Hike #886; New Village to Phillipsburg

Hike #886; New Village to Phillipsburg

10/15/15 New Village to Lopatcong/Phillipsburg with Jessica M. Collins, Jennifer Berndt, James Quinn, and Alicia Micula.

Group shot with the James phone camera

Our next hike would be the first night hike in a while, something I’d been meaning to get back to more regularly, and on the routes that I’m planning for the Warren Highlands Trail.
What’s happened over the past year was a change in direction for the trail, at least in the opinions of those doing all of the work on it.
It was discovered that the route of the trail from Merril Creek Reservoir to the Van Nest-Hoff-Vanetta farmstead was superior to the long road walk from there to Washington, and although routing the trail there adds mileage to it, it much improves the trail. My concept was that the trail reaches the historic farmstead, turns right on Rt 519, then comes back up hill over Scotts Mountain and Ragged Ridge, a route I’d not yet scouted completely. I had found some trails that seemed to go through, but further exploration was needed.
We met on Charles Street in Phillipsburg, then shuttled in James’ car to on street parking near the fire house in New Village, off Rt 57. James had just gone to Taco Bell and gave me a taco as well as some absolutely amazing pastry balls I’d never tried.

We started walking the back streets out to Rt 57, then we turned right on Montana Road heading toward Merril Creek Reservoir.

There are a ton of woods roads through Merril Creek lands and other adjacent lands I had explored with my grandfather years ago, but I’d never tried to go back to them on any of my regular hikes, so this was one of the first things I wanted to see: how could the trail system there potentially link into others such as the Morris Canal.
We walked Montana Road to the Merril Creek access road, then turned left onto it to begin ascending the mountain.
The woods road went up, but then cut hard to the left. When he contined to the left, I wanted to go straight. There was another woods road that went that way too, so it didn’t look like it’d be too bad.
It was bad. At first it was doable, but then it got pretty tough. We walked the clearing as best we could, but the path petered out at the west end of an overgrown field. We bullied through the field, and on the other side we tried to go off into the woods and head direct up hill. The thorns were too bad, and I had to come back down. It was disappointing because were were again close to and parallel with Montana Road. I wanted to continue to the small dike near the main dam at Merrill Creek.

Weird bent tree

We continued through the woods parallel with Montana Road, and after some crappy bushwhacking I found a sort of deer path that was acceptable, at least when compared with the other crap we had been walking through. This path turned hard to the left, so I continued following it and told the others to stay back behind me so we didn’t all end up fighting through a mess like we’d already done.
I continued walking up on a poor path toward a creek outlet from the reservoir. I could see on aerial images that there was some sort of clearing along it. It started looking a little bit better, so I told the others to come and join me. When they got close, I made my way further up stream, parallel with the water. Things were still looking bad until I came upon a random abandoned foot bridge. I remembered back when I was little, when there was not yet a perimeter trail at Merrill Creek. They opened it, then abruptly closed it for a time. I figure this trail might have been the route further around the outside, used when that was closed. To the left though, there was an open and mowed off trail that reached some sort of vertical pipe that must still be used for something. The trail on the other side of the foot bride was badly grown in.
Up from the foot bridge, there was a weird bent tree. Like many of them I’ve been looking at lately, I wondered if it could have been an Indian bent tree. It was an older one than the rest of the woods around us. I suppose it was possible, but just not sure.
We turned left to follow the mowed off trail with hopes that it would take us up to the reservoir.

Discovered a path...

The path led along the slope and abruptly turned up hill. To my surprise, another spur of the path, also mowed, continued further down hill, but we missed connecting with it. Further on, another spur went to the left. I wondered if this was connected with the original woods road we had turned off of. It probably was. I probably could have followed it and it’d have been so much easier. Perhaps I’ll scout it out one day. For now, I was just happy to be getting out of there.

Merrill Creek Reservoir

It was obvious that this woods road was used by the people at Merrill Creek for something, whatever those vertical pipes were. At least some of this would work out as an official trail if we could ever get plans off the ground for it. One thing at a time.

Merrill Creek sunset shot by James

The trail came out at a nice wide mowed area along the Perimeter Trail near the first dike, east of the main dam. There were no signs saying not to use this as a trail, so we can only assume that it’s now an official route. We turned right on Perimeter Trail and headed around the reservoir’s edge. We crossed the dike, then reached the boat launch area after passing a section of woods. There were a lot of other people walking the trail up there. Jen was working on meeting up with us, but my debacle with the weeds had set me behind my expected schedule, so I was going over the maps trying to figure out how she could best meet up.

Orchard Trail

We passed by the boat launch area, crossing the parking lot and the foot bridge, then heading up steps toward the main lot. Before getting there, we turned right on the Orchard Trail, which follows a side hill and out to some old pastures, passing through old stone walls. I’d used this on hikes before, but the route has two edges of a loop. I always took everyone on the longer one to the right, so this time I decided I’d take everyone the other way. There is an impressive stone wall section there. We followed Orchard Trail to the Merrill Creek access road, crossed, and continued on the Eagle Trail, the only handicapped accessible trail in the park. This took us to the former Beers Farm ruins. The trail meandered a bit from there more than I remembered it did, and it was among the rockiest sections in the preserve.

Merrill Creek

We descended a bit until we reached Merrill Creek itself, and we turned right on Creek Trail. This trail is the most secluded of the official trails in the park, and therefore one of my favorites. The sections along the creek itself are just outstandingly beautiful. It was my intention originally to route the Warren Highlands Trail along this trail to the Richline Pond Trail, but when the Van Nest-Hoff-Vanetta option came up I decided that route would be far better. The previous route could be used as an alternative one day.

Richline Pond Trail crossing Merrill Creek

Richline Pond Trail broke off from Creek Trail to the left. We followed it through woods and across Merril Creek, then along some well constructed puncheons to Richline Pond. It wasn’t as nice as I’d remembered it being. It’s really starting to grow in a lot. Now, the trail was cut out to the intersections of Fox Farm Road, Richline Road, and Allens Mills Road. This too was the anticipated Warren Highlands Trail route, originally.
We continued from here not along the planned route on the road, but left on Fox Farm Road. We had to walk up hill a bit to find a route down to state park lands. This was not really scouting for a new trail, but for myself so I can organize hikes through there in the future.
I watched the GPS on my phone to get to where Fox Farm Road was parallel with the state park land off of Harmony Brass Castle Road so we could bushwhack down toward it. I knew this would be a tough section, and we were running out of daylight. I was getting a bit nervous about that. I had Jen park on Ridge Road, and told her to walk west on that, then south on Swamp Road, then east on Harmony-Brass Castle Road to find us. She’d be waiting far too long for us otherwise.
When I got to where I knew we were on about the same longitude as the state park lands, I looked to cut into the woods. Just then, as if by some miracle, there was a path into the woods. This was a woods road when we followed it in, and it was perfect. The woods road was clear enough and we were able to follow it with relative ease all the way down Scotts Mountain. When we got to near the bottom, it turned right and probably leaves Merrill Creek lands. We turned off the road at an area of a dry wash, which went to a somewhat soggy meadow. We continued to walk using my aerial images and GPS on my phone to reach a lovely little pond on state park land. Boundary signs confirmed that this was public land.

Hidden pond on state park land

The pond was quite lovely. I was sort of surprised it was there, and that it was so nice. I did not notice that it was there on aerial images immediately. A path went around the berm of the pond making it pretty easy to get to the other side. We then cut over to the creek and followed it shortly before turning and finding a good safe place to cross without getting soaked.

Hidden pond on state park land

Once we got to the other side of the creek, we happened upon yet another old farm pond that I was not expecting to find. This pond was more in an open meadow type of area, but people go around it because we could tell by the vegetation that was sort of worn down.
We had to cut to the north from here along state land in order to get out to Harmony Brass Castle Road. I nearly fell out of the woods on that final bullying through weeds, and I looked up to see a hunter in his deer stand. Slightly shocked, I said “Hello! Sorry to stumble out there so fast...how’s it going?”. The guy responded “It WAS going good...not any more” or something like that. I got out of there rather quickly and we made our way out to the road. Jen wasn’t there yet, and I didn’t want to stay around with the disgruntled hunter, so we all walked Harmony Brass Castle Road for just a little bit to meet up with Jen. After she joined, we walked back to where we came out of the woods, then headed up hill on the other side of the road.
The other side of the road, also state park land, is where I’d installed a new gate with Darryl Schmidt at work recently. There is an old road parallel with the present alignment of Harmony Brass Castle Road, and it’s probably the original alignment.
When we got up hill next to the old road bed, there was a rounded stonework area which appeared to be an old well base, now mostly destroyed. I had not noticed that before. We reached the road and turned right, then got to the gate on the other woods road that goes left up hill, to the north climbing Ragged Ridge.
Ragged Ridge is one of the most prominent features on the future Warren Highlands Trail. The ridge is great, like another Jenny Jump, but hardly anyone other than locals know it is there. I knew there were supposed to be views of the Delaware Water Gap, but I had not been to the part of it where we could see it, except for the section further on down Ridge Road by the Merrill Creek pipeline.
We followed the old woods road up hill, which turned hard to the right. We had to climb over several dead fallen trees. It wasn’t too easy, but when we reached the peak of the hill, there was an intersection of ATV trails and some seasonal view to the north. I had to wait for everyone to catch up, and then decide if it was smartest to turn to the left, heading east and down the hill to uncertain paths, or if I should continue up hill a bit more on another ATV path heading west. I decided that the choice would depend on where we were on GPS from where we needed to come out on Ridge Road.
When I looked at the route, we still had to go to the west a bit, so up we went on the ridge a bit more. What we found was for me the highlight of this entire hike and one of the highlights of all night hikes I’d done in the entire region.

View of Delaware Water Gap and Martins Creek PPL from Ragged Ridge.

This was the very top of Ragged Ridge. I knew the ridge had views, but these were the best I’d ever seen. There was a good sunset, and there was a fantastic view of Delaware Water Gap with the Martins Creek PP&L Plant in the foreground. It was a view of the gap I’d never seen before. I had forgotten my regular camera, and so James’s phone camera was the only thing that would get a good photo from the top, seen here.

Ragged Ridge sunset photo by James

I couldn’t believe how great this was. It was like another Jenny Jump Mountain, only no one except locals know about it. There was no question that this MUST be the Warren Highlands Trail. As we walked on, there was no ATV path, but rather a sort of built hiking trial along th eridge. People must have been using this a hundred years ago regularly. The foot path made it’s way along the rocks and such, and even though it was getting dark I could still see where the obvious good places were to step.
When we got to beyond the rock outcroppings, we had to head down hill. This would be a tough part. There was not a good way we could find. We’d have to go down randomly on the slope. I led the way and we carefully slid down those slopes on angles. It wasn’t much fun. The woods were larger and the forest floor sparsely vegetated so it was at first easy to walk in that regard, but then it gave way to a woods of young birches that were growing in very thick. Once we got down hill through this we hit the old woods road I had scouted in the weeks before.
We turned left on the woods road, then reached a switchback. We turned right heading further down hill, then went straight a bit to hit an intersection with another woods road. This one was like an ATV superhighway. It led left and right. We continued straight here on the woods road to the north, which headed gradually down hill and over a small stream where Darryl Schmidt and I had put in another state park gate.
This was a weird spot, because within a week of erecting the gate, someone had come by and defecated, then took the toilet paper and smeared their feces all over the sign that read “no motor vehicles allowed”. They also smeared it all over the chain that opens the gate, where the lock would go. People are just disgusting. We continued past here, and past Jen’s car.
Rather than continue across the road and scout questionable woods along the fields heading north, we decided to save that for another day, and change the route of the hike to go left on Ridge Road, then on the future Warren Highlands Trail down to Van Nest-Hoff-Vanetta.
The Ridge Road section is little used and was very easy to walk, but when we got to the next near parking lot area, we cut down hill where I’d like to put the new trail in, and it just got too weedy to walk. We had to come back up, walk Ridge Road further to the west, then turn right onto the woods road that leads down to the pipeline right of way from Merrill Creek. At first, I could not find the woods road. We cut in at the wrong spot and headed down hill through random woods until we hit it. Then, when we hit the pipeline, it was pretty overgrown. Usually, it’d been plowed down pretty well, but no more. We had to bully through some awful stuff in order to head down hill. When the trail is in place, hopefully we’ll be able to keep it beat down, or perhaps we can reach out to the people at Hoff Vanetta about keeping it mowed if it’s not too much a burden.
When we got near the bottom, rather than cut over to Hoff Vanetta, we continued along corn fields straight. Rather than get too close to the houses, we cut into the corn several rows, and followed a good row north, out to Rt 519. When the direction of the corn changed, we would have to fight through to make sure we were still going north.
519 sneaked up on us fast. We could hear it clearly for a while, but not see it. We just all of a sudden were out of the corn and to the road. We bullied through the last stretch of weeds, then turned left on the road.
There are countless pleasant back roads throughout the tri county area that are worth walking, and lend themselves perfectly to night hikes. Matt Davis and I drove around on them one time recently and I remember saying “I have to use this one!”. So this time, I planned to close out the hike using clear routes and the back roads that’d be easy for us to walk. The first of these after Rt 519 would be Harmony Station Road, one of the ones we were on.
We made the right turn, and the road was very very pleasant. It was a nice and relaxing walk on the cool night heading to the west. Harmony Station Road has a couple of ninety degree bends so traffic doesn’t go too fast, when we see any of it at all. My plan was to follow this road to a left on Buttonwood Lane.
We made that left turn, and this road was even less used. While walking it, there was a fenced in area of horses.

Friggin horses

Whatever it was about these horses, in the dark they looked ugly as sin. They were friendly I guess, or at least hungry because they came over to greet us, but they just looked like hideous demons in the dark!
We kept walking down Buttonwood and all of a sudden came to the end of the road! Google showed that this was a through public road, but it was some sort of a cul de sac! We were getting so close to the end, and this happened. It would be a very long way around if we went back. The actual “road” route was a gated farm lane to the left of the end of the road, which went through an active farm, then became a regular road again. I wasn’t sure if we could walk through, but I am assuming not. I didn’t even want to try. All we could do is turn around, or try to bushwhack a bit to the other side.
Looking at the google images and our location, it was a tiny distance to the other side of the road, and a lane that breaks off of the main road to the west. If we could head down hill and cross a small stream, we could reach the driveway known as Sloan Lane. I figured this was best. We cut directly into the weeds, and headed down hill, which wasn’t too tough, to the stream bed. It was totally dry, so crossing was not a problem. Only tough part was getting up the other side after the initial descent. I fell into the slope where it dropped down, but after that no one else would because they saw my folly.
Somehow, after going up the other side, we descended to cross yet another stream. My GPS was showing like I should turn into it to follow it up stream, then go up to Sloan Lane. It was all sorts of screwy, because we ended up in the fields to the west of Buttonwood where we first entered the woods!
We headed back to the end of the road again, and I tried to figure out what happened. I wondered if the GPS messed up because of the iron content in the ground, or what. It just made no sense. I was following where it was supposed to go. We walked left and tried to follow the closed portion of the road for a bit, but it just wasn’t looking like it’d work out right. I didn’t want to walk late at night out of the dark through someone’s yard and across their front steps if we could avoid it. I decided we needed to go down and cross the stream once more, and just continue straight rather than try to follow the GPS. This would work out fine because the distance was so short. I headed down first, and the rest of the group was apprehensive to follow at first. They were soon behind me, and before I knew it, we had crossed the creek, climbed the other side, and ended up on Sloan Lane. We turned left on this, came out to the other side of Buttonwood, and turned right to Marble Hill Road. I was so glad this portion was over.
We followed Marble Hill road down hill to the natural resource area, where we entered the parking area and turned right on the Yellow Trail. It was tough to see where we should be at first, because it’s up a weird slope. We ended up off the trail at first, but as soon as we got on it we had no problem. It took us out along the slope, then gradually up hill toward the top. We turned left on the Connector Trail, blazed yellow with red dots in the middle, and followed it to Warren Highlands Trail. The WH Trail took us to the red blazed Lopatcong Connector Trail and we followed that up hill.
There were a lot of trees down on the Yellow Trail and on the Lopatcong connector I want to get cleared, but I don’t own my own chain saw and there’s a ton to get done. Since the last time I was up, the work on the new Phillipsburg High School had progressed incredibly. The building framework was all completely up and most walls all were in place. Lights were on, it was just amazing. I wish I’d gone over to have a look at it earlier. Maybe I should plan another where we go over there and look around.
There is just so much to do. As we came out to Lopatcong Park, the lights of the town were shone everywhere. It was beautiful. We were about done, so there was the comfort in knowing that, combined with the beauty of the vista that made for an awesome feeling. We had discovered what could be a solid future trail route. This is kind of a landmark that will seem more important as time goes by.
We walked back out to Belvidere Road and to Charles Street to conclude the hike. On the way driving to the cars, I hit a deer, for the third time in my life only. I suppose with all successes there will be hiccups. The deer got up and ran off, and I got away with only a broken license plate cover.
In the days following this hike, I officially opened new sections of Warren Highlands Trail above Harkers Hollow Golf Course, a long coming thing. We are ready to steamroll ahead with huge improvements.