Hike #1443: 10/3/21 Kinnelon/Riverdale/Pyramid Mountain Loop with Justin Gurbisz, Stephen Argentina, Carolyn Gockel Gordon, Serious Sean Dougherty, Professor John DiFiore, Phil ?, Tina Chen, Violet Chen, and ?
This next trip would be an oddball loop I came up with around the northern New Jersey Highlands that would feature all sorts of trails and such that I'd been wanting to do, and some old favorite spots.
I had done some similar hikes to this, and covered many of the area trails, but I had a huge list of stuff I hadn't done that would elevate this to a greater personal priority.
I think I chose the strip mall with the Blu Alehouse in it for the meeting point, because then we could have a nice dinner stop at the conclusion of the hike. It was a prominent location off of Rt 23, just a short distance from Interstate 287, so it was very convenient to reach.
The hike would be a long loop that started in Riverdale, went south through various odd pieces of land, eventually reaching Pyramid Mountain Natural Historic Park, and then heading back to the north through the trail system from there to get back to Riverdale.
This could easily fit in as one of the signature hikes that goes to show how we do things unlike any other group. Despite having long sections without a clue of what we were getting into, it went really very well.
I was very glad that Justin was able to come along on this one because he grew up in the area, and probably explored more of it than anyone else I knew. So we would be able to see other stuff, and hopefully he'd see some new stuff too.
We made our way to the west slightly and then crossed over Rt 23 at the traffic light to Cotluss Road.
My oddball trip then had us follow this road to the east for a bit, and then turn uphill on an abandoned road near the point where Cotluss Road joins Rt 23. Cotluss is probably an earlier alignment of Rt 23.
We headed up the slope, which had some weeds, but was not too bad. This side road might have been another earlier alignment, or maybe it was some sort of construction road associated with the highway. Whatever the case, we followed it only for a little ways until we reached the highest elevation that road would get, with steep slopes to the right of us.
Ahead, the road disappeared to cliffs along Rt 23, and we needed to get more uphill to get to a power line I wanted to head south on.
I had hiked this power line the last time I was in the area only to the north, and we came out and used a tunnel underneath Rt 23. I wasn't going to ask the group to get their feet wet this early on, so I figured we would take a chance and try something new.
When there was nowhere else to go, we started bushwhacking and climbing uphill directly to the right of us. This was a bit of a technical climb with some loose rocks and some spots we had to pull ourselves up. It was a bit more intense than I was counting on for this one.
Eventually we got to a better height of the land, and then started skirting the hillside heading to the left a bit. We stayed around the same elevation level and bullied our way out to the power line. Once everyone was together there, we turned to the right to head rather steeply up the power line to the south.
The power line skirted the property of the Cedar Crest Senior Living Center. We stayed on the easternmost of two separate but parallel utility clearings, and eventually came to a point where the orange and blue trails of Mountainside Park came close to the power line.
We had done this trail system before, but not everything there, on a previous hike. I wanted to get back to it so that we might cover some different trails in the same preserve this time, only barely touching on what we had done before.
Since the last time we were there, much of the trail system had been reblazed. I'm not always a fan of how they do it, but they made this one so that they were mostly colored loops rather than point to point connecting trails.
I think my goal on this one was to follow the middle blue trail, which used to be the red and orange trails. I think the previous time we had already walked the blue trail farthest to the east to take in all of the views. However, this time I did want to get back up to where we had been on that previous hike to at least take in the best view in Mountainside Park. We would then backtrack just a bit to get back on the western leg of the blue trail.
We started following the first bit of trail, and I tried following my phone GPS as well as a map on my phone to see if we could make our way to the top. Google maps only shows one trail through the entire area going up to the top, which doesn't help us because there's a lot more up there.
We headed up the mountain, somewhat steeply at times, and reached the peak at the top where there are some nice benches and a few views. There was one at first slightly to the south along the ridge, and then another to the southeast where we could see the Lincoln Park Airport in the distance.
Directly to the east, we could see clearly the New York City skyline from this vantage point. It was the perfect spot to take our first break.
From here, we headed back down the mountain, again somewhat steeply to continue on the blue blazed trail to the south.
The trail was rather undulating and had some nice rocky scenery. We went over a brook and used a nice little foot bridge. I had considered following some of the other trails to the west to add some mileage to it, just in case we fell short, but looking at the rest of my planned route, I felt like we were more likely to go over than not.
We continued on the blue trail south to reach the parking area on Mountain Avenue next to Route 287, near a water tower. There was a surprising amount of people parked there on this day. This was the location I used for my previous point to point hike here.
From this point, the hike got a lot more ambitious and challenging.
I had been looking at the NJ Geo Web site for public properties in the area, and found a surprising amount of public lands that stretched from Mountainside Park south to Brook Valley Road.
So, from this point we started following the long abandoned continuation of Mountain Avenue beyond the water tower to the south of the parking lot.
We headed uphill a bit with a small stream, the outflow of Sawmill Pond to the west, to the let of us. Eventually, we turned to the left down across that stream and along an informal trail that passed along the slope above Rt 287.
We headed uphill on the other side for a while, and I thought we were going the correct direction, but somehow we got turned around in a way that we should simply have stayed on the old road route.
We made a hard right to follow a stream parallel uphill and then skirted some height of land on our left, then descended into a more level area around the stream.
It seemed like we were in this area off trail or barely trail for a while. I get a little tense when I can't figure out where we're going or something starts to look bad. We did find our way to a little unmarked trail close to the small stream, so we started walking that.
The trail took us out to the edge of Sawmill Pond. The area clearly looked like it was private maybe with some state land that touched it. The woods road along the edge was well used and manicured.
We just pushed on along the lake and into the woods for a bit. The woods road went from being super extra manicured to being somewhat maintained, but not to the degree as before. We came across a lot of no trespassing signs through this area, and I didn't know what to do. I knew there was public land not far off, so we tried to stay off and just made our way further up away from the lake and into the woods.
We then made our way to the dam of Untermeyer Lake. The dam was in plain view, and there was a somewhat indistinct trail along the south side of it. We continued walking here.
It turns out, going back as far as 2017, the land around Untermeyer Lake, and along the south side of Sawmill Pond, was to be the subject of a conservation easement of 80 acres, with access through the sections we were walking, and 14 acres in fee simple to the tune of $1,700,000.
The Trust for Public Land has been very active in the area, but the problem is with these non profit organizations as land holders, they are notoriously bad at land management.
After looking at all of the maps, my assessment was that we were never trespassing at all and, like the Warren Highlands Trail and many other trails that are more recent public acquisitions, the signs are just the result of land owners illegally trying to bar public access to public land.
At the time, to me it was still questionable, so it was all about respect. I wanted to get us away from the lake and back into the woods as far as we could get from being invasive to privacy.
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| A spring sitting higher than the trail in Pyramid Mt. |
Untermeyer Lake is named for millionaire stockbroker Milton Untermeyer, who in 1920 established his home along the north shore of the lake. His home was forty thousand square foot mansion made in the style of a French chateau, with a slate roof and stained glass windows. There were plans to turn the mansion into a resort, but it burned down in 1969 under unknown circumstances.
Like many abandoned home ruins of stone that burned long ago, leaving only the stone frame behind, it erroneously is labeled a "castle", due to the fortified look.
"Untermeyer Castle" as it was referred, was popular in Weird NJ and a sought after destination until a private home was built adjacent to the ruin on the same property. According to the Colt Chronicle, the current owner is John Konarski who chose to leave the ruin rather than demolish it, and he hopes to utilize parts of it as his greenhouse behind his home.
We came to the intersection of paths in these woods, I think one of them a continuation of nearby Franklin Lane, and we turned to the left. This took us slightly uphill. This area is known as the Waughaw Mountain. It is now part of the greenway plan to Pyramid Mountain I understand.
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| Small falls at Pyramid Mountain NHP |
Once we reached the height of the land on Waughaw Mountain, we turned to the right on another woods road. These ones were kept pretty well open by ATV use.
I was able to watch very easily our trajectory on my GPS, and it was taking us almost exactly where we needed to be going. I was very happy about how well this was working out at this point.
I had thought we were going to have to follow a nearby power line clearing, which might have been somewhat rough, but these woods roads were perfect.
We continued on to the south for a ways, until Waughaw Mountain started to dip down somewhat steeply. We made a left turn in there somewhere, and I thought that was the way to go, but then I noticed on my GPS that we were going the wrong way. We had to turn back around and start heading to the west, which had be a little concerned that we were going the correct way.
The woods road we ended up losing elevation on had some good drainage heading down. Some springs flowed on it, and some other woods roads were visible in the woods parallel with the one we were walking. I figured these must have been the roads used either for logging, or even earlier for the colliers operating nearby iron furnaces, or both.
I had imagined we would be emerging from these woods out to Brook Valley Road near the power line off of a little dead end road to the west, but we emerged in a really nice spot where there was a barrier just into the woods a bit. We had gone behind a house briefly, all on public land, and reached a spot on the road where there were trucks parked. I figured they were probably doing some small game hunting or whatever hunting season was going on since it was September.
From here, we simply turned to the right on Brook Valley Road and started heading to the west. Surprise Lake was off to the right of the road as we walked along. We left Kinellon Twp and entered Montville.
At the intersection of Brook Valley Road and Stony Brook Road, we turned slightly left across the road and got onto a red blazed trail. It goes sort of straight and slightly left straight from this intersection, then turns abruptly and parallels Stony Brook Road heading south.
The trail closely paralleled the North Valhalla Brook in this section.
For whatever reason, I was feeling energetic and not particularly social, so I sped ahead of the rest of the group super speed to the south. I waited for everyone at a sie trail that went to the left, and the trail got to be a bit easier like it used to be an old road.
The trail started heading inland a bit, and then I reached a curious spot that looked very odd. A small tributary to the North Valhalla Brook to my right was flowing parallel with the road, but then the road started to dip down gradually toward a crossing of the main brook.
The spring remained up high. As I walked, I saw this peculiar spring higher than me. The trail dipped down and crossed over the North Valhalla Brook, then turned briefly right up the other side of the brook. There was a nice little cascade on the other side where the aforementioned odd spring flowed over a rock form. It must remain at that higher elevation because it follows a natural flume through the rock form rather than eroding the path of otherwise least resistance.
I let the other scatch up with me, and we continued on the yellow trail ahead. The red trail ended and yellow went both right and left.
We climbed and skirted the edge of Turkey Mountain, and passed a pink blazed trail to the left. We then followed the trail that remained closest to the power line. We crossed the line and yellow went to the right, and then again to the left at the crossing.
As we approached the first of the two summits of Turkey Mountain, there was an old stone building ruin, which I have no idea what it was. The style of stone work looked more consistent with early 1900s than with the fine cut work of the nineteenth century. It looked like it might have been CCC era, but it also was not totally consistent with their style either.
This was a perfect time to take a break and let everyone catch up. We checked out the interior of the old building ruin, which no longer has any kind of roof. It had doorways, and some sort of podium or something inside.
I sipped some Bells Expedition Russian Imperial Stout and had a very nice sit down. From there, we continued on to the second top of Turkey Mountain, where we had a great view of Lake Valhalla.
This was along a green trail, which we switched onto. It was a pretty nice view, and we continued further to the west, and then had a bit of a view down the power line clearing to the west.
We reached the orange trail just beyond that point and turned to the right, north for a bit.
Where we crossed back over the power line, we turned to the left on yellow again.
From this point, we reached the Hundred Steps, which descend along the power line clearing down Turkey Mountain.
I had hiked this section only once before, back in 2010 when I was recovering from the fire that almost took my life. I was trying to do some elevation stuff and had tons of time off of work to try to recover. I was not really supposed to be out exercising, but I credit my unwillingness to take it easy to my fast and successful recovery. I was carrying a rescue inhaler and told not to exert myself too much, and less than a week after getting out of the hospital I did twenty miles.
I had not been back to the spot since, but it hadn't changed all that much.
The trail took us downhill and then out to beside Boonton Avenue. The trail then turned left, and ran parallel to Boonton Ave. I think that segment might not have been in place yet when I hiked it before.
Across from Mars Court, we crossed Boonton Ave and entered the Pyramid Mountain Natural Historic Park, a Morris County Park, parking lot.
The park was established in 1993 after a grassroots effort to save the lands, with one of the major benefactors being the Mennen Corporation.
We turned right on the blue trail, and followed it into the woods. It was very soft surface crushed stone, which made for very easy walking at the start. There were tons of people using this section of trail.
What we were walking at first was once, and actually still is, part of the Kinello-Boonton Trail. This trail was one of the early trails set up in the 20s and 30s. Old trails in New York and northern New Jersey were set up to travel between train stations, and New York clubs would have big hiking events using the convenience of the stations.
Pyramid Mountain was passed through by two of these trails, this one and the Butler-Montville Trail.
In more recent years, the trails have been disappearing due to encroachments. The Kinnelon-Boonton Trail is not mentioned anywhere on current county park maps, and it is no longer shown where it leaves the county park property to the north, despite the fact that it still exists up there. Where it left the park land to the south, the trail is now gone save for maybe a stub of it.
My plan was that we would follow most of this trail further to the north and out of the Pyramid Mountain park land, but first cover more of the trails I'd never done before. I had actually never done the stuff to the east of Lake Valhalla Overlook, and that was the first bit.
The other bit I had not yet explored was the part along Taylortown Reservoir. I originally planned to follow this all the way through to the east, but then I changed my mind and realized I could do other trails that I also had never done.
We continued to where the blue trail crossed over a little foot bridge, and we turned to the right.
The blue trail continued along the base of Pyramid Mountain through the woods, until reaching an intersection where the orange trail went to the right. We turned right here.
Pretty soon, we passed within view of the dam for the Taylortown Reservoir. This lake has water rights associated with the Jersey City water supply.
The route of the orange trail was quite beautiful with multiple views of the reservoir. It unfortunately didn't look too particularly good for taking a dip in like I was hoping it might.
We continued along the orange trail with more great views, and eventually climbed up to a higher vantage point above the reservoir with views over it. We then came to the intersection with the green trail, which continues ahead along the shore of the lake to the Boonton Avenue Recreation fields.
We continued to the let on the orange trail, which climbed up the northern flank of Pyramid Mountain. Near the crest of the rise, a blue trail went to the left, but we continued straight on orange.
We climbed up what is known as Eagle Cliff, and then came across the giant Whale Head Rock. This is a glacial erratic that somewhat resembles the look of a whale's head from afar.
We took a break here again for everyone to catch up, and some of the group climbed up the rock.
The trail weaved around a bit from here, and then descended rather steeply to the west. Near the bottom, we came to the intersection with the white blazed trail to the right. This was the old Kinnelon-Boonton Trail, and we followed it to the north.
The trail meandered through the woods, and then came out on Miller Road in a light residential area. The trail turns to the right on the road as I recall, but at this point it was hard to say where it was supposed to go on the other side. The blazing wasn't that good any more.
There was some sort of path we ended up going down on along the other side. I was not seeing the trail just yet, but as we went down through the open route, I spotted a blaze.
Despite being on the right track, we still continued downhill a bit more toward a pond that we could see on the aerial images.
This was a great spot, and we of course had to take the opportunity to swim. Not many went in, but I know John and I went for it.
Once we were done with our break, we tried to see if we could walk across the dam of this pond, but it was really wet on the other side, so we couldn't go through.
Instead, we backtracked again, then went up slope to the left to come upon the trail once more.
We continued on the trail heading uphill a bit, and then hit a woods road access down toward the pond area. We followed that, and it took us back up to Miller Road across from a church place, Our Lad of the Magnificent or something it was.
We turned left on Miller Road again, and eventually the trail turned back into the woods to the left. I don't recall this section being too crazy difficult, but it passed through a meadow, and then soon started to skirt a finger of the Butler Reservoir, also known as Kakeout Reservoir.
Work began on this reservoir, which was funded at least partially as a Works Progress Administration project, in 1936, with the assertion that the hundres of thousands of gallons of water it would make available would be of much higher quality than that of the nearby Apshawa Basin.
The trail was really nice through this area, and emerged on Fayson Lakes Road. The trail crosses that road almost directly, and then continues along the shore of the reservoir to the west a bit.
The trail followed the reservoir as it narrowed to the inlet where it is fed by Stone House Brook. It passed into the woods a bit, and then crossed a wooden foot bridge just barely downstream of a lovely little rocky cascade. The trail then turned to the right and began to follow the inlet back to the wider reservoir.
There are a couple of really great places out along this reservoir to surreptitiously take a dip that I've always loved since my first time there. We made use of one spot and then continued along the western shore, heading north.
Along the way, there was an old stone foundation on the right. I wonder what else might have been along the shore of the creek that was destroyed when the reservoir was built.
I would suppose there must have been mills and homesteads in there somewhere.
We continued to the main dam of the reservoir, and we walked over the top of it to the right. The Kinnelon-Boonton Trail continues ahead onto Bubbling Brook Road. I'm not sure the exact route it took beyond that point originally.
We continued over the dam, and then got on what I think was the former Butler-Montville Trail. This long trail used to go between the two stations as previously mentioned, but now also only goes some of the way.
To the south, it no longer goes through, and to the north, I have been told that the pedestrian bridge that exists over Rt 23 just to the north of this location was built specifically acknowledging this long distance trail, which had since been let go.
We turned away from the blaze trail in a short bit, and then followed a side trail that took us out at the dead end of Seabirt Lane. We followed this out and came to Birch Road where we turned left. These were some pretty nice roads to walk as far as that goes.
Birch Road took us out to Kakeout Road where we turned to the right.
There were old stories about this reservoir being some sort of anti-semitic name because of the similar sound it had to a racial slur, which would not be too far fetched a thing because the area was home to a German-American Bund camp on the other side of the Pequannock River.
Fortunately, this is not the true meaning of the word. It is actually of Dutch origin, from kijk-uit, meaning "Look out - a place of observation as a tower, hill."
We followed through a residential area to a left turn onto Hiller Court (no, not "Hitler" either). After a couple of blocks on this, we turned left on Brown Lane (no, not Braun either).
This took us out to Cemetery (I'm not going there) Lane, where the Brown/Sanders Cemetery was off to the left, and the Mt Holiness Memorial Park to the right. Brown/Sanders was established there before 1848.
We turned right there and entered the much larger Mt Holiness burial area and started heading to the east side of it.
This cemetery was something much different. There were some statues and such, and some religious things, but for the most part the graves were all flush with the ground.
That was the weird part about this. The graves were in many cases not even noticeable. They were completely covered over with grass.
A kick at the ground revealed that some of these stones were only barely exposed. There was a large stone thing that might have been a mausoleum, a white statue, and then some sort of thing that read "Garden of Gethsemane", but otherwise most of the graves were more than inconspicuous.
As we went further through the burial ground, entire rows of graves were barely even noticeable. Something about this place bothered me, so I looked it up later with the idea of writing this journal.
It turns out this was not the only controversial thing that had ever happened in this place. There were some shady deals going on with the burial ground, and some of it was downright disturbing.
During one burial, as I read the story, a coffin was being lowered into a plot when all of a sudden, a hand came out of the dirt from the adjacent grave. This raises the question not only about the measurements of these plots, but about whether they were buried in reasonable coffins at all.
It's further disturbing that this was reportedly a majority African American cemetery. Just another example of minorities getting the short end of the stick again, and someone is making money on their trust. Probably a lot of money.
I can see from a mowing stand point that it is much more practical, easier to do, and thus the maintenance expenses of the place would be lower, but if one cannot read the epitaph, what good is it?
We continued to the northeast corner of the cemetery, and then started to descend toward the Stone House Brook again. My plan had been to come out at the Rt 23 Auto Mall.
I think I probably didn't consider the Stone House Brook when I planned this and just looked it too hastily. Fortunately, Justin had a plan for something I'm glad we didn't miss.
We headed downhill from the cemetery on a slope, and then came to the ege of the auto mall lot. Justin then told me of a tunnel beneath Rt 23 that he had found a while back. He'd even written an article on it for his Vacantnj.com page.
We made our way down the slope and along the Stone House Brook, and then to a large double tunnel, one full of water from the creek, the other not.
This was the Yungborn Health Resort Tunnel beneath Rt 23 in Butler NJ area, built in 1934 to carry Stone House Brook on one side and pedestrians using the now bisected facility property on the other.
Founder Benedict Lust died in 1945, by which time he had been arrested over 20 times for practicing medicine without a license, and promoting his Naturopathic Medicine, so the tunnel probably wasn't used for long after its construction.
Check out more on this here: https://www.vacantnewjersey.com/.../yungborn.../index.html
We continued through the right side of this tunnel, and on the other side we found the stone remnants of a dam on the Stone House Brook.
This must have been left over from a pond that would have been associated with the Yungborn facility also.
There is more public land beyond this spot on the brook, but we didn't walk through on that this time. Instead, we turned to the right and headed parallel with and then out to Route 23, and emerged along it when we got over near the 7 Eleven and Boonton Avenue.
I had at this point considered going up through another cemetery and some ball fields to the north, but we were on a straight trajectory to the cars once we got to Rt 23 and it wasn't all that far, so there was no convincing anyone to go any other way.
Justin went way ahead at the end, and I seem to recall someone else went way ahead too, as they didn't go through the tunnel like the rest of us did. I don't recall all who.
Some of us did decide to head over to the Blu Alehouse for some dinner though. I joined John, Serious Sean, and Carolyn at least. I can't recall if anyone else from the group joined us for this time.
It was really a great loop and I was glad to have done it. There is so much more to do even in the places we had been.
We still have more trails in Mountainside Park we have not done, we have more land in the non profit property near the old Untermeyer Estate, we have more trails to hit at Pyramid Mountain, and then still the remainder of stuff I had considered for the last portion of the hike. We could almost do it all again and have it be fifty percent different.
That's one of the amazing things about the area. We can go out and see so much, and still have so much left to explore.
