Hike #828; Pochuck Mountain to Hamburg

Hike #828; Pochuck Mountain to Hamburg

2/16/15 Pochuck Mountain to Hamburg with Gregg Hudis, Jen Berndt, and Jon Wilson.

The group on the south side of Pochuck

Our next hike was a good filling harkening back to some of the earlier series' of things we had done, filling in some blanks that I'd long wanted to go back and explore, but it would also prove to be far more difficult than anticipated.

There were two components of this hike I really wanted to check out; first, the former Lehigh and Hudson River Railroad. The rail line was built in 1886 to connect Belvidere NJ with Maybrook NY. It had trackage rights to get it to Bethlehem PA, and made up a major part of the northeast corridor before the burning of the railroad bridge at Poughkeepsie (now walkway over the Hudson). After being taken over by Conrail, the line was abandoned from Belvidere to Sparta in 1986. I remember the tracks still being in place. Today, the line is a segmented trail across Warren and part of Sussex Counties. In the earliest informal days of Metrotrails, when all of the hikes were ending at my home in Port Colden, we followed the rail and trail infrastructure ending at that point. Several hikes included the former L&HR corridor. We continued to trace it's route on other hikes until we eventually had covered it's trackage rights section to the Lehigh Valley, and we went north on it as far as Hamburg. Other interests came up, and I never got around to walking the active tracks north from Hamburg. I figured we'd through it on the schedule when there were snowy conditions because it's still pretty easy to walk tracks at those times (usually).

The other thing I had wanted to see was the southern tier of the Pochuck Mountain. The Appalachian Trail crosses Pochuck Mountain, and I'd covered that section several years ago. I found out later that the Janet Van Gelder Wildlife Sanctuary of the Audobon Society had land on the south side, and so i wanted to see this as well as other land just to the north of it, connecting with the AT.

For this, a Monday hike, I figured it would be an appropriate one to put up. We had a good amount of snow on the ground, and the only ones interested in joining us (or available to join) were Gregg, Jen, and Jon. It was also a brutally cold day.

We met in the morning at the Shop Rite in Newton where we could get some food and drinks. I got a breakfast sandwich from the Shop Rite and right out asked the clerk if the sandwiches sucked. Of course he said "no". They actually did suck. It was one of the suckiest breakfast sandwiches ever. I will likely never purchase a Shop Rite breakfast sandwich again. It was absolutely revolting and was probably under the heat lamp for eons.

The four of us actually fit into Gregg's car, so we only needed the one to shuttle. Others who had signed up didn't show.

We shuttled north to a small chool on McAfee-Glenwood Road to begin the hike. There was a great deal of snow on the ground, more than I had anticipated there would be. We began to walk the road south a bit, then turned right on Fox Croft Drive. This road had not seen a single plow. Barely any tire tracks were visible on it's route. We turned right on the more used and cared for Basswood Drive to Black Walnut Mountain Road. To the right, this road was cared for, but to the left it had not seen a single vehicle since the start of the snows, let alone a plow. It was plowed onto to a certain point on the other side, then let go. We made our way along this crazy road to the plowed area, then continued southwest.

We reached Drew Mountain Road and turned right, heading up hill onto a cleft in the Pochuck Mountain. This was plowed, but the ascent was sort of tough. We got to a driveway where a lady was cleaning off her car ready to head out somewhere. The snow was pretty fresh, which made it harder to walk in. None was solid. To the right of the lady's driveway was an old woods road descending further into the saddle in the Pochuck Mountain (I guess the section we were on was Drew Mountain). There was one battered tyvek state park sign on a tree by the road. I asked the lady what she knew about it, and she basically didn't know about anything. We opted to try to follow this route, although it was not shown as the official start of the trail I was looking for for the Janet Van Gelder Wildlife Sanctuary.

We got to the bottom of the hill on the old road, after a rough trudge through the snow, and found a former pond with a purged dam. There was a woods road at the bottom that crossed over the outlet of the former body of water down from the dam. We crossed here and reached another woods road at the base of this section of Pochuck Mountain. There was no trail to speak of in this area heading to the top. I was hoping to find something, maybe one of those metal Audubon Society blazes, but nothing. Now, looking at the map, I can see nothing is blazed at the base.

My boots, steel toed things that I have for work, already were getting snow in them. I figured we needed to get to the official trails that might be beaten down or this could be awful. I started scaling the mountain right there, heading up steeply. It was very difficult, and I worked up a really good sweat on the climb. I'd worn lots of layers, which I was glad for, but at this point it was difficult.

I stopped briefly near to the top to let the others catch up, and then finished the climb to the knob with views across the clove to the other side with homes and such, and a great view further down the Vernon Valley toward Hamburg. There was also a good view of Wawayanda Mountain where the ski slopes head down at the Mountain Creek area.

View of Vernon Valley from Janet Van Gelder Sanctuary

We took a little break here, and then moved on looking for this official trail, known as Summit Trail. I soon found it, but it was quite a disappointment. No one had used it at all. When we were climbing the cliff, I found some vague old foot prints in the snow, which I tried to use because they had been packed down a bit more and were easier to step on. This snow was tough because we would go through the first layer, then down through a second one. My boots didn't lace up tightly enough, and so tons of snow kept getting in around my ankles. I tried to keep dumping it out, or otherwise removing it with my fingers and keeping on moving, but it was getting worse.

We tried walking Summit Trail for a bit, but it was heading back down hill a bit. I didn't want to follow a circuitous path up and down, especially since no one had broken trail yet, so we kept up to the top of the ridge and moved onward. The drifts sometimes became very deep. I had thought it would be packed and much easier than this. We had continuous views to the east as we walked, and could even see Gregg's car at the school as we went back by that point. My feet kept getting colder, and I was getting very frustrated. Fortunately, we came to the trail eventually, which was beaten down pretty good. We were able to head further to the north with greater ease.

The easier trail lasted only long enough for me to warm my feet up. The official trail turned off to the right, while the beaten down one went off to private property. It looked on aerial images like we were getting much closer to Lounsberry Hollow Road, so we pushed on. The trail zig zagged on top of the ridge for a bit, but then descended to the right a bit. I looked at the aerials and could see that this was not at all a straight route, and we needed to get off of this mountain. We'd been going for a long time and were not covering much distance. My feet were freezing cold. I opted to get off of the trail again and just stay no the ridge top toward Lounsberry Hollow Road at the entrance to the preserve.

We wandered along and came to a section of the mountain with some rock outcroppings. We kept to the left of them, as that would lead toward a sharp bend in the road that was closest to us. We then hit an old woods road and followed it briefly to the right, to a large clearing. The snow was shallow here, so we took a break and I paced around letting my feet warm back up a bit. I think the others emptied theirs out altogether. I was still cold and pacing around wasn't going to do much good. The clearing might have been a frozen vernal pool or something. We started moving on, and the woods road didn't continue. There were marks on some of the trees, and some of them cut, probably some sort of forestry management area.

My frustration was getting worse; the snow kept getting in my shoes and my feet already  hurt terribly. I actually got to the point where I wanted to scream out I was so frustrated. I took one shoe off at a time, trying to remove the snow and ice which had already hardened into the cloth in the inside of my shoes. I had to carefully pick it out and then get the shoe back on. I couldn't feel my feet enough to know if I was putting them on right. The shoes were wet and they were not easily sliding back on, and if I untied them my hands would not function well enough to get them tied again.

As we walked, we eventually came to the metal marked Summit Trail again, making it's way down from over the rocks to our right. I was very glad we didn't attempt this in the snow. We turned left to follow the trail down hill, and some buildings were starting to come into view. More and more snow entered my shoes and it had become quite painful. Then, the trail turned off to the left, back to the south. This was not the direction of the road, and not the direction I was going to take. Jon was right behind me at this point and the others were much further behind. I turned off to the right, to make a bee line toward Lounsberry Hollow Road. Jon pointed out that I'd lost the trail, but I didn't care. I needed to get out. At this point I'd lost all feeling in my right foot, and in my toes in my left foot. If we had kept with this much longer we'd be losing toes. I hurried out and came out at the top of someone's private driveway, then hurried down to the road where I paced and stomped my feet.

For the last time, I took the shoes off and emptied out snow and ice, and with difficulty put them back on. No feeling was coming back to my right foot, or my left toes. People in the house where I'd descended looked down at me tramping around, but didn't say anything. They were getting ready to go somewhere, and a patriarch had headed out to start his car when he saw me. The other three came off of the property and down the same driveway soon behind me, and I continued pacing.

Once everyone was a bit more comfortable again, we turned right down the road heading east. I wasn't going to chance trying to go through any more off trail woods stuff on this hike. This was far far too difficult. I continued to stomp down the road, and feeling was coming back to my left toes because they hurt, but no feeling back in my right foot.

Loundsberry Hollow Road is the old route of the Appalachian Trail. Before the section over Pochuck Mountain was cleared, and when this road was dirt, it was the AT. We took the route down hill and turned left on Rt 517, McAfee Glenwood Road heading north. We passed Vernon Valley Lake with a nice view of part of Pochuck Mountain, and eventually reached the crossing of the Appalachian Trail at the Pochuck Quagmire.

I'd never done this swamp section in the winter time, and the trail was worn down so nice that it was quite easy. Pochuck Quagmire is a very popular spot because the AT follows predominantly boardwalks for quite a while, with some outstanding views across to Wawayanda Mountain beyond. We made up a lot of time moving quickly along the boardwalks.

Pochuck Quagmire

The sun was shining nicely and so it seemed much warmer. The feeling had come back rather quickly to the toes in my left foot, but my right foot took a bit longer. By the time we got across the main boardwalks and Pochuck Creek bridge, feeling had come back entirely. It was a huge relief for me, but not the end of the frustration.

We went over the knoll in the east side of the swamp, then descended to cross Lover's Bridge, and then to Canal Road section where we crossed another creek. From here, the AT goes across a narrow little board walk section. The trail was beaten down enough, but there were major drifts that closed it off. It was impossible to see exactly where these double wide plank bridge pieces were, and so we'd slip off and possibly fall. Gregg took a pretty good plunge off of one of these.

AT heading toward Wawayanda Mountain

We passed a couple of stiles over fences where farm animals were seasonally kept, and then reached the Lehigh and Hudson River Railroad, now operated by the modern New York, Susquehanna, and Western Railroad. I'd already hiked this section several times before on the AT, but I had not done the LHR south. I was excited to finally fill in this missing gap on the old line with the rest that I'd done.

We headed southward on it and crossed Pochuck Creek on a concrete bridge.

Old mile marker for between Belvidere and Maybrook

It didn't take long before we reached one of the old concrete mile markers I'd come to know on the line with the familar "BD" for Belvidere, and "MB" for Maybrook. It read that we were 46 miles from Belvidere, and only 26 from Maybrook. It was nice to think there are only 26 miles of this line I had never hiked now. I could finish that off rather easily, and I'll have to make a point to do it in the near future. We passed other older rail remnants including the base to signal towers near crossings, and old whistle markers where engineers were signaled to sound before coming to a grade crossing. We crossed Maple Grange Road, which I believe is the former AT route before Pochuck Quagmire was completed.

LHR line and Wawayanda Mountain

At first, my theory held true in that it was very easy to walk along the tracks. Snowmobiles had obviously been using it because right between the two rails it was hard packed enough that we could just walk on top. We made better time just walking along the tracks for a while. It was really nice, and we had some great views of the wetlands and winding streams, tributaries to the Pochuck and Black Creeks to the right, and sweeping views of the Wawayanda Mountain to the left.

The joy of this didn't last long, ad the snowmobiles had been turning off and the nothing was hard packed after one of the roads. We'd just go through the ice and it was taxing on the muscles. Jon and I took up the lead and tried to figure out a strategy on how to walk without pain. We figured out via trial and error that if we walked along the rails themselves, with one foot on, the other partially on, we would bust through and could make good time. It just took a little concentration and getting used to. Also, initially with wet shoes we did not get traction on the rails. It took several steps using this strategy before we could really make any distance at all.

Jen and Gregg were having a really hard time, and Jon and I ended up getting far ahead. They had just about had it and wanted to cut out.

We reached Vernon Crossing Road, with some ruins directly across to the left. I looked to my left, shocked, that the beautiful old Vernon Station was still standing.

Vernon Station; 1963

Not only was the structure standing, it was in good condition and now used as a deli. We were getting very hungry, and so this could not have come at a better time. Jon and I hurried in for food and snacks. It was really neat that the inside of the station with it's deli counter still had the railroad type wooden paneled walls.

Vernon Station; 1973

The architecture of the station I found very surprising. It was the same in style as that of the Great Meadows station in my home of Warren County, with it's interesting roof style. I had no idea any other stations were built with similar construction, let alone any were still standing. This made it even more interesting to me.

Vernon Station; 2015

I ordered an Italian sandwich and some junk food at the place, and Jen and Gregg showed up. They had a good break, and they agreed after a bit of time to try to go on a bit further despite the pain, cold, and frustration of the route. I was still entirely distracted by the mere existence of the beautiful station. I told the proprietors of the place that we were doing this long distance hike, and I talked about the railroad a bit. The lady in charge disappeared around a corner to their back room and emerged with a spiral bound book, "Tracking Down the Lehigh and Hudson". I'd never seen this book before and needed to have a closer look.

Paul Miller's "Tracking Down the Lehigh and Hudson"

I immediately recognized the author's name: Paul Miller. I'd never met Paul before, but I frequently post Metrotrails hikes on abandoned rail lines on facebook forums where Paul is active, and so we've communicated a lot and became friends on Facebook. The other authors below his main bi line also were familiar to me through these forums; Marty Feldner, Tom Callan, Dave Rutan, and others. I flipped through the book and knew I wanted a copy. I contacted Paul about it when I got home, and I am planning on picking one up from him. I also will be able to help fill in the blanks with some information (for example, the brook in Belvidere was not mentioned in name, 'Pophandusing', I love helping consult regarding little known local interest items).

The book was incredibly well laid out with lots of photos. It is the kind of thing Matt Davis and I want to do in the future with our productions.

While sifting through, a guy we met came up to us and asked "Were you the same people I saw heading up Drew Mountain earlier today??? NOBODY goes up there! I've never seen anybody go up that!". Certainly no one was out on this day. We didn't pass other walkers or anything. We were the only crazies out.

I ate a delicious sandwich, and we were ready to be on our way. After showing Jen and Gregg how we went about walking, they had an easier time. The only parts that were a little tougher to deal with were the little tie bridges, which were quite slippery. one of them in particular I stepped onto too early and fell through, whacking my knee and shin.

We had a long stretch before crossing Sand Hill Road, with more open wetland meadows and mountain views. Often we were close to Black Creek and it's tributaries. When we crossed Sand Hill Road, we started to parallel golf courses. To the left, I noticed what appeared to be another rail bed breaking off. I watched it as we walked, and sure enough it led to some concrete ruins of what must have been a coal trestle, now incorporated into the obstacles of Great Gorge Country Club.

LHR tracks in Vernon Valley NJ

The section along the golf course became much more pleasant because it was again used by a snowmobile. The tracks had a well beaten down treadway between the rails again. We started making better time.

Although my feet were now warm (though still wet), my left knee was now giving me a lot of trouble. The pain was getting to be pretty bad, which must have been from walking on it funny for so long. I muscled on through it, and the easier walking came at the right time. There were lovely views still of the wetlands and mountains, but the ski slopes appeared on them to the left. I had to stop for a few moments to watch the skiers from a distance sliding down the mountains. It looked really interesting from that far away.

We crossed McAfee Vernon Road, where another spur used to go to a quarry to the right of us, then Old Rudetown Road. The walking remained easy passing Cascades Golf Course, but when we reached an access road called Van Decker Road, the packed down snow mobile route left the tracks and we again had to do some trudging. It was getting painful again, and we didn't have so much daylight remaining. We also did more mileage than I had anticipated doing. We were all quite tired by this point.

We pushed onward, with some apartments on the left above us. The railroad was on a sort of shelf above Wild Turkey Golf Course after we passed beneath a more modern concrete overpass carrying Wild Turkey Way. Frustration started setting in a bit, although it was beautiful out. The fatigue was getting to my head, and I'm sure everyone else as well. The tracks continued parallel with some light residential area, and it became a former double track. It didn't take that long until we reached the Rt 23 overpass.

Our friend Shelly Janes lives nearby in Ogdensburg, and she had told me via text message earlier that if we needed a ride that she'd be willing to pick us up. We'd done 16.5 miles at this point, and I saw no need to continue on. The bridge over Rt 23 was where I'd left off on the last hike I'd done on the Lehigh and Hudson back in 2004. I had accomplished my goal.

We climbed down the steep embankment to an elevated walkway along Rt 23, which has a tunnel through to the other side parallel with the roadway. We crossed the highway to a strip mall on the other side. None of us were really hungry, just incredibly tired. Shelly showed up to our rescue after a short while, and we all fit into her car. It would have been over three more miles probably on the roads if she hadn't come to our aid.

Rt 23 overpass photo I took in 2004, as sort of a hopeful look at what I had to do next. It took over a decade to return to this spot on a hike.

It's strange to think I waited an entire decade to try to walk any more of this section. I'd had a variation of this hike scaled off for at least that amount of time, when I carried all of my files in a briefcase to A&P to go over on my breaks. It wasn't the most amazing or special hike, but it's been filed away, mapped out and ready for so long both physically and in the back of my mind. A concept fermenting with wonder that even the most mundane aspects of it were amazing to me. No one else could understand what covering this ground means to me.

L&HR Map

It's possible that it may be another ten years before I return to finish the last 25 miles, but hopefully not. It's just one of another series of initiatives that fill my mind, and there is sadly not enough time in one life time to see it all.