Hike #1133; Mt Olive to Hackettstown

Hike #1133; Mount Olive to Hackettstown

6/2/18 Mt. Olive to Hackettstown with Jim “Uncle Soup” Campbell, James Quinn, Captain Soup (David Campbell), Justin Gurbisz, Brittany Audrey, Daniel Trump, Ken Zaruni, Robin Deitz, Alyssa Lidman, and Annika Krystyna

This next hike would be another point to point between Mount Olive and Hackettstown. There are so many trails through this area that I just never tire of it, and there’s always more that I want to do. I hadn’t done one in this section in a while, so up it went on the schedule.

View at Mt. Olive Walmart

We met right after I got out of work at the Hackettstown Speedy Mart where there’ s a pizza place and a liquor store. We had hiked through here on somewhat recent Hackettstown area trips, but this time I put some stuff together that would be new.
Things ended up not really going as planned much at all, but it was interesting and all good.
We shuttled in the van from this point first to Saxton Falls where Robin left a car. She didn’t want to be out walking in the dark long, so we gave her a bit of an out here.

Mt. Olive swamp from the trail

We then continued to shuttle to the International Trade Center just off of Rt 46 in Mt. Olive, where we had started quite a few hikes. It looked like it was raining off in the distance from the view we got from the parking area.
Some of the group went into the stores to get refreshments and such, and then we were on our way out in back of the Walmart.
There is a road from the back of the Walmart known as Gold Mine Road. For years, it was closed off to public for driving, but they recently reopened it for one way only traffic.

Mt. Olive swamp flowers

We turned right to follow Gold Mine Road gradually down hill and past the Quick Krete facility, then onward through some nice woods. We only passed maybe one car on the route. I don’t think people have yet realized it’s possible to get through there yet.
When we got to where the road opened back up into developed area, the white blazed trail of the Mt. Olive trail system crossed over. This trail used to only go south to Turkey Brook Park area, but now it continued north to Rt 46.

Mt Olive swamp and flowers

This was only my second time ever following this particular section of trail. I really liked it before, and figured everyone else would appreciate seeing it.

Mt. Olive Swamp

The trail passed through some very nice woods, and then started to skirt the edge of a very lovely swamp. There were bogs, trees, and a tuft of purple flowers growing through it. The swamp became more expansive as we walked on to the north.
The trail skirted right along the edge of the swamp to such a degree that at one point the swamp overtook the trail completely. Fortunately, we could go around with ease. We continued to walk through woods along the swamp to it’s end.

On the trail

The trail continued along over varied terrain from here, and we passed a long abandoned car on the left.
As we got toward the end of this swath of undeveloped land, we started to see a clearing to the left. It was nearly encroaching upon the trail. This was a new development that only recently started up. It’s certain to be a horribly ugly thing with McMansions or town houses, and it’s going to mess up the natural ambiance of this section of trail. We continued ahead through woods to Old Budd Lake Road.

Wet trail

We turned left on Old Budd Lake Road where the trail came out between houses, and then turned onto Rt 46 briefly. We crossed over at the next traffic light.

Mt Olive swamp

We headed across and then down across the store parking lots on the other side. We passed the Home Goods Store, then continued out past the pizza place. No one really wanted pizza at this moment, but the ice cream store, called Das’ Creamery, was a big hit. We all went over there.
I believe Uncle Soup got me some ice cream, and it was a great little stop. It also bought Brittany time because she was planning to come and meet up with us.

Mt Olive trail

I ran around the corner while everyone was having their ice cream to see if there was anything interesting in the liquor store, but then ran back and hung out for a bit until everyone was about ready.
We walked from Das’ Creamery out between the buildings by the PNC Bank and continued across Village Way.
We cut to the right, and then emerged on a golf course section of the development behind the stores. They probably don’t want hikers in there, but we went anyway.

Mt. Olive Swamp

We headed down hill through the golf course, and up a bit so that we could skirt the sides of the course.
When we got to the end, we cut off to the west end of the course. We followed this to sidewalks in the development surrounded by town houses.
We followed the sidewalks to the west for a bit, crossed Fairview Drive, and then paralleled Hickory View Circle, staying parallel with it out on the sidewalks of the development.
Brittany met up with us and parked her car on Hickory View Circle I believe it was.

Mt Olive Swamp

There was a secondary road that went out in back of another section of town houses after we came out to Hickory View Circle, and we walked into that to the woodland behind it. We ended up at the northwest end of the apartments and townhouses, and then cut directly into the woods to head up hill. My plan from here was to find a way to the east end of Lozier Road. It ended up not being nearly a easy as easy as anticipated. We ended up going back down hill and came out in the lot for “Logical Logistics” which had a big warehouse.

Mt. Olive Swamp

Once out, we walked the parking lot in back to it’s northwest end, and then cut into the woods to the left to try to reach Lozier Road. It wasn’t far up that I came to a chain link fence blocking the road. It wouldn’t be too tough to climb, but not everyone would want to do that. Fortunately, it was easy to parallel the thing and come out directly on the public cul de sac of the road. We continued following Lozier Road up hill from this point and passed the intersection with Waterloo Road, and turned right to continue on Lozier.

An old car

The road out this way is lightly used. It was more used after the intersection, but still not too bad. We only followed it up hill for a short while, and unlike previous times, we cut into the woods to the right on an old woods road that leads out to the parallel power line cut.
We made our way through the woods and to the cut, then turned to the left to hike it to the west. It was rocky but clear, and the low areas had giant mud puddles. We saw a snapping turtle that had just emerged from a mud hibernation sunning itself on some of the higher ATV path on the line.

Cumulonimbus clouds at Home Goods

We continued on the power line only as far as a pole line going off to the right. This one went directly to the 95 Mile Tree Fire Tower, better known today as the Budd Lake Fire Tower.
The original wooden fire tower at this site was in place as early as 1905. It was called “95 Mile Tree” because it was at about mile ninety five along an old state turnpike, probably present day Route 46. It was replaced by the current metal tower in about 1924 I believe it was. It is reportedly the only fire tower in New Jersey that uses the equipment it does.

ICE CREAM

I nearly missed the turn off for the tower. The Tower Trail goes along the power poles at first up the hill, and it was somewhat overgrown. We managed to get on through, and reached the tower. I went up quickly first and waited for the others to follow suit.

Development golf course

From the top, we could see plainly out to Budd Lake, and Rt 46 passing along it’s south shore. On a clear day, you can see some of New York City, but I couldn’t this time. It was pretty hazy. To the north, Allamuchy Mountain is immediately visible, and beyond is the Kittatinny Ridge. Although it was not very clear out, we could see the Delaware Water Gap in the distance. Fortunately, there were no bees this time up the tower, like there were a previous time up, which was awful (and I was one of few that didn’t get stung).

Golf course walkin

Once we were happy with the view we got, we continued on the Tower Trail, pink blazed, down hill. From this point it follows the access road to the tower.
We continued down hill on this and reached the Green Trail. We turned right on that and continued heading west some more. My plan was to take this to the White Trail and then continue to the west on that. We had done a variation of this hike where we followed the upper end of the white trail, but not the lower end completely, so I figured we’d do it here.

Power line walkin

The white and green trails are co-aligned for a brief time, but I couldn’t quite remember how they were oriented this time. We just kept walking on green, and eventually came to a trail that went to the right a bit. I didn’t see blazes on it, but I thought it might have been it. A lot of these blazes, while they are marked correctly, are town down by hunters who don’t want people walking by their stands, or the were hammered into the trees too far and didn’t last long. Whatever the case, I was unsure at this point.

Snapping Turtle

It didn’t take long walking this route till I realized I didn’t think I’d ever walked this part before, or if I did, it was another unintentional section like this time. Regardless, I knew I had never followed this route through, and it was kind of heading where we wanted to be. I thought it might cut over to the left and lead us to the white trail somewhere.
We passed by an old cinder block foundation on the right, but not sure what it was, and continued to descend a bit. This took us out to a possible private land interlude.

From the fire tower

There was a state park sign on a lower tree straight ahead, and on the two trees behind, there were “No trespassing” signs put way up into the trees beyond where they could ever be reached. Since there was a state sing, we continued to make our way along the trail down from here, and it led back and forth to the north.
At first, the trail followed an old woods road, but it seemed to leave that after a while. There were a couple of other trails made by mountain bikers off other ways that were unmarked, but we went with most obvious.

Budd Lake from the fire tower

The trail started heading a bit more to the east when we were supposed to be going west. I wanted to see where it went, but this would require me to change the hike a lot.

View of the water gap

We were so far along at this point that it made no sense to go back. We continued on, and passed a sign on a tree that read “Squatch Crossing” and an image of Bigfoot. The trail then led us down hill further to some interesting rock outcroppings. Below us and through the trees, I could see we were now parallel with Tilcon Lake, the former quarry lake that we’ve visited so many times. We continued heading east from where we could see Tilcon Lake, so I devised a plan that we would skirt the north side of that lake and continue.

Fire tower view

The trail started to switchback a bit more when we got down below the rock outcroppings, and it headed to the west a bit more again. It got so low that we could soon see the NJ Transit Tracks, formerly the Morris and Essex and later the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western.
I had everyone bushwhack at one point direct from the trail right on down to the railroad tracks to save a little bit of time, and we headed into the woods.

Tower silliness

Once everyone was down to the tracks, we crossed them and descended a tiny bit more to the abandoned former westbound track right of way of the Morris and Essex, later Lackawanna. I’ve hiked this numerous times and always liked it. We turned right to follow that grade for a while, and soon we came to the former site of Waterloo Station. Today, only a stone foundation remains of the station, and a little further ahead, the turntable pit is still in place.
We made our way further along the track right of way, and I wanted to show the turntable, but we still had a long way to go and we had walked back in the direction we were already coming from.
I pointed out where the road used to ascend to the station, and we walked down some of it. Once we were down, I pointed out where the Sussex Branch, a twenty mile long spur to Branchville, used to go off to the right. I then pointed out Old Waterloo Valley Road. The back road down in this area is seldom used.

Historic image of Waterloo Station

Waterloo Valley Road was moved when Interstate 80 was built, aligned parallel with it and to the east to terminate at International Trade Center on Continental Drive.

Tower Soup

The road originally went direct down to Waterloo Village and crossed Waterloo Lake on a truss bridge, but a quarry truck went across it in the years before 80 was built and collapsed it. When 80 was through, they no longer needed the connection as only one unoccupied house was out on it, the only house of Waterloo Village not preserved.
We turned to the left through a gate on an unmarked trail that goes to the north, and soon is parallel with the Tilcon Lake. The former quarry lake is huge and a great swim spot.

Tower

It’s not allowed to be swimming in there, but when there are no cars parked anywhere nearby, no one really bothers. We got out to where it started to get closer to the lake shore itself, and paused for a dip.
The sun was starting to set, and there was a beautiful pink hue on the water that was nicer than anything I’d seen at this location before. Robin didn’t want to wait around too much longer and get stuck in the dark, so Ken went with her and continued along the lake to the Morris Canal heading back.

TOWER!

I was surprised more people didn’t want to go in with me. I think only Annika went out really far. I think maybe it was James also came in a bit.
Once I felt good and cooled off, we got out and started heading along the trail to the west. It emerged onto the road that used to carry the heavy trucks, and we followed it out through the gate, which had an opening to the left. We turned right at this point on Kinney Road to cross the Musconetcong River. Just past that, the Morris Canal once crossed.

Tower fun

Since Brittany works at Waterloo now, I started quizzing her on the dates of construction and abandonment of the Morris Canal. She knows the stuff pretty well at this point, but of course I could stump her on some things when I was outright trying to stump her.
We turned left onto the canal and passed the old Waterloo concert fields, where the old stage had recently been torn down. We then made our way through more woods until the trail turned to the right out to Waterloo Road where a house was built over the canal historic route.

95 Mile Tree Fire Tower

We had to turn left on Waterloo Road past the house for just a short bit, then turned left again onto a trail that led back to a nice section of the canal topwath.

Building ruin on the way

The section of towpath led us directly along the river for a little bit, then cut inland a bit. There was a spot where there used to be an ore dock, where it comes back out to Waterloo Road. There is a mine at the top of the hill on the Deer Park section of Allamuchy Mountain, but I was never able to find it.
We continued walking onto the road, briefly to the right, then to the left to continue on the trail. At this point, it follows the historic former Waterloo Road route, while the road is built much over the canal.

Obnoxious high signage...

The section took us up and then back down to the edge of the road again, and a trail section crosses over but does not go through. Another house is built right in the canal prism up ahead, on the upper bit of slack water above Saxton Falls dam.

The group

The trail could connect if a route was cut back up to Waterloo Road, then back down on the other side of the house, but that has never happened yet. Maybe I should do it, I don’t know.

Squatch crossing

We passed by the guy’s house; it’s amazing anyone still lives there along the lake. It doesn’t even look like the house has electric any more. There were no lights on in it, but the car was out front and we could hear something. We continued walking Waterloo Road ahead to the next clearing.
The clearing is the former lock tender’s house at Morris Canal Lock #4 West. It was later known as Elsie’s Restaurant, but it’s been closed for years.

Rock outcropping

The plan is to have the Warren Highlands Trail end at this point, and eventually restore the tender’s house as a sort of river keeper place or an outfitter, but nothing has happened yet.
We had to continue on the road from here, because the Morris Canal went onto a causeway on Saxton Lake that has since been purged. We had to walk the road for a little bit, as the greenway as well as Highlands Trail, which follows it at this point, turns left on Colony Road just up ahead, a defunct development with only a couple homes left.

Tilcon Lake

Rather than turn down Colony Road when we got to it, I had everyone follow me a bit further to another lesser used road. I knew of an abandoned house on it that I’d never done on an official hike.

Tilcon Lake sunset

When I had injured my leg terribly badly about a year prior, I did go ahead with some of my regular scheduled hikes, but rather than do a big night hike, I chose to go shorter.

Tilcon sunset

I instead met Justin one night with the plan on just doing a couple of miles to find this abandoned house I had seen. I didn’t want to go with a group the last few times I went by because they get too loud and obnoxious. This time it was fine.
When Justin and I went looking, we over shot it by a couple of miles and had to go back. I ended up doing over seven miles even when I was only trying to do two, but it made my leg better actually. I thought the place was rather interesting, so we’d go to see it when time was right.

This time seemed good, so we went in. I was surprised that it wasn’t more wrecked than it was before. I mean it was, but not all that bad. We had a look around briefly, and then moved along.
The side road we took led us right back to the designated trail route and we headed out to the forer development area.
We used to come and explore the houses on this road quite a lot on some of the earlier hikes. There were quite a few of them at one time. The trail used to go down by one called the Ditmar House.

Tilcon Lake

The first house was on the left, and it’s gone, and the second was on the right, also gone. Another one actually is still standing hidden out in the woods so well that no one really seems to know it’s still there, but it’s not particularly interesting.

Sunset

We continued down Colony Road back to Waterloo Road, and Robin’s car had been long gone at this point. We made our way briefly along Waterloo Road to the cut over onto the Morris Canal towpath again. The section goes from where the canal crossed Waterloo Road on a high shelf above the road. The first bit of it is rather tough walking on a foot path, where the original width of the towpath is eroded or plowed away, but it gets quite easy after that. I had everyone stay quiet because there’s a dog that goes nuts on at a house along parallel Waterloo Road.

Sunset

We continued walking where the canal starts moving away from the road. We paused only a second at the next abandoned house, and then continued where the trail had somewhat recently been cleared by Jakob Franke and his crew, Mr. Franke’s final trail project before his unfortunate passing over a year ago.
The trail was still kept up pretty well, but there are a few downed trees on it. We followed it over the driveway crossing, and there was equipment out at the collection of homes off of it.

Creepy

It appears they are in the process of demolishing the last four or so of them back there. It’s kind of sad that I never got to going into all of those, but oh well. It looked like they were going to take them down with everything still inside.
We continued along the towpath into the deeper woods ahead. It has two areas of washouts or something, but for the most part was still pretty easy walking out to the major washout where Warren County funded a bridge project. There is a makeshift bridge there made of sticks, but it’s breaking up badly.

Ham

We continued along the towpath from here out to the end of the trail section at Bilby Road. From there, we would do a different route than I’ve ever done to the end, which worked out really quite great.
We turned right on Bilby Road, but only briefly. I forget who opted to go another way, but not everyone followed me through this part the entire time, and I think they missed out.
We turned to the left at a grassy hillside soon after the canal trail ended to the left.

Ham

Just barely up through the high grass was a mowed pathway. It was better than I had thought we’d find.
The mowed path emerged at a parking lot off of Lindsey Drive in an apartment complex.
We cut to the right and between town houses on sidewalks and grass, then to the left on to the south side of the development complex. We reached Belmont Drive, and turned to the right briefly, then left on a sidewalk to behind one of the town houses. We followed the grass along the woods line.

Eu 'splorin

There was no way through the line of trees at the end, so we went back out to Belmont briefly, and then cut to the left again when we got to the next town house.
We were able to skirt the backs of a couple of town houses, and then at the last one in this line, turned right along more woods parallel with Colby Court heading north.
We didn’t even have to come back out to the road; we turned to the left and were behind even more houses. We just kept quiet as not to freak anyone out living there. We followed this to the north a while.

Ham

We ended up parallel with Carnegie Court or something I think it was called, the one to the most northwest of the development. It was easy walking behind this last one, while others were out on the road.
We followed it right out to Bilby Road and turned left just briefly, then right into the lot of the Hackettstown Baptist Church. This parking lot led right out onto Rt 519 directly across from the strip mall parking lot we had met in earlier. It wasn’t too late, so we were able to go into Sonny’s II Pizza for food.
That last bit was the part I had been planning, but we just got to it at a different point than I was expecting to. The new trails we explored south of Tilcon Lake ended up making up all the difference in mileage I wanted to do and then some.

It was a really great night to be out, and now yet another version of this hike has to be done to finally cover some of the other trails we didn’t get to on this one.