Celebrating 19 Years of Crazy Hikes! March 2016

Hello all!!!
We have some great stuff coming up, the first and foremost of which is the Annual Warren Railroad hike and Hikers' Hootenanny!
This year we are trying something different; for the first time since 2003 we are running the Warren Railroad hike backwards. We are chopping a little off the end and putting it to the start to actually trace more of the right of way.
We will be meeting at Smitty's Store at 8:45, liquor store and deli we have stopped at on these hikes every year since we started. They have graciously given us permission to park cars at their location. Use the area to the left of the store and let's keep everyone together as not to take up too much room. We'll then shuttle to our start point to the south. The hike will end at Delaware, where we will have dinner at the Jagerstein Biergarten, which is just up the road from Smitty's. The following advert for the hike gives some of the details:

Everyone can get food and drinks at Smitty's for the hike while we wait for everyone to get together.
After the hike, the Biergarten has graciously given us a lowered price for dinners. $15 will cover your choice of one of three dinners noted above, and there will be bread and butter, salad, and soup out to take at the door. They have also given us permission to have live music, which is great! I'm sure this is going to be an awesome time!
If possible, it will make it much easier if you bring $15 cash rather than try to pay with card at the Biergarten. Usually the entrees are a bit more, so they really gave us a good deal.
This will be the twentieth annual Warren Railroad hike, and 19 years since the first hike. As we head into our twentieth  year with this group, there are going to be a lot of exciting things planned.
Everyone should also grab a copy of the latest issue of Weird NJ, in which Mark Moran wrote a very nice article on the NJ Perimeter series, with layout by Mark Sceurman, always awesome!

Aside from all of this craziness upon us, we have a lot of other really great stuff coming up over the course of the next month!
The night hikes have been going great, typically on Thursdays.
The next Sunday hikes we have planned will be pretty interesting as well.
4/3 Looking at an interesting route well out into Pennsylvania, perhaps Tuscarora Trail
4/10 Appalachian Trail and more in the first Connecticut section, Kent CT!
4/17 To be announced
4/24 911 Memorial Trail Part 4 and Morris Canal Part 2
4/29-5/1 Ricketts Glen Campout Weekend!
As usual, we will do a few hikes branching out in farther directions like we try to do, but we'll also have some good more local stuff. In that, we have the September 11th National Memorial Trail and the Morris Canal Greenway. Things are looking great on both these series, and the first three have been very well attended despite poor weather forecast on some.The first hike took us on the "alternate", from the World Trade Center north to the George Washington Bridge. The official route uses the water taxi, but if one wants to actually walk it, it's necessary today to use the GW. The second hike in the series was also very well attended, heading down the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway to Hoboken. We just completed the first "official" trail route hike, which went just as well across Jersey City.
At this time, we also utilized the Morris Canal Greenway for the first section. The March and April hikes are loops with the 911 route and Morris Canal, but the series splits in May. It continues to get more interesting from here!
We have also recently covered the Mason Dixon Trail from Elk Neck Maryland to Newark, Delaware. The official 911 Trail's designated route is on highways, both to the north and the south of the existing Mason-Dixon Trail footpath. That is fine for cyclists, but no one wants to walk paved highway for fifteen plus miles, so we followed the footpath which goes directly between the two designated 911 Trail routes, and it was absolutely beautiful and very diverse!We'll continue to do more sections of these long trails with the hopes of completing them. There are a few hikes left on the Mason Dixon Trail, but we also have nearly completed the Horse-Shoe Trail, which connects Philadelphia by way of Valley Forge to St. Anthony's Wilderness on the Appalachian Trail. There are only two more hikes remaining and that trail will be complete! We hope to finish that this Summer as well.
Keep your eyes open for more posted hikes coming very soon on our schedule. The dates have pretty much been decided on many hikes that are all set through January of 2017 and beyond.
Hope to see you all on Saturday, if not very very soon! Lots of good stuff coming up!!

-M'ke
President
Metrotrails
908 343 8374

Metrotrails February 2016

Hello everyone!!!
Things are going pretty good despite all of the rough weather!
The snow took us by surprise...the largest single accumulation in my lifetime left us unprepared, and caused us to reschedule the first hike in the September 11th National Memorial Trail series. We had over sixty signed up, and had just under forty come because our snow reschedule date was Superbowl Sunday.
Still, we had a really nice time! There was a pretty good showing, we completed the hike, and some of us even continued to cover twenty miles!
The Metrotrails crew was complimented by Morris County attendants brought in by Mr. Tom Edmunds of Morris County Park Commission.
The group segmented a bit when we hit the Hudson River Waterfront, as some of us did all fo the piers, others did not, but in the city it doesn't matter so much.
For February, a few things have changed, but we'll keep with a lot of the plan, then continue to move forward from there!
This Saturday we are doing a difficult scouting  hike on the Warren Highlands Trail proposed route early in the day hosted by me. Sunday's hike will be on High Tor and Hook Mountain hike in NY along the beautiful Palisades.
The following week, Feb 21, we will return to the 911 Memorial Trail series, this time with the  opposite side of the Hudson, heading down the NJ waterfront of the Hudson to Hoboken Station.
For that, we will take the train in to NY Penn Station, head to the subway north, then walk across the GW Bridge as a group, visit Fort Lee Historic Park, then follow the waterfront south. It's much different than the NY side, but equally as interesting. When we arrive at Hoboken station, we simply take trains back to our start destination.
It will be easier to keep people together for that one, because the route is a bit more straightforward.
If anyone wants an early out on that one, after we reach North Bergen, the light rail leads all the way to the end point easily.
On Saturday, February 27th, we will do something very different, but also part of a series we've been working on already...

The September 11th National Memorial Trail mostly follows the East Coast Greenway through Maryland and Delaware, but many of these sections are long road walks. After many of our members indicated concern that most of the Pennsylvania section of the proposed trail was simply a designated route on paved roads, intended more for cyclists than hikers, I started looking at the entire trail more closely.
It turned out that at least forty days of the proposed trail route would be mostly walking paved roads if we followed it as shown on line, but this is of course still a work in progress.
Many of these road walks can be partially if not completely eliminated by following nearby trails.
One such place in particular was the Maryland/Delaware border. The 911 Trail is shown superimposed on the Mason-Dixon Trail through Elk Neck State Forest MD, but then follows large highways from there east. This is easy to overlook, because the Mason-Dixon Trail guide is not available on line, it is only available for purchase. While this is not all bicycle friendly, it is the best route for hikers.

Rather than do the 911 Trail sections 100% in order like I had originally planned, I decided it best to jump around a little bit, because our hikes could benefit the study altogether. The hike we will do on the Mason-Dixon Trail passes several historic sites like pictured Iron Hill Park, past the site of a famous battle, as well as other interesting points. This section breaks away from the East Coast Greenway and returns to it once more in Newark, DE.
Apart from showcasing some of the designated 911 Trail route and a potential alternate, this is also one of the only missing sections of the nearly two hundred mile Mason-Dixon Trail we have never hiked. One more hike in Maryland, one in Delaware, and then maybe three in Pennsylvania will complete the trail for us.
The next 911 Memorial Trail hike as scheduled will be on Sunday March 20th in Jersey City. That will also kick off more of the Morris Canal series again.
Also mark your calendars for our group's 19th anniversary, which is the twentieth annual Warren Railroad hike scheduled to take place the day before Easter, Saturday March 26th! Details to come on that!
Still nothing new on my work schedule, so this is why you see no hikes on the Metrotrails schedule after March (typically I'd have items posted for the next six months). I'll report back if I get any further news.
Upcoming hikes are posted at www.meetup.com/metrotrails

Also, everyone follow our facebook page at www.facebook.com/metrotrails for constant photos and information on places we've visited over the past nineteen years!

Best Regards

M'ke H

Metrotrails January 2016

Hello everyone!
January has been off to a great start and we've got a lot more goodies coming up!
It's a relief to have the holidays over with, and we had a crazy December. Now it's time to take a step back, put things in perspective, and look at our goals for 2016.
We already had a great First Day Hike between Spruce Run Recreation Area and High Bridge, with over thirty in attendance!
We followed up with an equally awesome Raritan River confluences hike. There is a lot of good attention coming our way for more in these types of series, and I'm looking very forward to following the popularity of the NJ Perimeter series with more fun.
The big one is the National September 11th Memorial Trail.
The focus of this trail is not actually on the three sites, but the themes of heroes, of resilience, of pride in what we have.
There are a lot of conspiracy theorists, naysayers of all kinds, and everyone can believe what they want to believe....the point we should not lose in all of this is that there were heroes, first respondents, police who died on 9-11-1, and regardless of any how or why, they deserve to be honored, and I hope many of them will join in this first hike of this series. I hope to meet many more people who might not have considered themselves "hikers" at any given point, but have found this as their inspiration to come out.
The route the hikes in this series will take are not all about September 11th. They are full of wonderful sites of national historic significance and natural beauty. These hikes will not be different than anything else we've been doing apart from the fact that we are utilizing a conceptual route for this future trail, and we'll have the opportunity to share these places with a greater audience.

I plan to run these hikes also as good media PR for full trail connectivity, the "You Can Get There From Here" idea.
The third and fourth hikes, in March and April, will be loops with both the 911 Memorial Trail and the historic Morris Canal route, seen above. After that, I plan to split the hikes, and monthly there will be two themed hikes, 911 Trail and Morris Canal, until we finish both again completely (so long as their is good interest from Canal enthusiasts in NJ).
As of now, only the first two hikes for the 911 Trail are posted, for January and February pending work schedule changes. More to come on that later.
We also have a lot more great stuff to announce/coming up:

This Saturday, we will complete the Appalachian Trail in New York, and add our SIXTH STATE to the inventory of connected hikes we've done! We will reach CONNECTICUT!
Over the past 19 years, the theme of these hikes is that each one of them is somehow connected with a previous one, and in that time I have covered 15,000 miles within five different states. It's been long overdue connecting into Connecticut, and we will finally do this.
The hike Saturday 1/9 will be between  Pawling and the Connecticut line. Future hikes will lead us farther into the state, with several plans coming together.
Then, on Sunday 1/17, we will cover the next bit of the former New York, Ontario, and Western Railroad's Scranton Division, now the O&W Rail Trail, between Starlight and  Union Dale PA. We've been tracing much of this rail line periodically over the years, as well as the great Lackawanna Heritage Trail, which this fits into. It will be a lovely hike, mostly flat on the old rail bed, with both mixed hardwood forests and pastoral settings, as well as a few historic villages.
The following week, 1/24, is the first 911 Memorial Trail, noted above.
I am still working on details for the final weekend in January, but stay tuned, it's coming up!
Other stuff to get worked up over: twentieth annual Warren Railroad hike, or 19 Year Anniversary Hike on March 27th, then a Ricketts Glen weekend group camping trip in April with food by Scott Trinkle!
Hope to see you all soon!

M'ke