Hike #1340; Chester to Long Valley
7/16-7/17/20 Chester to Long Valley with Professor John DiFiore, Jennifer Tull, Jim “Mr. Buckett” Mathews, Heshi ?, Carolyn Gockel Gordon, Kirk Rohn, Chris Kroschinski (Cupcake), Brittany Audrey, Gloria Maynard, Justin Gurbisz, Ken Zaruni, ?, and Luke Fresolone
This next one was a point to point between Chester and Long Valley, which I had planned over a year ago but ended up doing differently at that time.
Along Black River
I’m always trying to add new stuff to each hike, whether it’s a day hike or a night hike, and of course all of the Summer ones have to have swim spots.
There are a few places I try to hit once a year with great spots including Hacklebarney and the Kay Pool in Black River County Park. It gets a little more complicated trying to figure out how to put together something new while still hitting some of these spots.
It ended up being somewhat easy with the road walks. I’d been wanting to walk some of these back roads for a long while, and this was a good opportunity to put it together.
Hacklebarney Mine Railroad bed
Usually, I end up meeting in Long Valley at the Krauszer’s food and liquor store, but this time I wanted to add the swim spot that I like down off of the Gillette Trail in to the end of it again, so I made the end point the brew pub that is located at the old stage coach stop in the middle of Long Valley. We could park in the back lot to the place, and then we’d weave down and back at the end, which is a little extra and slightly out of the way, but well worth it for the swim. I would use the Chester Hill Mall for the start point, which we’ve done a lot.
Hacklebarney Mine Railroad bed
I keep forgetting when I plan hikes down in this area that Route 513 is closed or bridge work just a little east of High Bridge, so it takes me a bit longer, but I got through.
I managed to have enough time to go to the liquor store in the Kruaszers before meeting for the hike, and got myself some Weyerbacher Blithering Idiot.
From there, I headed up to the parking area to get the group together.
This was also a special occasion because it would be the first time Mr. Buckett joined us for one of the regular night hikes. It’s rare that someone who’s been coming out for so many years has never done one of the night hikes yet.
Hacklebarney Mine Railroad bed
I was surprised also to have three newcomers on this one. We’ve been in sort of a lull since the start of the covid scare, and not many newcomers have been showing up, but this was sort of a reminder that things are getting back to normal.
Cupcake did wear a mask pretty much the entire hike, which I was surprised about. No one has been wearing them much at all I’ve found, except for in group photos, and even then it’s more so because they don’t want to get shamed by their families for being out without one.
Once everyone had arrived, we shuttled with as few cars as we could to chester, at Chester Hill Mall.
The mall parking lot used to be some of the rail yard for the Central Railroad of New Jersey. The branch from the Chester Furnace up to town was called the Chester Hill Branch, and an extension to the east went to the Squire Mine I think it was and others, and was called the Chester Mine Branch. I went over some of the history with everyone, and we headed west from the lot toward the trail.
Kay Pool
Patriot’s Path now uses some of the Chester Hill Branch to head west from a parking area near the library. Mr. Buckett went ahead a bit and we convened just into the woods from the parking area so I could go over what we were doing.
From here, we headed along the rail bed, past a couple of old iron mines, and I pointed out the orange acid mine runoff.
The trail weaved from the rail bed briefly at a power line crossing, rejoined it, and then the Patriot’s Path turns off to the right. Ahead, the blue blazed Black River Trail section of the Patriots Path continued on the rail bed a little further before it too turned off left.
At the old Kay pool house
We weaved around on a nice foot path through the woods, behind a municipal area, and then down along the Black River where there are giant discarded concrete pipes.
Pretty soon, the trail turned and crossed the power line clearing again. Ken had worked on some of this trail section, putting posts in and such, and it was looking quite good. We made our way out ot the inundation of water behind the curved dam before reaching the tunnel beneath Rt 24. We got back together there briefly so everyone could catch up, then headed past the Cooper Grist Mill.
My then and now compilation
At the bottom of the steps, we walked by the mill wheel, and then weaved around the Black River. I pointed out here where the former Hacklebarney Mine Railroad used to cross over the river, and soon after that point the blue blazed trail joined its right of way.
The Kay pool and pool house ruins
We continued along the rail bed which soon skirted the edge of Kay’s Pond, named for early horticulturist Elizabeth D. Kay, who owned the property. The dam had been rebuilt a few years back, and when we reached that spot, I walked across the top of it.
At the Kay pool
I pointed out where the Hacklebarney Mine was, all fenced in. The Hacklebarney Mine Railroad ended at this point, in the settlement that was known as Hacklebarney, and the trail follows the Langdone Mine Railroad bed for a while beyond here. That was a narrow gauge rail line that served the Langdone mine only for about four years near the end of the 1800s. The name “Hacklebarney” has in the past been erroneously referred to as a native Lenape word for a bonfire, or to a old tale about a heckling mine foreman named Barney, but I found through my reading about other mines that the term is actually an old Scotch-Irish name for Hell.
Old ruins on the former Kay estate
We continued down the Black River Trail to a side path to the right, which leads out to a woods road, which used to access the pool house of Elizabeth D. Kay. It has its own good bridge over the Black River we took.
The trail follows the river higher up on the slope on the west side until nearing the old swimming pool built into the river. From there, we walked down a set of stone stairs to the edge of the river.
The old pool house stands in ruins, but they seem pretty stable, just with the roof missing.
My then and now of the pool house
The former Hidden River Farm location is still rather unspoiled. People know it’s there, but it’s still not overrun by people littering or anything. It was a really great spot to take a dip.
Black River along Conifer Pass Trail
We hung out there for a while, and I tried to climb up the stone dam. It usually isn’t too incredibly hard, but this time the water was just too strong and I couldn’t pull myself up. Cupcake pointed out that the right side of it was starting to look a bit undermined. The dam will certainly collapse eventually, but hopefully not too soon.
We continued on from here along the green blazed trail, which leads along the east side of the river heading downstream. It had been removed from the official maps a while back because no one was maintaining it, but Ken and Tom Edmunds had apparently come back up and fixed some of it up
Along Hacklebarney Road
The green trail was in great shape, probably better than I’d ever seen it. It eventually intersects with the red blazed Conifer Pass Trail, and I found that the green trail was actually better than the red at this point.
We continued on this trail downstream. Carolyn met up with us along this stretch of trail, and turned around to continue with us for the rest of the hike. We followed the red trail along the river through some beautiful areas, and then took a bit of a shortcut when we reached a bit of a plateau.
Rather than follow the trail to Pottersville Road which I’d originally planned, we cut the corner short and headed directly out to Hacklebarney Road downhill.
My then and now of the Hacklebarney Grist Mill
We emerged just up from the old Hacklebarney Grist Mill area. From there, we walked uphill to the east on Hacklebarney Road, to the intersection with Pottersville Road.
Dan fell behind a bit, but I directed him on where he needed to go.
Along the Black River
We turned right on Pottersville Road, which took us in short order to the sportsmans lot for Hacklebarney State Park, at the intersection of Pottersville and Lamerson Roads. I had earlier in the year blazed the trail from the Patriot’s Path/Black River Trail section up to the lot, and then finally marked the trail I worked on with the Student Conservation Association down to the Black River. I think this might have been the first time I’d brought a group through on this trail since I blazed it. The marking was fading a bit already, so it’ll need to be touched up, but it’s not really that bad.
I wanted to go from here to the pool in the river at the park boundary. We walked down the trail to the river, and then crossed over the log across the river. Everyone did pretty well, except right at the end, Heshi took quite a fall into the river near the beginning.
Fortunately, he was fine, and really a great sport about it, and just walked through the water for a bit.
We headed upstream, across another log, and soon reached the pool where we hung out for a while and took a dip. I also climbed the little waterfall there, which was quite hard with the excess water running over it.
From the pool, we headed back downstream a bit, and then along the red trail along the river for a bit. I pointed out where we’d covered over some graffiti on a rock, and then reached the intersection with the Haki Trail, which heads back uphill to the Main Trail.
My then and now of the Hacklebarney entrance
Most of these trails date back to the CCC in the 1930s, as does the pool, but the pool is on the property that was taken back and swapped for the current entrance property by Adolph Borie. That’s one of the reasons it’s a bit lesser known.
We turned right on the white blazed Main Trail, and then left when we got to the green blazed Playground Trail. The area looked awesome, because my coworker Alyssa was up there doing brush clearing, and other coworkers Bill and Matt removed some broken picnic benches that had been out there for years.
the group on the back roads
The reason I had chosen to do this hike at this time was because the Japanese Wine Berries are typically ripe, and there are just so many of them up there you can just stuff yourself. This time, I was surprised to see they were not quite ready yet. We ended up barely eating any of them, which is strange.
We followed the green blazed Playground Trail for a bit, and then turned to the left on the pink blazed Upland Trail. I had done a ton of work on that one after super storm Sandy came through and wrecked it. Since that time, it had grown back in pretty badly, but Alyssa got it cleared out very well.
We headed up it, and then turned right at the first turn to reach the former overlook spot.
Along the back roads
There is no longer an overlook out there. It’s long since grown in, but the viewing platform still stands. It’s always a nice spot to go up and sit for a few moments.
From there, we headed further along the pink blazed trail to reach the overgrown picnic area off of the main entrance road.
It was not yet too dark yet, so I opted to just walk right out the main gate instead of sneaking out by way of an informal trail that comes out on State Park Road. We passed through the stone entrance monument, and then turned left on State Park Road with no problem.
I made a wrong turn up ahead at this point. We walked State Park Road for a bit, and Gloria was telling me she used to go to some farm down there when she was little. Ken started turning right on Old Farmers Road, which was the right thing to do, but I called him back.
The group along the road
I had gotten it mixed up, and we went all the way south to Black River Road and turned right. My original plan was to go Old Farmers Road to Apgar Road to Parker Road, then left again on Old Farmers, but I forgot the alignments.
We headed down to Black River Road, turned right, and it was a nice night view along the route of Black River Road, so it wasn’t too bad. The views in the dark out over the farm fields were quite nice.
Dan tried to get an Uber when he reached the Hacklebarney area, just to catch up with us, but it fell through. He ended up walking along on his own, and somehow got pretty close to us again.
After not long, we reached Old Farmers Road where we turned right. In this area somewhere, Luke met up with us to finish the rest of the trip.
We simply walked this road all the way back to Long Valley, to Rt 513. There, most of the group decided to go to the left and go back to the cars more quickly, while some of us continued to the right and over to the Gillette Trail. That took us down to the Black River through an orchard and across an old farm bridge. One of my favorite swimming spots is there, so we took one last dip there before moving on.
We continued slightly north to the former High Bridge Branch of the Jersey Central Railroad, and followed it to the left. That took us to the Frazier Steel place, skirted their property, and then went around the newer houses on the former Welch Farms site. We continued past that out to Schooleys Mountain Road, and then turned left to reach the main part of the town and the old coach stop, now brew pub, and our cars behind it.
Dan was still behind when we finished. He took the short cut when he got to the end of Old Farmers, and when we went to look for him, he was determined to finish and wouldn’t take the ride that little distance left. We continued on that to Parker Road and turned right, to the north.
The road walk wasn’t the best to me, and probably not something I will do the same way again, but it wasn’t bad overall. It was a great night to be out, and I think everyone pretty well enjoyed it.
HAM
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