So far, the fall has been off to a great start, and we have plenty more to go!
This past weekend, we had two great hikes, one around the perimeter of Spruce Run, and another in south Jersey for our perimeter series! Both were excellent! But what do we have coming up??
Planning
11/2: Appalachian Trail; Bear Mountain and Fahnestock
This hike will be mostly a linear route on the AT between these two parks! It should be a nice scenic way to have our annual costume hike, which has become a Hudson Valley tradition!
11/4: Jersey Perimeter, Forked River and Waretown
For Election Day, one of the only remaining sections on the entire eastern portion of the state, this back roads and trails trip will have a little off trail, some lovely back roads, estuary views, and some unconnected trails. Meet 10 am in Waretown, see description.
11/5: Musconetcong Trail Work
Meet at 3:45 pm to help with the finishing touches on a new trail connecting the River Resource Center in Asbury with Valley Road! This lovely trail will help both hikers and fishermen, and of course the programs of the wonderful Musconetcong River Watershed Association!
11/8: Metrotrails Thrift Excursion and Mini Hike!
Join us for some short local walking around, and visit one of my favorite thrift stores to purchase silly cheap suits for under $10 that many of us in the group have come to be known for!
11/9: Lackawanna Valley and Moosic Mountain Loop
In the Carbondale area, this hike will be the next in a series to cover the Lackawanna Heritage Trail, for which we've had a few, and another section fo Moosic Mountain. The coal heritage of the area makes this quite interesting!
11/11: Appalachian Trail Cross Susquehanna!
Join us to cover yet another section of the AT, this time between the Ebberson Preserve and Duncannon across the Susquehanna River! Nice views should be had throughout the trip as leaves will have fallen on ridge line!
11/16: Bluestone Wild Forest and Kingston
This hike is the last connection I've needed to tie 150 miles of our Catskills hikes to everything else we've done! We'll cover all of the trails in Bluestone Wild Forest, the easternmost and probably overall easiest trail system in the Catskills preserves, and then follow the old rail line from where we left off between West Hurley and Kingston! Should be very interesting!
11/23: Jersey Perimter Series; Thompson Beach to Port Norris
This leg of our ongoing NJ perimeter journey will be to circumvent the long estuarine wetland where the Maurice River connects with the Delaware. We'll be walking estuary trails, sand roads, back roads, abandoned rail line, and more! This should be quite an interesting one!
ALSO: Mark your calendars for Saturday, December 6th....rather than the regular Decemberween party that is usually hosted by Carol and Rob (they're doing a regular Halloween Party this year), we will be hosting a Decemberween fundraiser party at Washington Theater!
The theater is in grave danger of being demolished in early 2015, unless our friend Marco Matteo can come up with enough money to purchase it. Many fund raisers are going on, and we want to help him out! There will be a regular hike that Saturday ending at the theater, and then we will have the party, with our friend Jack Lowry and his band Gypsy Funk Squad entertaining! Cover is $10 which will go toward helping preserve the theater!
I would also like to thank our friends Michael Gronsky Jr. and William Honachefsky Jr. of Union Forge Heritage Association for giving us the tour of their new Solitude Heritage Museum at the historic Joseph Turner House on a recent hike. After being removed from the Solitude House in High Bridge, they opened a lovely new museum in the Turner House, with it's original section dating back to 1760.
Continued renovations will restore the home to how it would have looked circa 1830.
They're doing a fantastic job, so when you're not hiking on a Sunday, stop by the place on Van Syckles Road, Union Township and have a look at their displays!
Development...
We have been working hard on our projects...Warren Highlands Trail has been at a stand still due to land owner issues with the latest piece I have to cut through. With things sort of stalled, we've taken on a secondary project helping Musconetcong Watershed Association rehabilitate existing trail and build a stretch of new!
Before...
After!
The trail stretches between the River Resource Center off of Maple Ave in Asbury NJ and will connect to Valley Road/Shurts Road closer to Hampton. The trail is currently about 2/3 clear, and we will be hopefully finishing initial clearing next Wednesday evening at 3:45! The trunk trail will be blue blazed with a short loop near Asbury will be orange.
Once this project is finished, we will be moving to Port Murray to develop the new Morris Canal Trail. This will open a good, long section between Hoffman Road in Port Murray and Harts Lane to the west. A foot path we will clear will circumvent a piece of private land on the canal.
Maintenance
Continued maintenance will be needed on Warren Highlands Trail. I may be posting clearing trips on that in the near future.
Promotion
The featured trail for this newsletter will be Paulins Kill Valley Trail!
Always one of my favorite trails, it stretches for nearly thirty miles from Columbia NJ to Sparta Junction. It's diversity of terrain, proximity to water, and intimacy with it's environment make it probably the best rail trail in the state of NJ.
It passes by amazing historic structures and ecological wonders.
On our official website, we offer a mile by mile guide to the Paulins Kill Valley Trail that can be viewed on PC or smart phone with great simplicity, following this link:
http://www.metrotrail...
The trail begins officially as part of the Liberty-Water Gap Trail at the Portland-Columbia Footbridge.
The side of the old Rt 46 along the river is striped as a pedestrian and bike lane. It follows the road for a short time, then descends down a crushed stone path to the edge of the Paulins Kill River. This section is of course not former railroad.
After passing beneath Rt 46, the trail ascends to the left, then crosses the Paulins Kill on 46. On the other side, it turns a hard left along the edge of a private yard, along the right of way of the 1876 Blairstown Railroad, the first part of the New York, Susquehanna, and Western Railroad to be developed (Blairstown Railroad was absorbed into the NYS&W system and extended in 1881).
The trail turns away from the rail bed again past a former quarried area, then returns to it within Columbia Lake Wildlife Management Area where it passes by the dam for Columbia Lake.
The right of way is now a gravel road, which soon leads beneath Interstate 80 by way of a giant metal pipe. Prior to the construction of Rt 80, there was a junction here. The southbound NYS&W followed the earlier Blairstown Railroad alignment to connect with the Lackawanna old main line in Delaware, while a northbound main line crossed the Paulins Kill where the highway crosses today, and traveled north through Delaware Water Gap and on to Stroudsburg.
Columbia Lake is a silted in mess, more like a swamp these days, and the trail remains a gravel road out of Columbia Lake WMA. Beyond, the rail bed becomes somewhat overgrown and difficult to pass through at times. Because this section is so rough, Liberty-Water Gap Trail has routed it's marking to the right, then left onto Bruglar Road.
From Bruglar Road, the trail is shown on all state maps as going through, but there are often "no trespassing" signs on this side. Walking from Hainesburg, at Station Road, there are state park signs, but from this side they are missing for the first part. The rail bed can be quite washed out and wet in this section toward Hainesburg.
The trail continues east from here, through lovely woods and pastoral settings.
Although this is a rail trail, it is not a wide monstrosity like so many others can be. At times, it is just a narrow path that bares little resemblence to the rail line it once was.
Along the way, the trail passes through the village of Kalarama, where today we find the Blairstown Airport. The trail leaves the railroad right of way altogether here, and skirts the south side of the airport. At one point, the trail is right along the side of one of the runways!
Whistle signs and mile markers reading "JC" for Jersey City can be found along the way, as well as many other historic remnants.
When the trail reaches Blairstown, it passes through Footbridge Park. This lovely park is great for a side trip over it's namesake foot bridge. Trail users can cross the bridge, and immediately on the other side is Dale's Market, where snacks and drinks can be purchased. They have OUTSTANDING baked goods in the back!
Northeast of Blairstown, the trail crosses over the Paulins Kill on a slack water section above the village of Paulina. The Paulina Dam is probably the loveliest dam in the county, and the trail along the lake is beautiful.
The trail crosses the river again ahead, and then reaches the settlement of Marksboro. It is here that the Ridge and Valley Trail breaks away. When complete, this trail will connect Paulins Kill Valley Trail to the Appalachian Trail. Most of it's infrastructure is already in place. The first part of it mostly follows the old White Lake spur, which broke away from the NYS&W to reach the Marl Works, a limestone processing plant for material dredged off of White Lake. The material was hauled by train to Newark where it was used to neutralize it's sewer system.
Shortly after leaving Marksboro, the trail crosses the most beautiful bridge in it's entire length (save for the Paulins Kill Viaduct which it does not cross). It is a through style truss bridge again over the Paulins Kill.
The trail becomes wider in the sections north of Blairstown. It remains a good width until reaching a farm area in Fredon Township vicinity where there have been washouts. It then resumes as a narrow foot path, and alternates depending on the accessibility of the sites.
To the north of Marksboro, there is even a wheel truck left over from an old derailment that has never been removed!
There are sometimes bridges missing along the line, such as this one at the downstream end of Paulins Kill Lake. The trail routes it's way down to the road for these sections, then returns on the other side.
The trail makes it's way to Swartswood Station area, where the platform still stands. Here, a section of rail has been replaced as sort of a demonstration of what the line would have looked like.
Ruins of old water towers and other structures also exist in this area. The trail descends and ascends again to cross Newton Swartswood Road, where another bridge is missing. Beyond, there was a junction with the Lehigh and New England Railroad, which had about wenty miles of trackage rights on the NYS&W from Hainesburg.
After this junction site, the rail line left the Paulins Kill Valley on it's way to Sparta. The trail now passes through dramatic rock cuts on it's way heading east.
Beyond this point, the trail passes through more woods and farms and regains it's pastoral/rural character like in the westernmost portions.
It again looks more like a footpath than a rail trail.
At Warbasse Junction, the NYS&W crossed the Sussex Branch of the Lackawanna, and today the Sussex Branch Trail crosses the PKV Trail. Both trails are very very similar in character. One of the best rail trail hikes in the state is the Sussex Rail Triangle using the Lehigh and New England from Swartswood Junction, PKV, and Sussex Branch from Ross Corner.
In the vicinity of Warbasse Junction, the largest mushrooms we've ever witnessed on any Metrotrails event grow directly on the edge of the trail. The amazing size of these is unlike any we've seen anywhere, and it's owed to the narrowness of the trail and certainly it's proximity to moist ground.
The trail crosses the abandoned Lackawanna Franklin Branch ahead, which is not yet a trail. It then crosses a somewhat decked bridge, but nothing like the others on the line. The trail continues, though less developed.
A second bridge is out nearing the eastern terminus of the trail, with a sign facing it from one way. The bridge is just a narrow I-beam and can be crossed with ease. It is not as easy to access with a bicycle however.
The trail abruptly terminates at the rail yard where it once crossed the Lehigh and Hudson River Railroad. Ahead, the NYS&W still has tracks in place all the way to Jersey City. There is no offficial access from the eastern terminus of the trail, although the seclusion of this section is nice for an out and back hike.
From the western end of the trail, the NYS&W continued north through the water gap, and crossed the Delaware at Karamac, where there was once an inn.
From the Rt 80 bridge over the Delaware north to the former trestle site, the rail line can be walked, as it is now part of Karamac Trail. It is a beautiful unmarked section along the river worth exploring. Also, on the opposite side of Columbia Lake from Paulins Kill Valley Trail, a similar gravel road follows the rail bed for a short time.
In Pennsylvania, the right of way is not yet a trail in Minisink Hills, but it is informally used as such.
The old line once crossed the Broadhead Creek on a high trestle, over the Lackawanna line, then headed to Stroudsburg. Originally, the line made a connection with the Lackawanna at "Gravel Place" to get coal, but in 1893 NYS&W opened the Wilkes Barre and Eastern, a wholly owned subsidiary so it'd have it's own line. It was short lived, being abandoned in 1938.
On the other side of Brodhead Creek, the NYS&W is again a trail within Glen Park where there is parking. Washouts force the trail deviate somewhat from the original route, but it's an outstanding route to hike.
In closing, hope everyone can join us on more hikes soon! We have some fantastic stuff coming up!
Best Regards
M'ke
908 343 8374 cell
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