo, Red Sean (Karl Franz) Reardon, Doug DeGroff, Kenneth Lidman, Serious Sean Dougherty, Cindy Browning, Diane Reider, Gail Ingham, Tamara Sapilak, Steve Sanbeg, Alyssa Lidman, Galya, and Terri Allen.
This next hike was an intended loop in the Wyanokies of Northern New Jersey out of Long Pond Ironworks State Park section. There is still plenty of stuff I’ve never done in the area, and I had come up with a couple of different route sin the Wyanokie Mountains.
View along Monks Trail
Lerch had suggested to me that we do a birthday hike for Jen, and I asked her what area she’d prefer to go, and she mentioned the Norvin Green area. As I stated, there’s plenty I want to do there, so I looked at the two planned hikes I’d put together and figured out which one would be most appropriate.
The route that looked to be the best included one of my favorite overlooks in the state of NJ, the amazing one on the Highlands Trail from Horse Pond Mountain. Anything with that is always a good hike. I also figured out a way of connecting Jungle Habitat and other places.
View just off Monks Trail
We met in the morning at a strip mall with a little deli where Margaret King Avenue reaches Greenwood Lake Turnpike. There’s a little deli there that was good for a meeting point so people could get food. We wouldn’t pass anything till near the end.
Prickly Pear Cactus on Monks Mountain
Once we were all together and ready, we shuttled a short distance to the Monksville Reservoir’s northern boat launch. The Monks Trail breaks off out of there and heads to the west, over Monks Mountain and a sort of peninsula of the reservoir. I had done this trail once before, but I figured we’d check it out again, as a sort of warm up for the rest of the hike. We headed into the woods, first on old woods roads that were there prior to Monksville Reservoir.
Monksville Reservoir was completed in 1987, to address some major drought concerns of the 1980s. The reservoir overflowed only about fifteen residences, some of which were moved to Long Pond Ironworks State Park for historic significance. Others were just demolished. Stonetown Road was re-aligned to cross the dam, and the old Greenwood Lake Railroad was flooded over.
We headed up hill with a nice view first to the left of the trail, then continued on a gradual up and down until we came to a side trail I wasn’t familiar with. It was a spur trail that led to another overlook I had not been to, so it was a good thing I went to do this trail again! We took a break up there and enjoyed the view, as well as some well growing Prickly Pear Cactus plants. This is pretty far north for them, but with the water and the south facing slope, they must get just enough light.
Monksville Reservoir was pretty high, but I understand the Wanaque Reservoir, which it works in conjunction with, was actually somewhat low. That reservoir was much older, built around 1916-1920.
View from the Passaic Watershed Trail
Both of the reservoirs are on the Wanaque River.
We continued along the trail until we came to the south boat launch. From there, my plan was to find another trail I had never done that makes it’s way out of a Passaic River coalition property (The Wanaque is a tributary to the Passaic). From the intersection at the boat launch, I bushwhacked directly up hill and soon found the trail, blazed with yellow plastic tags, just after the slope. Ed went up the hill a bit and found the actual trail head that I had not gone to.
Construction of Wanaque Reservoir around 1916
The rest of the group joined me, and we followed the trail to the east. It really wasn’t much of a trail at all. It was pretty overgrown when exposed to light, and there were a lot of branches over it. No one is really maintaining it. Apart from that, it did have some easy areas where it followed woods roads heavily used by ATVs, and it took us to a couple of overlooks, one of them very nice, just above Greenwood Lake Turnpike, toward the Monksville Reservoir. We could see the water to the east, as well as the Monksville dam directly to the south, which was where we were headed.
When we paused for the view, I actually caught the somewhat disturbing image of a Cicada being killed by a Cicada Killer. It was actually quite amazing.
Cicada Killer
The Cicada Killer is just about the largest Wasp one will ever see in the Mid Atlantic.
The Cicada Killer (Sphecius speciosus) is unlike other Wasps like yellow jackets because it doesn’t sting to protect it’s nest, unless handled roughly. The sting is used to paralyze the cicadas, and then it carts them off to feed on. The one I saw came to me from the loud noise of the struggling cicada. I looked over to see the giant yellow and black thing attached to it, and remained until the cicada stopped struggling. It’s kind of morbid, but the cicada killers are actually good because they curb the over-population of cicadas, thereby protecting the trees they feed on.
Monksville Dam
From the top of the hill, we descended off trail. The official yellow blazed trail ended, and there was a trunk of a woods road that seemed to go down hill toward where we wanted to be. It ended up a bushwhack before we got down there.
At the bottom, we headed over to the Monksville Dam where there were three plaques from it’s construction. It was really hot at this point, and so staying out in the sun was not looking like fun. There was a large group of cyclists there when we first arrived, but then they took off. Other onlookers enjoyed the view from a small parking area access there.
We crossed over the dam, with good views of the rest of the Wyanokie Mountains along the edge. There was a Cormorant just below us sitting on a buoy. Once we got to the other side of the dam, we could see the abandoned old road of Stonetown Road descending to the water’s edge, still with painted yellow lines.
From here, we picked up the teal diamond blazed Highlands Trail. We turned right off the road onto the trail, which at first follows the reservoir before making it’s ascent of Harrison Mountain. It’s not too terrible a climb, but it goes on for a while. It starts out gradual and has some steep spots. The worst part is where it gets confusing at power lines and such. You have to watch the blazes closely out there. The entire area was more torn up by ATVs than it was my first few times up it. That combined with already sparse undergrowth makes it hard to tell where to walk. I got to the top of the ascent first and waited for the others to catch up.
On the way up we crossed a power line, and Ken must have made a wrong turn there, because he was heading back down hill on it. Bad cell service made me miss probably a couple of his calls. When I spoke to him, he had been off it a bit. Alyssa went back to look for him while the ever growing group at the top waited. I took a side trip down part of the Stonetown Circular Trail to see if I could see another nearby overlook. I ended up on a woods road and came right back over the mountain another way.
Once we had everyone together, and after singing a few happy songs, we were on our way. Jack brought out his Martin Backpacker guitar, which was the first one he had ever brought on one of my hikes way back in November of 2007 in Perth Amboy.
Jack with his Martin Backpacking hiking Perth Amboy in 2007
It still sounds really good! It’s quite impressive the amount of sound you can get out of a little guitar like that.
We continued from here down Harrison Mountain, more steeply than we had climbed it. No sooner did we reach the bottom of Harrison Mountain, we had to start the climb of Horse Pond Mountain.
The Wyanokies are like that, with lots of ups and downs making it the toughest hiking in the state. Once we got to the intersection with the Burnt Meadow Trail, which was where we would turn, we let everyone catch up and regroup again. I wanted to be sure to hold everyone together so we could go to the great view from Horse Pond together.
Weird. Just weird.
While we were waiting, some guys were heading the same direction we were I guess, and we were all very happy and having a silly fun time. Red Sean then decides to bring out his giant rubber horse head mask. He then goes to this complete stranger and asks if he can take a selfie with the guy wearing his horse head mask. This must have been by far the most odd request the guy has ever had in his life. Still, he obliged! In return, Red Sean gave the guy a shot of the red stuff he had been carrying with him.
A horse of course plays a Horse with No Name on Horse Pond Mountain.
Also while we were waiting, Serious Sean put the horse head on himself, and proceeded to play America’s “Horse With No Name”, because of course he had to play this with the mask while atop Horse Pond Mountain. And to further show off, he started playing it with the guitar behind his (horse) head!
Once everyone was together, we left our packs on moved on down the Highlands Trail northbound the short distance to one of my favorite overlooks in the state. The dramatic bend of the Monksville Reservoir with Monks Mountain between is just about as pretty as it gets.
View from Horse Pond Mountain
The guys Red Sean had freaked out just before were already sitting at the overlooks, probably mortified to see us yet again. One of them was good enough to take a group photo for us though. Red Sean and Serious Sean were feeding each other food or something at this point, which I’m sure just further freaked these guys out!
At first, the group didn’t seem so keen on going to this overlook, but everyone understood what I meant when we all got there.
From this point, Serious Sean, Cindy, and Galya all had to go due to previous engagements or something, and the rest of us continued back to our backpacks just to the south.
On Horse Pond Mountain
When we arrived, a wrestling match ensued between Commando Tom and Red Sean. Red Sean was carrying with him a wooden paddle shot glass server I had found when I was working at Liberty State Park cleaning up after Super Storm Sandy. I had dubbed it my “industrial strength Fanny Whacker” and wrote such on it, then later gave it to Sean.
Horse Pond Mountain view
This went on for our amusement for a while, and then we started heading down the Burnt Meadow Trail.
The entire trail system is a problem up there at this point because the blazes were changed.
Wrastlin'
The trails in these parks have been the same colors for so many years, some of them date back to the 1930s with the historic William Hoeferlin Maps.
It doesn’t sound like a big deal to change the blazes of a trail, but the truth is it’s an incredibly irresponsible move. The NY/NJ Trail Conference is usually extremely good about trail colors and their changes, and they make sure that signage and such is all put up, but I’ve been told a lot of this was imposed by the state of NJ.
There’s a long history of trail blaze issues. In the early 1900s it turned into “trail wars” between people painting on and painting out blazes. A lot of the volunteer groups don’t like that the NY DEC in the Catskills try to have all trails going north/south or east/west the same colors, but that really doesn’t work in the least bit.
Now, in NJ people are getting lost, so the decision was made to change trail colors.
Swamp along the way
The idea that people will do better with “loop trails” is good in concept with new trail sections, but in this way they have created an even greater liability. The editions of the NJ Walk Book, Appalachian Mountain Club, and Sierra Club guides to the area, as well as available maps, are now all incorrect. Not only that, the older editions will of course remain in print for a very long time, and be sold at reduced rate, which means they’ll sell more.
When I worked at Stokes State Forest office when I first started with the state, I actually bought out some of the old maps. I could use them to guide me through closed old trails, but also I don’t want public buying those things with the assumption that they are correct.
Burnt Meadow Road
Now, I feel that more people are going to get lost.
In the past, when there were trail changes, like the original trail to the Roomy Mine in Norvin Green State Forest, NYNJ Trail Conference even had tyvek corrections put into their maps for sale in places like Ramsey Outdoors. The NJ maps remained horribly incorrect and available online or handed out at the parks for years to follow. Even this year, a closure of Hewitt Butler Trail (which is also ridiculous and shouldn’t have happened at all because it was just having to do with parking) appeared almost immediately on trail conference maps, and yet the NJ park maps available on line are grossly incorrect. The issues are being resolved, but these things should be planned ahead so that when it is on the ground, the maps are changed to reflect it immediately with no chance of anyone having anything wrong.
Lake Sonoma. Photo by Ken Q.
We reached and crossed Burnt Meadow Road, and I had planned to follow some of the unblazed trails to reach Lake Sonoma to the south. I had never walked any of these, so I was just doing the best I could to try to follow them. Had Ed not been with us, I probably would have been more screwed us since the Burnt Meadow Trail was supposed to be yellow, and it was now changed to green or something. I ended up making wrong turns anyway on the woods roads, and the first one Ed caught me in time to turn around. After that, he didn’t catch me quick enough and we ended up out on Burnt Meadow Road again. I decided instead that we’d follow the road to other woods road access. Tom found a tire and rolled it around down the road, which was fun.
I took one side trip to the left to check out a nice pond with a rock outcropping, then we turned to the right on more roads that led to just north of Lake Sonoma. An unblazed side trail took us to the east side of the lake, and I was going to head to a place I was familiar with on the south side until Ed caught me to recommend something better.
Northern overlook on Overlook Rock Trail
Ed’s suggestion was an awesome rock we could jump off of on an unmarked side trail. It was outstanding. We all cooled off here for a good long while. I couldn’t believe that a lot of the group opted not to go in!
At this point, we had to change the hike a bit because we wouldn’t have the time to go as far south as I had wanted to. My plan had ben to do a piece of the Hewitt-Butler Trail, but that would put us out of the way for too long, and so instead we had Ed lead the way back the direction we’d come from, on a woods road to the west side of Lake Sonoma, then to Overlook Rock Trail.
Overlook Rock Trail
We went a bit out of the way to get to it, but it was likely quicker Ed thought because of a stream crossing.
We paused for a break again when we got to a northern overlook on this trail (not Overlook Rock, another one). We then continued gradually up and over a power line to reach the Hewitt-Butler Trail along Long Hill.
We began following Hewitt-Butler Trail to the north, which was pretty easy in this area, and my plan was to connect over th Jungle Habitat, a former Warner Bros. theme park that closed and eventually became state park land. I’ve done several trips there.
Seventies image of Jungle Habitat
Jungle Habitat was initially a profitable and well visited place, but it only operated from 1972 until 1976. It had both a drive through safari, a bus option, a miniature railroad, and walking sections.
As is to be expected in New Jersey, it was plagued by lawsuits from people doing stupid things, and visitation declined. It was to expand in 1977, with the addition of two roller coasters, adult spinning rides, and some kiddie rides, but the township, who were not fans of the added traffic anyway, voted against it. Without the opportunity to expand, Warner Bros. instead chose to close the park altogether, and it remained shut down for some time. Rumors of animals left behind went on for years, and still persist today to an extend, but they were all apparently sold off. The state of NJ purchased the land in 1988.
Old Jungle Habitat advert
Ed had a side path that went down into Jungle Habitat I’d never done before. My plan was to head up near an overlook and we wouldn’t really be in Jungle Habitat for all that long, but the way we went down took us much farther down Long Hill than I thought we’d be.
Jungle Habitat
There are now tons of trails in Jungle Habitat which go all over the place like crazy, all made by JORBA (Jersey Off Road Biking Association). They do a fantastic job, but the problem is mountain biking trails are very circuitous and can put you in a stretch of land for hours. I wanted to take the most direct route to the north because we were running out of daylight fast, so I looked at my aerial images for the easiest paved roadways through the park. I wanted to end up at the north end with a side yellow trail, from which point we could bushwhack a bit and end up almost directly behind Jessie’s Country Kettle, which was one of the stops that I had planned from the start.
Old Jungle Habitat photo from West Milford Jungle Habitat website
The trail we followed down was originally just a bushwhack route that Ed had started walking in order to perform his regular trail maintenance on sections he had adopted up there, but someone along the way must have noticed his path and also used it. It now appears to be a regularly used pathway to Hewitt-Butler Trail.
We remained along the lower section with it’s old roads for a bit, and passed by a kiddie pool looking thing that must have been for penguins or something. Doug and Jen got in it to use the sliding board. We then got on some of the paved roadways near the bottom to start making our way north. I followed my phone GPS to try to follow the best route.
Jungle Habitat
I found a good switchback road that was part of the safari section that headed on up. We had to weave around a bit to get to it, and some of the roads started paved and then abruptly ended. Once we were on the main route though, we were good. We also passed by a big netting cage thing, which was apparently some kind of bird display, maybe peacocks.
I started to fall behind some of the rest of the group, and chatted with Steve a bit about the AMC stuff from the past (I had met Steve on the earliest hikes I had posted through that organization, and he’s been rather consistently coming out with us since 2004!).
Old cage thing in Jungle Habitat
When we got to the top of the hill, the group continued ahead, but I took a few up hill slightly mroe to the graffiti laden fence line known by urban explorers as “Rape Hill” because of the graffiti on the entrance of the north side.
The area has large grey panels, and on each one is a cartoon depiction of basically every sexual act you can think of.
At some point, parks employees or someone had come up and covered all of the drawings over with grey spray paint, but it’s still pretty easy to see beyond it what it all is. They line the entire way back down to the paved road. Jack was particularly upset that he didn’t get to see it. We soon got back to the paved road and continued to the rest of the group.
Art...
Everyone else was waiting soon up ahead. Also, Captain Soup (David Campbell) was waiting for us at Jessie’s to have some food, and he got there way early, but at a time that I thought we’d arrive there. We were running quite behind what I thought we would.
We saw where the trail went off ahead toward the boundary, but we weren’t seeing where exactly to go off of that. We followed it for a bit and crossed over a power line, and looked it over for a good way out. It looked like it might be a better solution to try to follow it than the bushwhack ahead, and so we turned right to descend via the power line.
Demo derby car. Photo by Ken Q
The power line went into some sort of industrial site, but we were able to cut to the right next to a small stream flow. We continued down, then cut to the right out past a building with storage stuff off of Burnt Meadow Road. We quickly walked out it, and then turned left on the road.
Just then, I spotted a really beat looking demolition derby car. I decided to stop and chat with the people because it seemed interesting, but it would also draw attention away from everyone coming off the mountain probably where we shouldn’t have been just up the road. I told them what we were doing, and then they didn’t care anyway.
We headed along the road the short distance to Greenwood Lake Turnpike, at which point some of the group opted to just walk the road back to where we were parked at Monks boat launch, while the rest of us walked over to Jessie’s bar.
Captain Soup was inside, and he fortunately allowed me to use his car to get people back to the parking area and have their cars to bring back. I thought the boat launched closed at night, but it’s a 24 hour one it turns out.
When Captain Soup gave me his keys and described his car, I went out to get it, and then accidentally got in the wrong car! I sat in someone else’s car for a long while, packed full of hikers trying to start it! I’m so glad no one came out while I was in there! I realized the mistake and we headed around to his car which was on the side of the building.
Those of us who stayed got some burgers and such, and ordered quickly because the place closes at 8. We then got ice cream.
Even though we didn’t get to closing in the loop completely, and didn’t do a lot of what I had proposed doing, it still ended up being over fifteen miles and a lot of fun. It also leaves me with an excuse to do another warm weather hike in the same area! There’s still so much more to see!
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