Hike #1334; Belfast and Wind Gap Loop

Hike #1334; Belfast and Wind Gap Loop

6/20-6/21/20 Belfast and Wind Gap Loop with Kirk Rohn, Pam Patton, Brittany Audrey, Dr. Michael Krejsa, and Luke Fresolone

This next hike would be a big loop in Northampton County PA, and a variation of a loop hike I had done with Jillane just last year between Belfast and Wind Gap.

Nice swimming hole Pam showed us

I actually came up with the hike with my dad in mind. I wanted him to join us for another hike since he did my anniversary hike in 2019, but then the covid crap hit, and he’s either working or doing something or another.
I ended up going in to work at 6 am on this day, and so I was let out an hour early for that. Since it was the day before Father’s Day, I decided to pay him a visit and brought him a really good Weyerbacher 23 beer from the brewery down the street. I hadn’t had much of it yet, so I figured I’d try some too.

Plainfield Twp Rail Trail

My plan was to hike from the park and ride in Belfast off of Rt 33 by way of back roads over to the old Bangor and Portland Railroad, later a Lackawanna branch, and now the Plainfield Township Rail Trail. We could take that north to Wind Gap, and then trace the Lackawanna Wind Gap Branch west to town, and return mostly via the Lehigh and New England Railroad’s Nazaraeth Branch. I thought it looked like a real winner of a trip, and I liked it the last time I did it, although Jillane didn’t.

I was rather surprised that only Mike, Brittany, Kirk, and Pam showed up at the meeting point. The last Jacobsburg thing I’d posted on a Saturday brought a very large crowd, and this hike was almost entirely different.
No matter, we’d still make the best of it.
I figured the start might be interesting to try to bushwhack directly into the woods from the park and ride and see if we could get over to the activity fields just a bit to the south. I started myself, and soon met a fence.

Plainfield Twp Trail

We started walking to the right on Jacobsburg Road toward town, and there is an abandoned barn off to the right. I figured maybe we could cut through these woods and head out to those same fields.
Well, we made an attempt, and after a little bit we came upon wetlands and horrible brush with no canopy to keep it under control. We ended up backtracking and then cutting to the east through the grass behind a little fast food place called Petey’s Eties. I’d eaten there once before, but this time no one wanted anything.

Plainfield Twp Trail

We turned right to follow Sullivan Trail south through the town of Belfast, and eventually went to the left when we got to Clyde Street. It was sunny and hot, but we pushed on through.
Clyde Street ends at Bangor Road, and we turned briefly left and then right on Gall Road. It was at this point that I fell and cheese grated my leg a couple of years ago, which required me to go on antibiotics. We headed down Gall Road and soon reached the railroad bed across some grass to the right, so we cut over.

Lackawanna Wind Gap Branch

We started walking to the north there, and soon crossed Gall Road.
The Little Bushkill Creek was visible to the right much of the time, and we then crossed Engler Road.
A little ways beyond that, I was talking about how I wanted to take a dip in the stream directly beneath the underpass for Bangor Road/Rt 191. Pam said that she knew a better place she could show us so I was definitely up for that.
As we walked, and just before reaching that 191 crossing, she showed us a little path off into the woods to the right. It led to a nice pool in the river with a rocky shelf.

Lackawanna Wind Gap Branch

We sat in the water here for a while, which was quite relaxing.
The stream comes back together at this point after a split with a little island in the middle that creates the nice stone shelf.
We headed back to the rail bed and continued north, and at Bangor Road, I had a then and now photo I wanted to try to set up.
The problem was, I couldn’t quite match it up. The road looked like the right place, but there were things I believe like old telegraph poles that should have been in the older photo that were not there, so I’m not sure of the exact spot.

Lackawanna Wind Gap Branch

Either way, the shot didn’t come out. When I take photos too fast, they often don’t work or save to my phone. So I missed this one anyway.
The photo showed what was supposedly the original grade crossing on the road, and Rt 191 now crosses on a bridge.
We continued under the bridge, and didn’t stop for a dip since we just did so. The Little Bushkill had crossed under to the other side of the rail grade just before the bridge, and as we headed north, it crossed to the east side again near Jones Hill Road.

Lackawanna Wind Gap Branch

We crossed Getz Road next, and the Little Bushkill crossed again to the west side beyond in a swath of woods. We took another break here, and I laid down in the water to cool off.
The next crossing had a parking area, Merwarth Road. We checked out the kiosk there, which showed a lot of the D&L Trail and its connections.
We crossed Gum Road next, followed by Delabole Road. There was a long stretch of woods ahead from here, and then we crossed Grand Central Road.

Lackawanna Wind Gap Branch

This was the last road crossing we would have before coming out in Wind Gap. The trail went from being a paved or hard surface to a more gravel cinder type of surface, which I much prefer.
The darker woods in this part were cooler and nicer, and the prominence of giant slate piles along the right of way was more obvious. We were really in the slate belt now, with quarries and such all around us. The rail bed goes into former quarry beds and then into what is now I think a landfill, so it is routed to the west.

Lackawanna Wind Gap Branch

At the point of the turn off, it was once the junction where the Lackawanna Railroad’s Wind Gap Branch broke off. I had never tried to follow it direct through from this point, but it’s pretty obvious with railroad ties still in place.
I had been on it with Jillane the previous time, but we went up to the north and wandered through woods to get there.
This time, we would go direct. It was a little weedy, but the understory wasn’t very bad. We were able to just push on through it. An ATV path even joined it for a bit.

DL&W Wind Gap Branch

It was pretty cool to try to follow it. Since the ties were all in place, it was easy to picture rails going right along it.
We made our way further into the woods, and eventually we were parallel with a field to the left. That made the rail bed quite a lot more overgrown. I tried to stay on it as long as I could, but it just got to be too difficult, so we all moved off into the parallel field heading west. When we got to a field opening, there was a lovely old stone farm house in the open area north of the railroad bed, undergoing renovations.

Lackawanna Wind Gap Branch

We continued form the opening directly on the railroad bed again, as it was cleared and being used as sort of an access road and ATV trail. It was clear out to Mack Road.

Lackawanna Wind Gap Branch

The last time, we had followed a driveway to Mack Road from the other direction, which was almost certainly a spur from this out to the slate quarry at the end of it.
It was hard to see where the track bed was supposed to be because it was right under a power line cut.
We turned right on Mack Road briefly and I think Brittany spotted a cemetery to the left side, which I had never seen before, probably because the sign to it was all busted up.

Lackawanna Wind Gap Branch

This was known as Bruch’s Cemetery, and the sign was missing an entire section. It seemed cojoined with the yard to the right, but we walked back into it anyway.

Lackawanna Wind Gap Branch

There were a lot of graves from the 1800s, and I figured we could check out the cemetery and then wander through to the municipal road department land right around the back of it to continue on.
Brittany and I pushed through that, and the others didn’t want to, but soon followed.
The wide open road department land had the typical gravel piles we’d expect to see in a place like this, but also a giant slate quarry I could see from the aerial images. I thought maybe it’d be a good swim spot.

Lackawanna Wind Gap Branch

There wasn’t a good way down to it, but we tried walking around it.
It took us out to a police shotting range along the edge of the quarry, and there was no good way around the other side. We had to backtrack back around, and then saw that there was an old fire truck that belonged to the town of Roseto just growing over with vegetation.
We walked out of the road department area and passed by a new building under construction next to the current fire department. We then turned left on East West Avenue.

Lackawanna Wind Gap Branch

Just ahead, a lot of this road is built over top of the old railroad bed. There is another quarry area to the south of it, and a new development is under construction along that. There’s not much sign of the railroad left any more in this area.
We walked along West Ave, which was recently paved, and had been closed to vehicles the last time I went through. There was no one driving on it this time, so the locals might not realize that it’s open yet either. We then got to the entrance to the new development on the left.

Old stone house

The buildings were framed out and mostly closed in the walls, but the doorways were wide open. We decided we would go over and have a look around.
One of the ones on the left was open enough, and so Kirk, Brittany, and I went in to have a look around. Dr. Mike and Pat continued ahead toward town a bit more.
I found that Mike was actually trying to set up a then and now compilation I had already done a while back, looking up West Avenue to the Lackawanna station.

Lackawanna Wind Gap Branch

I ended up going through all of the rooms and hiding beer bottle caps and such all over the place for fun. I also took photos from all different vantage points at window sites so that maybe in twenty years I could come back and emulate the same photos again. No one really thinks to do that, but maybe someone will if I’m not alive.
We continued out of the building and along West Street a little ways further to a gravel road that goes into the woods to the south. This comes out in a municipal park.

DLW Wind Gap Branch

We reached the Wind Gap Park and walked along the east side of ball fields. Someone was having a huge party in a house on the left, and we talked about how we haven’t randomly been invited to parties on hikes lately.
We continued out of the north side of the park, and then walked down Oak Street to A Street and turned right.
We followed A Street out to Rt 512 in Wind Gap closer to the Rt 33 underpass.
Everyone was getting kind of hungry, and the vote was for Burger King.

Lackawanna Wind Gap Branch

It was a little further away from some of the other establishments, but we went for it anyway. They even let us walk through the drive through, which is something I have been attempting to do at various place for years, never with any kind of success.

DL&W Wind Gap Branch

We pigged out on burgers and jalepeno poppers and such, and just as we were getting ready to leave, Luke ran up and joined us. He had work earlier, so he’d only be able to join for the second half of the hike.
We walked back through the parking areas, and then back out to Rt 512. We crossed, and then passed beneath the underpass for Rt 33, and I stopped and got an Arizona tea at a little convenience store before moving ahead.
Once beyond Rt 33, we turned left through grass of businesses.

Bruch's Cemetery

We went by a bank, and then some sort of big industrial building, and came out on Jacobsburg Road.
We continue on the road for a little bit until we passed another business on the right. At the corner of their property, the fields is the location of the mowed and crushed stone trails of Ballas Park.
I had only hiked this once before when Jillane and I did the variation of this loop. This time, I wanted to try to cover some more of the trails through the thing. I pushed through the weeds and came out in the fields.

In Bruch's Cemetery

It was only a short bit out to the crushed stone path, and everyone followed me through.
This was an amazing spot. The lightning bugs were going crazy during this time.
We reached an open area in a circle near the middle of the park where we just sat down and enjoyed the light show of it all.
From here, we headed south out of the main entrance of the park, and turned right on the very lightly used Kromer Road.
As soon as we got to the crossing of Sober’s Run on the road, we reached the former Nazareth Branch of the Lehigh and New England Railroad.
The Nazareth Branch had been abandoned since the 1930s, and the only reason this bit of it remained somewhat intact is because it was soon after used as a utility clearing. There is a rather old power line the follows the route. I had first tried to walk through on this section back in September of 2005.

Bruch's Cemetery

At the time, it was badly overgrown. I attempted to push through again in Summer of 2009 and it was also a mess. It was developed as a trail south from just west of Wind Gap maybe five or six years ago, and I’ve done several night hikes on it and one day hike.
We walked south on this for another good long stretch until we reached Keller Road, which is at the entrance to Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center. The line has been a trail through there for years.

Bruch's Cemetery

Nothing in any of the park history is written about the Nazareth Branch even passing through, despite its interesting history in the Slate Belt.

Bruch's Cemetery

We continued through the park, and the power line right of way moved slightly uphill, which made the right of way much darker.
We continued on this route across the closed portion of State Park Road, and then on to where the line used to cross the Bushkill Creek. I figured that would be a good spot to take a dip, but I decided to wait instead for a better spot just ahead, where there are much larger cliff walls and probably less chance of anyone around. Brittany was playing her bluetooth music and it was like a dance party.

Abandoned fire truck

We had a nice dip in the creek, and then moved on along the trail, which ascended to the former State Park Road route again, out to Jacobsburg Road.

West St is the former Lackawanna bed here

We turned right across the Bushkill Creek briefly, and then headed directly across at the next intersection on the Homestead Trail, which connects from there over toward the visitor center for the park.
We quietly walked through past the front of the visitor’s center, and then out to the parking lot off of Belfast Road.
We crossed the footbridge over Bushkill Creek, and then followed the Lower Henry’s Woods Trail along the creek heading downstream.

New development

The trail is named for the Henry family who were gun manufacturers in the area starting in the late 1700s, first at the now gone town of Jacobsburg, and then after that in Boulton just a little downstream.
The Lower Henry’s Woods Trail was the last portion of my other recent Jacobsburg hike, always a favorite way to bring the hike to a close, because it’s got these excellent pools of water with stairs down into it. It’s just a relaxing way to bring any hike to a close.

New development

We took one more good dip in the water where the stairs are, and then continued on Henry’s Woods Trail downstream to the Boulton site where we turned to the left.

New construction

The trail crosses over the former raceway that powered the mill at Boulton, and then comes out at another old disused stone building and a parking area. Another trail continues across the lot around the building, and then parallel with Henry Road for a little bit before reaching the Rt 33 underpass.
From there, all we had to do was walk beneath the highway and out into the parking lot to finish up the hike.
I drove Luke back up to Wind Gap to his car, and somehow we were still both wide awake for work the next day.

Framework of fun

I can definitely get one or two more hikes out of the Jacobsburg area without repeating really any of the same stuff again, but like the others like that, I will probably hold off and do them next year, or keep them on hold in case we have any other pandemic garbage and I need some sort of close easy hike on deck.

HAM