3/8/9 Stokes/High Point/Mashipatcong Bogs; Deckertown Tpk-Culver's Gap with Jillane Becker, Jason Itell, "commando Tom" Petrucci, Jason Kumpas, Jason-Michael "Jamal" Flintosh, Shelly Janes, Danny Janes, "DJ Ray" Cordts, Jim "Mr. Buckett" Mathews
This next hike would be a point to point in the Kittatinny Region covering some of those trails and routes we'd never gotten around to.
Unfortunately, the journal for this one was lost to the fire also, and then after being re-written, lost to the facebook change.
After meeting in Culvers Gap, we shuttled as few cars as possible to Deckertown Turnpike and the Appalachian Trail parking lot.
I was in an emotional state I'd been holding in; I drove my ex, Cathy, across the country to stay with her mother in Las Vegas and saw her for the last time only a couple of days before.
We started by heading in the informal connection of the Iris Trail out to the Mashipacong Shelter on the Appalachian Trail for our first little break. We then continued on the Appalachian Trail, which passes through a scrubby ridge top, for a little while. We followed this to the Cartwright Trail which descends the ridge to the west, and then reached the Howell Trail. Today, this is now part of the 17 mile Blue Mountain Trail. We followed this to the west for a while, then turned right on the Parker Trail.
Parker was one of those trails that connects Stokes State Forest and High Point State Park that I'd not finished before in all of the crazy loops and other hikes I'd done for so many years.
The trail was sort of a woods road at times, and other times more of a foot path. It didn't stay right on the ridge, but sort of a secondary plateau of the main ridge below. It passed by vernal pools and was generally pretty nice.
It was cold out and the vernal pools were still holding onto ice. Danny was throwing big rocks at the as we went by. It wouldn't last too long, because it was warm enough that many of us were in tee shirts.
The Parker Trail terminates at Ridge Road in High Point State Park, where we turned to the left for just a bit. From there, we took the oddball choice of going off trail at a corner into the swamp of the Parker Brook. We had to hop over bogs and such before reaching dry enough land to walk on the other side.
Although we were off trail, the woods were not too hard to walk through with limited understory.
We passed through woods and over some stone rows before coming out to an area where it seemed that someone was trying to build a wigwam. The frame of it was all there, but it was incomplete. This was part of the Mashipatcong Bogs Preserve.
We walked further and we could see Mashipacong Pond through the trees. There was a cabin on the right of the access road, and then a larger home type of cabin or lodge building to the right. I think it was called the Trail Blazers Camp or something.
We came back out to Deckertown Turnpike, and made our way to Rock Oak Trail. This odd trail leads to the turnpike from in Stokes and is one of the lesser used ones. We took it to I think it's called Coss Road. We turned left on that briefly, then right onto Deep Root Trail. This trail used to be a dead end, but was completed in the early 2000s to connect with the Criss Trail. We did just that, then followed Criss Trail to Lake Ocquittunk area, and then got on Blue Mountain Trail which crossed the Stony Brook on a couple of rocks. This trail would be the main trail name and part of the longer trail to incorporate other trails later.
We only followed Blue Mountain Trail a little while to the south before turning left again on Silver Mine Trail.
Silver Mine also used to not go through. It had three spurs, two blazed and one not, that led to ruins of the silver mine operation, the mine itself unblazed, and another to the brook nearby.
I'd done all of this stuff before, but it never really gets old to me.
We followed Silver Mine Trail to the Stony Brook Trail and turned left. The brook has some nice cascades on it and the one significant slide falls just before reaching Stony Lake.
I don't even quite remember what way we took back to the starting point, but I think we made our way up the ridge. I had never done the Tower Trail all the way up, and I think I made it a priority to actually do that trail this time, up to the Normanook/Culver Tower. We then took the Appalachian Trail back down to the parking lot in Culver's Gap to finish the day.
Following the hike, we all stopped at DJ Ray's place in Wantage or Ross Corner area to close the night.
No comments:
Post a Comment