Hike #1152; Stony Garden to Ottsville

Hike #1152; Stony Garden to Ottsville

8/23/18 Stony Garden/SGL 157 to Ottsville with Justin Gurbisz

This would be an interesting night hike between an obscure Bucks County point and the village of Ottsville. I had recently done a hike to Ottsville, and interest was spurred in me from that. There were a lot of places out there I’d wanted to see.

Heading through SGL 157

I was surprised that only Justin showed up for this one. I feel like I’m posting some really great hikes that are only getting light interest. I credit a lot of that to the weird weather that shifts from being super hot and humid to being rainy. We have rain it seems almost every day, for only about fifteen minutes or so, and then it’s gone.
Regardless, I was thinking of things we could do that I would not otherwise do with the larger group, but couldn’t think of anything other than Durham Furnace, and that was ways off.

Stony Garden

I decided we’d go through with the hike as I’d posted it. It was a good thing we did, because the route ended up being much tougher than I’d anticipated it would have been. A large group would have hated it. Actually, I rather hated it too. It was really a great spot to experiences, but nothing I’ll ever try to bushwhack through again.
The highlight of the first bit was something known as the Stony Garden. This was an obscure “Ringing Rocks” boulder field similar to the one that’s now a Bucks County Park nearby. Stony Garden has been pretty much forgotten in the back woods of State Game Lands #157.

Stony Garden

We headed to the north a bit from Ottsville along Stony Garden Road looking for the parking area for the state game lands and passed it the first time. We found it on the way back, and it was attached to someone’s private driveway. I wondered if I would have a problem when we finally made it back to pick my van up, but there was no issue.
We started walking on an obscure path that took us through a sort of logged area of slash. There was some sort of semi-worn path through it, but overall it was shit. Hardly anyone walks this except maybe in hunting season, and it wasn’t obvious.

The Stony Garden

We had an awful time getting through that initial mess, but there was a better path once we got into the woods. There was really no marking, just the somewhat beaten path.

Divets in the rocks from hammers

The first bit of “Stony Garden” we came to was the smaller of two boulder fields off to the left of the trail we had found. The trail split in two somewhere along the way, and we headed to the field. There wasn’t a lot to it, so we checked it out, and then started to backtrack toward the other path which would hopefully take us to the larger of the two fields. There was a very pretty brook in the area of where they split off, but none of the paths led us to where we needed to go. Eventually, we just went off trail heading toward the spot where it was supposed to be, following the GPS location and aerials on my phone.

Stony Garden

When we finally emerged into the more prominent “Stony Garden”, it was very interesting.
We started navigating over the boulders, which were very much like the popular Ringing Rocks Park, but with no people. The rocks all bore the evidence of having been banged on, but not recently. These rocks reportedly “ring” when struck, but I had no hammer to test them. I wouldn’t doubt it by the look of all of them.
When near the middle of the largest section, on a flat rock below us, we observed a deep etching done in 1901 by “Clarence R. Naegel” I believe was the name, of Coopersburg PA.

Old etching in the rocks

This was a really cool find. Clearly, hardly anyone even knows this is out there. The other little boulder field is the more accessible one. This was like some sort of secret.

Haycock Brook branch

We started hopping through the rocks to the west end, then turned to the south a bit. The rock field continued in that direction, and we could hear water flowing beneath a lot of them.
These formations apparently formed through the heaving that comes from freezing and thawing over millions of years. The main creek, a branch of the Haycock Brook, flowed in the woods just to the west of the boulder field.
When the boulder field started to grow over a bit, we headed directly into the woods to follow the creek more closely. It flowed in a dispersing way over rather level but rocky terrain.

Rock etching

I decided to start walking in the creek rather than on the rocks around the outside because it was easier. The weeds weren’t terrible yet because we were following the water, but the rocks were slippery.
While walking through this, we came upon a spot where a larger body of impounded water flowed over rocks and sticks to the heavier flows below. Within this impound of water, there was a whirlpool back much farther behind the outflow.

Suck pool

Justin and I were mesmerized by this strange occurrence. Apparently, the abundance of rocks provide outflow for water to the the stream below us through a deeper conduit.

Suck pool

We watched the thing for a few minutes, and then Justin grabbed a leaf to throw in. We were fascinated by how the whirlpool sucked it down with ease and speed. He threw another and another in, and we watched it take it down. Then, Justin tried out a stick to see if it wouldn’t clog the thing. It seemed to take just about anything he could find in the immediate vicinity (though he didn’t try any huge branches or anything). We could have messed with this phenomenon for probably much longer, but we had a long way to go, so we continued waking along the creek up stream.

Suck pool

The brook started to disperse off into smaller springs and sources, and we would soon have to leave it in favor of better routes.
We seemed to find a long forgotten former roadway, which ended up even having some junk laying out in it in the middle of nowhere. It was really bizarre to see anything in such an inaccessible piece of land.
We continued walking even when the woods road started to peter out. We had to make our way to the south, toward some of the management roads in the southern end of the state game lands. I had hiked a bit of this in the past, and I knew that some of the terrain we had coming up would not be easy.

Haycock Brook tributary

We left the stream for good and made our way through woods until we came upon the first of the rock outcroppings. They can get quite huge back there. The Haycock Mountain has two peaks to it, and I had only really ever explored the southern of the two. The first one was very inaccessible, and the other is in the area known as “Top Rock”, which is popular among climbers.
I had first explored this on a hike where we began at Lake Towhee, followed their trails to a back road walk, then entered the game lands from the east, and headed to the west to get to the climbing area. I had done this in colder weather months when there were no leaves on the trees, so it wasn’t nearly as bad.
Justin and I headed through the woods to the east a bit too far, which took us through woods and over rocky outcrops for a long while.

Rock on Haycock Mountain

While in this mess, we hit a yellow jacket’s nest. I can’t believe neither of us got stung on the first couple of them we hit. Yellow jackets have been incredibly aggressive this Summer, and these back woods areas where they’re not disturbed are just full of these nests. I moved along the rocks much more quickly than I normally would, despite slippery conditions, just to try to avoid these things.
We navigated between rocks and continued generally uphill toward the first peak of the Haycock Mountain. We eventually came to a place with much younger trees.

Rocks on Haycock Mountain

The area had been timbered, probably for some sort of vegetative opening rather than logging. It was well into the stages of succession, because there were dense young trees growing. This was actually alright for us because we were able to pass through without a lot of undergrowth and briars.
It started getting kind of bad just before coming out to the woods road that we were trying to hit. I bullied my way out to the cul de sac of the road and sat down for a moment. Justin was behind me, and hit yet another yellow jacket’s nest on the way out. He came running out.

Dense young growth forest

I got up and started running too, and neither of us got stung by some miracle again.
From here, we had a nice easy walk on the management road to the south for a while.
In retrospect, we should have continued waking the branch of the Haycock Brook, which would have taken us to another part of the management road, but I didn’t think it would be as tough as it was. We followed this road to the south until it started making it’s turn to the west, and we needed to go to the east to get to the Top Rock area.

Haycock Mountain

I followed my phone GPS as best I could, making my way into the woods. It was really weedy again at first, and Justin got behind me a bit. When the weeds opened up a bit, I waited up for him.
These woods were a bit more rocky, and had glacial erratics through it where rocks were balanced on other rocks.
This was just about where I had walked the last time I passed through this way, heading toward Top Rock. The area started looking a bit more familiar to me when we got to the larger rock outcroppings. I believe on that trip, I was using a regular old compass to get through.

Exploring Haycock in 2007

This time, simply following my phone GPS proved problematic. It doesn’t stay caught up as much, and the thing was dying fast. Fortunately, Justin was watching his as well.

Balanced rocks on Haycock Mt.

In addition to watching the maps, he was also watching the weather radar, and it was a good thing.
Just before we got to the rock outcroppings, he said there was a storm coming in, and it was looking like it was absolutely going to hit us.
When we got to the big rocks, the wind picked up like crazy. Big tree tops were all shaking. More so than thunder and lightning, we thought a tree might fall on us. The large rocks in the area fortunately provide a lot of cover, and we both hunkered down beneath a giant one that was nearby. Soon after getting in, it started to rain.

An obscure old woods road

Fortunately, the rock kept us pretty dry. The wind slowed down when the rain started, and we were able to wait it out, which was actually only a short time. Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, and the storm was done with.
Still, the rocks we had to cross on were now more wet than they had been before, and that would make for some very difficult conditions if we were to continue to Top Rock. Further, the GPS indicated that we had not gone very far from the previous woods road anyway. I didn’t want to go all the way back and add lots of extra miles, and I didn’t have faith that we could reach the Top Rock area before dark. Navigating these woods in the dark would be miserable.

Turtle friend

We were actually not very far from another area that had been somewhat cleared, similar to the previous section we’d been through, and would be a lot of light young trees. This led south to a dead end road known as Fox Run Road. I knew we had to amend the hike or we weren’t going to be getting anywhere.
We adjusted course to start heading to the south, and ended up going through some more rough boulders. We really got a workout in this section trying to get to the south. I first ended up skirting the clearing to the west that we’d already come from. That would have been awful to try to get through. We continued to the southeast from there, and eventually we found some sort of obscured old woods road. It was not at all obvious to the naked eye, but it was actually graded.

Turtle!

We were able to follow that for a while, and it came to a tiny piece of private land in the middle of the state game lands. The woods road seemed to disappear here, but only because it went through this property and then came out of it again. We skirted the spot where there was some junk stored, and then got back on the woods road to the south. This led us directly into the light young forest we were looking at getting to.
Just as we reached the section and started slowly descending, Justin found an adorable little turtle in the trail. He also took a phone call regarding a flight to Arizona I think it was, at which time I made obnoxious noises in the background.
The path through the young forest was obscure at first, and we had to weave back and forth to be on the more prominent route, but it got very obvious as we continued.

Ford on the water tower road

My intention was to continue heading directly down hill as the trail became more prominent, and end up on Fox Run Road, which is a little driveway side road built on the earlier alignment of Route 563, Mountain View Drive.
Instead, we cut to the right a bit and ended up at a water tower. I figured this was still the route that would take us to the same place.
Unfortunately, the water tower could not be climbed because they had some sort of deterrent thing blocking the ladder off. We continued on the access road down hill from the tower, and soon came to where it crossed over a tributary brook.

Ford site

The road crossed the brook by way of a ford, which was pretty cool looking. I walked right through it, but Justin crossed on the rocks just down stream from it.
The access road took us out to Kinzler Road, which passes beneath 563. We turned left on Kinzler, passed under the highway, and then turned left onto a trail up into some of Nockamixon State Park.
We followed up hill along the route of the frisbee golf trail. I had done this section once before when hiking the entire perimeter of Lake Nockamixon with Jason Itell back in May of 2007.

Ford site

The trail seemed a bit more developed this time. I also noticed that there was some sort of ruin below the trail of masonry construction. I’m not sure if it was some kind of mill or what. I can see buildings there on historic aerials, but can’t find anything on this one.
We continued gradually up hill, parallel with 563 and crossed Fox Run on the road bridge from below. The frisbee trail continued for a bit, parallel with the highway, and eventualy we had to cut through the weeds out to the right to parallel with the highway. Old Fox Run Road used to continue to the south out and across the reservoir, but is pretty inaccessible now from what we could see.

Ruins of sorts...

We continued along the highway to the east, the worst part of the hike for me despite it not being all that tough. We passed the Tohickon Boat Launch area, and soon after that turned to the right on an abandoned road known as Tohickon Lane.
The road took us through woods, and then past a lovely pond known as Johns Pond. We continued from there, and passed where buildings used to stand on the right. There was pavement on the road in this area, but some of it was covered over with underbrush.

Johns Pond

Johns Pond had a washout spot where the road is kind of wrecked.
We continued on Tohickon Lane to the former intersection with Old Haycock Road. This was apparently one of the main roads prior to the construction of the reservoir.
Unlike many of the other lakes like this one, it was apparently proposed for recreational purposes in 1958. It was opened to public in 1973. It seems weird that they went to so much trouble to build the reservoir for recreation, but they have no swimming beaches.

Tohickon Lane

We followed Old Haycock Road to the right, and eventually came to where we passed the Haycock Boat Launch. We walked back out to 563, and turned right to cross the finger of the reservoir where Haycock Creek flows in. Once on the other side, we turned to the right onto the trail that heads along the east side.
It had been a long time since I’d been to that part of the park. The trail used to be pretty straightforward along the shore line, but it was complicated since my last visit as it was rehabilitated for mountain bikers.
I stopped at the end of the bridge and went for a swim beneath to cool off while Justin waited above. We then moved on along the trail heading to the south.
It switchbacked a lot on the way down, and probably wracked up more distance than I was anticipating doing for this section, but the trail was overall really nice.
I stopped one more time closer to the water to take another dip, across from the Haycock Boat Launch, where we could see people still working with their boats or fishing.
I was surprised to find that the mountain biking path remained off of the old roadways almost all the way to the main dam. We never remained on easy trails all the way in the past, we ended up having to come out to the abandoned paved roads. There’s been a lot of additions I’ll have to get out there and have a look at.

Moon over Nockamixon

After the closed Foellner Lane, which leads to the main dam, we headed along the trail high above the Tohickon Gorge to eventually end up on South Park Road. It’s a beautiful section, but it was just too dark to see anything this time. I watched as closely as I could so I could point out the Sentinel Rock to Justin.

Sentinel Rock

It was just too dark, so I couldn’t see it, but it’s really a cool looking outcrop.
We reached Park Drive and turned left. It was a wide road, but not all that busy. I chose a road walk route between here and Ottsville that I figured would be pretty nice.
After a bit, there was a sort of orchard to the right, so we cut off the road and skirted their fences, separated from the main road by a line of trees. We remained along that to the intersection with another road called Park Road where we turned right. We could have gotten to the post office faster if we’d continued straight on the big road, but I didn’t realize it at the time.
We turned left at the next intersection to continue on Park Road, which followed some lovely fields and such out to Creamery Road where we turned left. This one went beneath Rt 611 by way of a bridge, so we just had to continue straight to old downtown Ottsville, and then turn to the left on Durham Road. This was the road we had to follow up hill during the previous hike to Ottsville. I wasn’t happy about doing it again, but we managed, and cut across a grassy field to the left to cut over to the post office when it came into sight.
This was really a challenging hike that everyone probably would be glad they did not attend, but that I’m glad we did. It was overall a really fun one, although a good workout.