Hike #1124; Belvidere Area Loop

Hike #1124; Belvidere Area Loop

5/2/18 Belvidere/Riverton/Roxburg loop with Justin Gurbisz, Brittany Audrey, and James Quinn

This next hike would be a loop right around the Belvidere area, and a variation on something I’d done in the past, covering a couple of slightly different things.

Goofing off in the restroom

I’d done plenty of hiking out of Belvidere, one way or another, and I always like to get back there in early Spring to have a look around. It’s always a pleasant walk, and we tend to find something new each time.
The new stuff I wanted to do would be on a little bit of the Del Haven PA side of it, along the river back to the boat launch associated with the Martins Creek Pennsylvania Power and Light property.
I made the meeting point the street near the lot my grandfather owns on 2nd Street. I parked there, and Justin and Brittany were parked up closer to the park square in the center of town, near the court house.
James was running late, and so I started walking to Justin and Brittany while they were walkin toward me. When I met up with them, we wandered into town a bit to get drinks and some snacks, and to wait for James. We went to the liquor store, and Skoogy’s Deli, where we got sandwiches. I got some sort of half sub, and Brittany got a whole one. I think I also got chocolate milk because they have good stuff.
We headed back into town after the stores and hung out at a little pavilion next to the Pequest River for James to show up. I think he parked over by my car and walked to us.

Group mirror shot

Once we were all together, we wandered over toward Bridge Street, passed beneath the former Bel Del Railroad trestle, and then to the free bridge. I told everyone the history of the start of the Farmer’s Fair, and how the local garbage man, by the name of Murphy, wold make a spectacle of a dive off the top of the trusses on the Belvidere Riverton Bridge, starting with when it first opened up.
The original covered span washed away in the Pumpkin Flood of October 1903.
When we got to the bridge, former Mayor of Washington Scott McDonald greeted us warmly as we headed across. He works for the bridge commission and is station usually between this bridge and Phillipsburg-Easton.
We walked from there on out across the bridge, taking in the views, and then turned left when we got to the PA side into the Lower Mt. Bethel Township Park. A connecting path leads up hill to a welcome center where we could use the bathrooms (more for a group shot than for any other bodily functions).

The Delaware at Tekening

A connecting trail leads from the welcome center, which I have never seen open, into the Tekening Preserve, which is owned by PP&L. The name comes from a Lenape word that means “in the woods”.
My plan was to follow the trail along the watefront; we did, but it was terribly obliterated. So many trees had fallen, and they apparently brought in contractors to do logging or wood salvage. They literally tore up the trails something awful. If it were me, I could have had the whole thing open in short order with just a chainsaw, but they apparently want the money.

Torn up trail

We continued along the beat up trail, which was just sad to see, because it was always such a nice section, and stopped for a break when we got to a pleasant area without mud. The trail was in better shape after the wooden foot bridge section about midway through.
Once we had a good break, we moved on ahead, and soon came to the observation platform overlooking Foul Rift, probably the most dangerous rapid on the entire Delaware River. The river was running very high at this time, so even the areas that were usually rather calm looked fast.

Tekening

There were a bunch of kids sitting at the platform when we arrived, all friends apparently of Brittany’s sister.
We didn’t hang around at this site too long; I just told them about how during the American Revolution, a general by the name of Hoops ironically, installed steel rings in the cliffs along Foul Rift, and blasted away some of the rocks in an attempt to make the Delaware more navigable through the area. It was never really that successful, but a few of the rings still exist in the rocks.

Ham

We continued along the trail, and started turning inland on it. There were several trees down, so navigating where exactly it went was a little harder than it had been previosly.
When we got to the trail intersection and turned left, we met a guy walking his dog. He told us that they had in fact contracted out a timber removal plan at Tekening, and that’s why the trail was so badly torn up. I can’t imagine they’d get any good amount of money for the logs of all weird shapes coming from the riverside down there, but whatever. We continued out to the lot from here.

View to Foul Rift

The lot is on Depues Ferry Road. We paused briefly here, and then continued on the Lower Mount Bethel Trail to the north. It somewhat closely parallels Depues Ferry Road.

Tekening Trail

It’s always a joke coming out of the rocky terrain of the Tekening Preserve, that the Lower Mt. Bethel Trail has a sign on it saying something about rugged terrain. Tekening has some really rocky stuff, but the LMB Trail is multi use, crushed stone path that you’d have to have some sort of mental handicap in order to trip on most of it.
We followed the trail where it crossed Depues Ferry Road, and then continued parallel with the road to the boat launch briefly, and then descended to cross over the Oughoughton Creek by way of concrete cylinders in the creek.

LMB Trail

This was really the only section of this entire trail that could ever remotely be considered “rugged”, because you have to step on cylinders. The creek was flowing high, but by no means was it anything we’d have trouble crossing.
My shots were chaffing, and so I sat my butt down in the creek for a little bit to ease the pain. I have to remember to cut the netting out of all of the damned swim trunks I have, because walking in them is miserable. We moved on from this point and climbed up the other side to field edges, which have little sections of board walks along them.

View at Del Haven

The trail soon made it’s way to rather closely parallel with 611, Martins Creek-Belvidere Highway. We continued on to the next intersection, Del Haven Road, and the trail turned left ot parallel that.
The trail switched sides of the road partway down, where there was a good view across the fields to the Martins Creek PP&L station, and it was completely grassed over. The crushed stone was still beneath it all, but no one had been taking care of it. We still followed it down to where it turned right ot the recreation fields at Del Haven. We stopped there for everyone to play on the playground equipment for a little bit.

Sunset in Del Haven

We emerged from the park on Bush Drive. From there, we continued just ahead to a left turn on Del Haven Road again, then turned to the right on Depues Road, which follows the Delaware River up stream. Homes were on the right, with the fields on the left. Many of these homes were sort of on the river, and the only access to them from Depues Road were steps and such, while driveways and that sort of thing were all from below. A rather interesting layout. We continued along these fields as the sun began to set over them. We then entered a more wooded area.
Soon, on the right side, we came to a sort of building ruin. It looked as though there was once a house here, but it was destroyed by flooding or something. The foundation looked interesting. We walked over onto it with the little remaining daylight we had, and descended the stairs to the main frame of it. Justin and I went in to the open part of the basement first, and we could see where it was collapsing. It was not built structurally sound from what we could see. While there, a couple of motorcyclists went by. We made our way back to the road and continued just a little further to the east.
There was a creek behind the building, a branch of the Oughoughton Creek. When it reaches the Delaware River, it splits in two, and the section between is a large island. We headed up the road just a bit, and then there was a gated road after the bridge over the first branch. We walked down it a bit, and I could see where we could head down to get over to the launch faster.
As I was walking down, I turned back to see that everyone had left me. They went out to walk over the bridge, but I headed down to the creek easily, and I could just walk right back up the bank and into the boat launch parking lot without a problem.
When I got over to the launch area, there were the two motorcyclists, hanging out on the far end of the launch. No one is supposed to be there at night, and so it was safe to assume that there would be no problem.
The ended up being really cool. I chatted with them for a bit, and gave them directions to some other cool local places. They said they might even come out on some hikes one of these days.
I walked on into the river of the boat launch and cooled off a bit, and then Justin called me. They were hanging out back up at the intersection waiting for me to come up.

Historic image of an F Unit crossing the Roxburg Bridge, from Phillipsburg Railroad Historians

I headed up, and when I met everyone else, we headed to the Roxburg Bridge to cross the Delaware. It’s a pretty interesting bridge, built in the later years of Pennsylvania Railroad. The power plant was originally called Roxburg rather than Martins Creek, because honestly it’s not really near Martins Creek, and the creek as I mentioned is Oughoughton.

Historic image of the Roxburg Station on the Bel Del

When we got to the NJ side, we turned left where the Roxburg Station used to be, on the former Bel Del Railroad. It was a small structure, like others that were not really much more than flag stops. We continued north on the Bel Del from here, which was rather pleasant.

The Chimney Rock near Foul Rift

We can’t see a lot while walking the tracks north from Roxburg, but I did point out where the Chimney Rock was, a giant rock spire that was left standing when the Bel Del blasted through. There are a couple of other smaller ones in the woods just to the right visible during the day as well, but this one is far more pronounced.

The power plant in the dark from the Bel Del

We made our way north, and when we got to a spot where we could get a nice view of the crazy lights of the power plant, we sat down for a break. It’s just such a cool sight to see.

Historic image of Foul Rift Station

We continued walking from here, and the next former station stop was Foul Rift. The southern end of this settlement today is completely gone, all the homes removed, but some of the upper section is still there. It used to have a platform and shanty building.

Foul Rift station

I believe there may have been two flag stops on the line at one time; one would have been for the settlement of Foul Rift itself, and the other would have been for a seasonal campground that I believe was a bit further to the south of the rest of Foul Rift.
We continued to the north away from Foul Rift, and as we got closer to Belvidere, Justin and Brittany opted to go and walk the road. I chose to remain on the Bel Del with James, who was slowing up a bit, but he did okay. We were able to get back to the vacant lot where the station used to be.

Historic image of Belvidere Station

My grandfather still owns the lot adjacent to that, where the creamery used to be.
We walked up 2nd Street, and got to our cars. I offered to go back and pick Justin and Brittany up, but they already got back with no problem.
It ended up being a really relaxing and pleasant night hike, with a few new things and random silliness, which is exactly what I needed.