Hike #1159; Allamuchy to Mt Olive

Hike #1159; Allamuchy to Mt. Olive

9/13/18 Allamuchy to Mt. Olive with Justin Gurbisz, Jason W. Briggs, Jennifer Tull, Chris Kroschinski (Cupcake), and Ken Zaruni.

It was time again for another night hike, and I wanted to go past a favorite swim spot, as well as do some more scouting for the Warren Highlands Trail. There is a meeting coming up, and I need to have plenty more to report. I also don’t want the project to stagnate any more.

Chicken of the Woods

I had the group meet me in Mount Olive at the train station, where I’d met so many times before for hikes. From there, we would shuttle to the Allamuchy Township Municipal Building area and start making our way along the proposed Warren Highlands Trail route. I had not done any of this section in a couple of years.
Ken was going to meet up with us late, and headed toward Allamuchy, but couldn’t find the municipal building. I then sent him to the same point I sent Cupcake to meet up with us, over by Rutherford Hall.

New road..

There had been big changes to the landscape since the last time I had been in this area. We had gotten permission to put the Warren Highlands Trail through the Panther Valley Private Open Space Land Holdings, which has a great couple of vistas on it, but they planned to build a new road through that area. Construction had been well under way on this for a while. I hadn’t seen any of it except what was visible on the aerial images.

Panther Valley view

From the municipal building, we headed to he left across the back of the parking lots, and then started to bushwhack up hill through the woods toward the development. This was far harder than I’d remembered it being. Then again, I did it in the Winter time previously.
We managed to bully our way through up hill, and emerged onto the end of a new road, still under construction with debris everywhere. We walked this up to the paved road which appears to be an extension of Mallard Drive.

View

We headed across to another new road to the south of Mallard, and followed it to where we could turn off to get a view into the Panther Valley development area where the golf courses are. We continued around on the road, and into the woods off trail. There was only a little scrubby undergrowth which made it really easy to walk. We then came to the more expansive view points that I wanted most to be a part of the trail. Views like this are amazing and would be one of the finest on the entire trail route, as long as they still let us use them.

Vista

What we came across next kind of shocked me: Panther Valley had built a trail. Not only did they put the trail in place exactly where we had laid out for Warren Highlands, they paved it.

New trail

I can’t say I’m really upset about the paving. My intention was to make Warren Highlands Trail a more natural surface trail rather than like so many others are, but to have a diverse section with an easy, trip-free walk, I don’t mind that. It also won’t need to be cut back very much.
We began walking it, and I was just blown away that it went exactly where we were planning on going. We then turned to the right off of it for a bit to go to another overlook to the south I was intending to use.

Another view

The paved trail did not reach the overlooks themselves, so those sections of Warren Highlands would have to deviate and be a more natural surface, either that or have each of two or three overlooks simply be side trails to the views. Either way, it will work out just fine. My only concern is that with this new infrastructure, the homeowner’s association leadership might not want there to be any public out on those trails, and have it be exclusively for those who live in the community. That would mess things up.

Overlook

We left the viewpoint and headed back to the paved trail, heading to the east. It followed along the edge of Mallard Drive, but farther back in the woods. This plan for this road must have been for a long time, because both roads on either side of the development are named Mallard, and never connected before.
At one point, the road seemed to end at a cul de sac, and it was just the trail going through the woods to connect to the other side. So, it won’t be possible to drive from one end of Mallard to the other.

New trail

The trail came out to the edge of the next cul de sac on the other side, and then we continued back into the woods more parallel with the road. It was always in sight though.
We continued along until eventually the trail came out to and followed the edge of the paved road. We continued a bit, and could see blockades over the new road where it joins with the pre-existing development homes.
Before we got to the first houses, we crossed the road and cut into the woods directly. This was where we needed to figure out some more trail location on the public lands.

New trail

There is municipal land the Panther Valley land connects to, followed by state land. We descended into the municipal land, and I was totally happy to see that this section, even in the warm weather months, had almost no undergrowth. A little bit of treadway improvement and simply blazing would open this section as a trail in no time.
Unfortunately, this was only one section, and we’d find other road blocks up ahead.
We made our way gradually down a bit, past some interesting rock outcroppings, as well as some glacial erratics. The property really was quite nice.
The proposed trail would be back in the woods parallel with Everest Drive, and this works out fine for the most part.
There is a narrow strip of private land that comes up toward the development, and in order to pass through, it would put the trail only a short distance from a private home.

New trail....

I felt like we were too clearly visible from the back porch of this one house, and that we’d end up having problems if we put it there. One option we do have, is we could come to the edge of an unused dead end piece of street, go around that house on the street, then back into the woods on one of the abandoned, unfinished development roads to the east. That’s probably the best option.
However, this time we kept following this lay of the land below the house and no one saw us. Down hill from us was another abandoned house I’d seen before from above, but never went to. With our small group, I figured this was a good time to have a better look at it.

Abandoned

It was unclear at fist if this was on government land or private, or who owned it. The house was in bad shape, with the entire front porch collapsed to make most of the inside of the house completely inaccessible.
This place was strange. Stranger than a lot of the places I’ve explored. It looked as though whoever left had left in a big hurry. Things were strewn about in such a way that it wasn’t for looting or anything. It looked like someone was looking for something. Clothes were all over the floors.

Abandoned

The amount of stuff left behind was as if someone had quickly died, but then there was a lot of kid’s stuff just left behind in the rooms as well. Roofs were collapsing and the place just didn’t feel safe. The side porch didn’t seem possible to go into.
The doors were all wide open. There was nothing anywhere saying to stay out. Even looking for signs, it was spuratically marked, and I later saw an old faded “no trespassing” sign facing toward the Panther Valley development. The road coming in to the site appeared overgrown.

Abandoned

It’s not that often that an abandoned building creeps me out, but this one was giving me the feeling that I was going to find a dead body or something. It’s so secluded and obviously no one comes back here.
When I peered into one of the rooms, I saw a mound about the size of a human figure on a bed, covered in a sheet. At first, I gasped because this was exactly the image I’d had in my mind and was fearing, but upon having a better look, it was fortunately not a corpse. That’s not to say one couldn’t be buried under the endless piles of crap strewn about everywhere.

Abandoned

Even Justin, who has been in just about everyplace you could imagine, seemed a little skeeved at this place, but in a fascinated sort of way. Part of me wanted to stay and see more, but another part of me was saying to get the hell out of there and never go back.
Justin looked at some stuff and determined that it was probably last lived in some time around 2004. In some ways the place looked ransacked, and in others it looked like it was just left as if someone was going away for only a day or two.

Frightening

Justin and I checked the upper levels and found even more high piles. I was creeped out because more than one body could easily fit beneath some of the super deep piles.
We headed back down the stairs and out to the side rooms. The house had had additions put on it, but the main part was a very old farm house. It’s a shame that it won’t last that much longer. Obvious large holes in the roof are going to cause it to decay worse and eventually collapse more. The porch is already done, the rest won’t be long.

Abandoned

The living room had a beautiful grandfather clock in it. Considering the value of the items left behind makes it seem all the more crazy that it’s in the state it’s in. It wasn’t just vandal kids out there. No one made any attempt to break the glass in the face of the grandfather clock. It was ransacked to look for something, but not to break something. And if they were trying to loot the place, one would think they would take that valuable grandfather clock. But there it sat. And there sat a ton more stuff all the way to the side entrance.

We managed to get over all of the stuff and exit that other way rather than have to go back out the way we went in, from a lower level or basement and up steps to the main level.
Another incredibly strange point about the place is the fact that two seemingly perfectly good cars were left out in the driveway. It looked like they were just parked there one day and left. No further explanation. I really wanted to get out of there at that point. We continued through the pasture beyond the house, and there was an out building.

That was what I thought was a body...

We didn't try to go into that, but rather headed toward the woods in the direction we needed to go. Ken and Cupcake were waiting for us at this point.
We headed into the woods, and the weeds started getting really thick. Too many briars, and we’d have to crawl to get through some of it. According to the aerials, we would have to fight through weeds only to come across a wetland or old farm pond if we kept up the hill too high. I decided we’d try to go down a bit. In retrospect, I should have gone for higher, which is what the trail will do.
We headed too far to the north, and soon I could see the still occupied house through trees.

Abandoned

At a point we came to a nice cleared path. To the left, it led back toward the yard of the house. We tried following it, but didn’t want to chance coming out at the yard. We followed it the other way to what appeared to be a hunting spot, and then had to continue to bushwhack.
The bushwhacking got to be absolutely horrible. Once we were a bit beyond where the house was, I decided we’d try to get out to the access road to it and just follow that out. If we encountered anyone on the way, we could easily explain that.

Abandoned

I pushed hard through the mess and came out to the road, which is like a frontage road to interstate 80, only in bad shape. It wasn’t that bad in the past, but the condition it’s in now, you’d need to have a good four wheel drive vehicle to get back to the house back there. I didn’t take notice of what cars were back at the occupied house. I also didn’t notice really any tire tracks. I wondered if maybe they were more accessing the site from Alphano Road rather than 519 over by Rutherford Hall, but I looked later and this is likely it.

Abandoned

When we all got out to the road, we tried to hurry following it to the east. Fortunately, no cars were trying to get back there to pass us. I wondered if the place was actually occupied at this moment at all.
The driveway headed down hill, and we could see Cupcake and Ken at the parking lot at Rutherford Hall. They parked over at the commuter lot, or Panther Valley, I forget which. We joined them by the hall, and headed down to the state parking lot along the edge of Allamuchy Pond.

Abandoned

From the lot, the trail goes to the left along the shore. This section was in the worst shape I’ve ever seen it in. It was a muddy mess for one, and for two it had lots of weeds growing across it. The Allamuchy Pond Trail was intended as a loop around the lake, but work was never completed on the section on the west side, and so it doesn’t get the intended amount of use. We bullied on through it and headed below the Rutherford Hall, which had a tent set up in front of it for special events, then over to the main dam.

Abandoned

We crossed the bridge to the dam, and then turned right to continue on the Allamuchy Pond Trail. They have the nice blazes, metal with Rutherford Hall on them, but they were all hammered completely into trees, which has been making them grow in. It’s a total waste of that cost because people didn’t know what they were doing.
We continued along the south shore of Allamuchy Pond and through the woods, which is a really nice section. The muddy areas were slippery, but we got on through.

Abandoned

When the official trail starts to turn to the right out to the farm at Weirtown, an unmarked old roadway leads to the left, gradually up part of Allamuchy Mountain. This will be one of the main connections of the Warren Highlands Trail that has not yet been formalized.
We followed the trail up hill until we intersected with the white blazed Deer Park Trail.
The trail gets it’s name because this section of Allamuchy Mountain was the Deer Park, a fenced enclosure where deer were raised as a recreational hunting facility for the Rutherford family.

Abandoned

Some of the original fencing from that use is still around today, though it’s much collapsing.
We turned I believe it was to the left on the Deer Park Trail, which forms the longest loop in the western section of Allamuchy Mountain State Park (that name comes from “Allamuchahockingen”, a Native American word that means “Place within the hills”.
We continued a little bit on Deer Park until we came to the intersection with Barberry Trail. This is one of my favorite trails in this section of the park because it weaves around past some interesting tree roots, and then follows some of the north shore of Deer Park Pond.
It was getting pretty dark at this point, and by the time we got to where we could see the pond, it was only a reflective body.
We continued around to the east side of the pond, and the white blazes of the Deer Park Trail rejoined from the left. We thebn continued further around the lake to the west.

Abandoned

When we were along the south side, we had to watch closely, because our next trail to turn on would be the Waterloo South or Waterloo North Trail. I wasn’t sure which one we would end up on, but either would get us to where we needed to be. I was actually planning to use the one that took us closer to Kinney Road, which would be Waterloo North. Somehow, we ended up on Waterloo South Trail, which worked out fine anyway.

Abandoned

We descended slowly and carefully over rocks, but it was never really that steep. Some of the trail followed a woods road as I recall. We emerged just a little bit to the west of where the Morris Canal Trail and Highlands Trail together cross Waterloo Road.
We had to turn right on Waterloo Road when we reached it, cross the outflow of Deer Park Pond, and then turn left on the Morris Canal towpath, where there used to be an ore dock on the canal. There was once an iron mine further up the hill here near the pond.

Cupcake at the pond

We followed the canal, which was very pleasant, for a while along the Musconetcong River, but then had to come back out to the road where a home was built over a part of it. After that, we cut directly back into the woods again.
As we came back out to the road, I warned everyone to watch it with their flashlights, because we were in a residential area. When we got back on the towpath, apparently a guy came out of the house across the street and said something. I don’t know what.

Historic view of Rutherford Hall

We walked a little further ahead on the towpath. I can see fine without lights, but no one else was that worried. I was concerned that the guy at the house would come to the next crossing.

Rutherford Hall

I walked ahead of everyone, and when I got to where the towpath trail came out to Kinney Road, I saw a car go across and seem to stop right at the towpath. I turned back to tell the others to douse their lights.
We waited there for a bit because I didn’t want to have any issues before moving on.
We eventually hiked on through to Kinney Road. From there, we turned right to cross the Musconetcong into Morris County.

Allamuchy Pond

Soon, we turned to the right into the old quarry entrance. The roadways around the outside of it area great for walking, because they’re so clear and easy.

Rutherford Stuyvesant Estate

We got up to the shore to take a break, and I was the only one with any interest in go as I recall. I don’t think Cupcake went in because he had jeans on.

Historic image of Rutherford Hall

I felt better, and we soon headed on our way. We headed back over to the main gravel road that goes around the north side between the lake side and the Musconetcong.

Historic image of Rutherford's gate

The trail headed into woods after the more active quarrying area, then continued to the south heading out to Waterloo Valley Road, at the point where the original road, severed by Rt 80, used to continue down to Waterloo Village.

Olmstead landscaping at Rutherford Hall

We turned left and walked the uncharacteristically flat section of Waterloo Valley Road; most of the road is old and in crap shape, but this one section was a newer road built the same time as Rt 80 as a reroute, so people use it for drag racing.

Oldstead landscaping at Allamuchy Pond

Just as we were reaching the railroad tracks, I heard a whistle blowing. I hurried to get up near the train coming. I even took a video of it going by, which came out cool.

Allamuchy Pond

We continued from there across and up on Waterloo Valley Road back to the Mt. Olive train station where we’d met earlier. We did the entire hike just about exactly how I planned we would do it, and still finished much earlier than we usually do. I was very surprised. Ken chimed in that during a lot of this time, we were doing a good three and a half miles per hour, so it wasn’t so surprising after all. At that rate of speed, we definitely made up for time we stopped to goof off. I at first thought I hadn’t scaled it correctly, but it turned out about right.

Da group

I’d found out a good amount about the future Warren Highlands route for this one, where to go and where not to go maybe. I’ll probably have to do another version of this through an easier way in the future, but until then I was happy with how things came together.

HAM