3/29/9 Walpack Center-Fairview Lake with Jillane Becker, Mark "Bobo" Godfrey, Jean Fletcher, Chris Kroschinski, Kyle "Carlos" Zalinsky, "Amish Paul" Hassler, Ron Phelps, Shelly Janes, Christina Manley, "DJ Ray" Cordts, Eric Pace, Jim "Mr. Buckett" Mathews, and ?.
This next Kittatinny trip, from Walpack Center to Fairview Lake, was another for which the original journal entry was lost, but I rewrote, and facebook lost it again, so again I have to try to recall.
On this one, Jillane wanted to plan a hike, but she came up with Walpack Ridge and a couple other things, and so I slapped together a trip that would focus on the stuff she wanted to do while still connecting and hitting other places I'd wanted to see that fit into the theme.
We met at the Blair Creek Preserve of The Nature Conservancy just above the Sussex County line and at the base of the Kittatinny Ridge near the old Fairview Lake scout camp. I think we met some of the group earlier in Footbridge Park in Blairstown because it was tough to find the location based on any description so I figured meeting a better known place would be better. We then headed to Blair Creek, and from there to Walpack Center ot start off.
Walpack Center is a "ghost town" in the Kittatinnies in the heart of Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, vacant mostly since the seizure of land by the federal government for the creation of the ill fated Tocks Island Dam project. Defunct by Carter in 1979 and officially deauthorized in 1992 under Clinton, the buildings throughout the park are deteriorating with no real direction.
From that starting point, we would head across Rt 615 and up what was known as Military Road, once a much longer road that went further across the state as a tactical route between the main fortification site at Van Campen's on the Delaware River to areas east.
We made our way uphill to the northern leg of the Walpack Ridge Trail heading to the east. It starts off as a footpath that goes along a small ridge with a swamp down in between. I believe we spotted a bear crossing the swamp as we went through.
The trail becomes a road and enters what was once the Thunder Mountain School, sort of an art school off of Thunder Mountain Road.
We checked out the first abandoned building, which I'd never bothered going through before this time. then continued along the trail which came out to an area in a field along the Thunder Mountain Road. At the east end, Thunder Mountain Road is signed as such, but originally it was Ridge Road and went all the way through from Kuhn Road to Old Mine Road parallel with Rt 615. Only segments of it are now passable via auto.
We walked toward an old barn over off of the side road to the art school, and it had recently collapsed pretty badly. We'd checked it out when it was still standing strong on my hike through in 2003.
From there, we walked across a somewhat overgrown field I had remembered to have been wide and open and reached an area of art chairs. The chairs and sculptures all had various colored pieces of pottery glued all over them, and are quite interesting.
From here, we made our way by another building and then back out to Thunder Mountain/Ridge Road. We then followed the roadway west, back toward Military Road in the direction we had come. It was in reasonable shape for all of this stretch.
Even beyond Military Road, it was still in pretty good shape, similar to how I'd found it the last time I hiked through on it.
We came upon a barn on the left of the old road that I'd seen before, but it too this time was collapsed. We stopped to check it out a bit before moving on. This was apparently once part of the Bunnell Farm. Another larger barn used to be across the road, and it was collapsed on my previous visit. It looked all to be gone this time.
We continued on the old road, and then Heater Road came in from the left, another dirt road. From here, it was a drivable road for a bit again. Just ahead and on the left was the old Richard Layton House, a beautiful old farm house and several barn buildings. The house was apparently once used as a restaurant, but closed down at some point. I can't remember the details of what had happened there, but I've seen the brochures and used to have one on the venue.
We looked around the house, then headed over to the barns, which were in pretty good shape, but could use a little help.
Inside, it was like it had been used more recently for Halloween events or haunted hay rides or something. There was an enormous paper mache spider hanging from the ceiling, and a coffin leaning up against a near wall. We were running around and being silly, just having a good time.
This was Chris "Cupcake" Kroschinski's first hike with us, and I remember him kind of acting too coolf or it, and made a statement that we were "acting like a bunch of twelve year olds". That was one of the reasons I started calling him "Cupcake", because if I gave him a slightly gay pet name I figured he would lighten up. He had known Jillane prior from abandoned mine exploring, but it was the first time meeting the rest of us.
The silly name seemed to work with him, because it didn't take long at all for him to start acting ridiculous with the group and he turned out to be one of the most fun people to be around.
We moved on from the old barns on Ridge Road, which almost seemed to disappear to the west. It was still shown on the NY/NJ Trail Conference maps of the area, but we could barely even tell there was a road there.
We bushwhacked, and sometimes had to go onto the slope to the right of the former road because it was so badly overgrown and covered in fallen logs and brush. Toward the end, we made a longer deviation from it through some evergreens that provided us with enough cover that we wouldn't have to bushwhack as bad. We took a break under them and I did inverted sit ups from one of the trees.
From here, we made our way out to Old Mine Road, which is dirt at this point, at a location known as Auns Landing. We turned left on Old Mine Road only for a few moments out to where it hits Pompey Road. We turned right on Old Mine Road, which is paved there, and kind of now looks like a continuation of Pompey Road, and then turned left uphill on an old driveway.
I'm not sure who lived up there, or if anything was ever up there, but this driveway led on a gradual climb up Pompey Ridge. We didn't really find anything at the top of it. If there was a house, it was certainly demolished long ago.
We went off trail through evergreens from there, over the ridge, and then headed down the other side somewhat steeply.
On the way down, it must have been Jillane that noticed some excellent fossils close to the surface. We collected a few of them, brown pieces of rock with little seashells in them.
We reached Rt 615 at a point near the intersection with Haneys Mill Road. I think Shelly and the new guy might have cut out early to head back somewhere in this area but I can't quite remember all who went back. I can't remember the name of the new guy that joined us either on it.
We continued on Haneys Mill Road to Mountain Road, which is dirt, and turned across the Big Flat Brook. We then headed to the intersection with Donkeys Corners Road where we turned right. It was accessible for the first bit to the right to a turn around point, and then closed just up there. My plan was to head out there only a short distance and then climb up the Kittatinny Ridge way way of the Fuller Brook to Woods Road Trail.
I suspected this stream would have waterfalls on it because of its substantial flow.
I was not disappointed.
We climbed the creek, sometimes literally in the waterfalls, and it had no less than fifteen significant cascades and falls as we headed up. Probably more like 19. It was fortunate that it was a warm enough day that it didn't much matter getting in the mess. It was a fantastic traverse up the falls. My brother Bobo was there and did great for his first really significant hike with us.
We reached a beaver dam and wetland at the top before getting to Woods Road Trail, and then made our way up Hemlock Pond Trail to Crater Lake on the Appalachian Trail. We were on the Appalachian Trail for a short distance before turning right on the old woods road that made its way into Camp Ken Etiwa Pec, originally a boy scout camp founded in the 1930s, and then later used by YMCA followed by Student Conservation Association. It had somewhat recently been abandoned, and our friend Cory Salveson was one of the last counselors over the camp. I wanted to walk through and have a look before it got wrecked.
The first lodge building was the oldest one in the area, from the 30s. The trail took us out right behind it. The next ones were in awful shape and collapsing badly. It was getting dark by the time we got there, so we didn't get to looking around a whole lot. One larger one by Long Pine Pond was collapsed badly as we approached it, but all of the other buildings as we moved on were in great shape, and unscathed it seemed.
We continued out the access road from the lake, over the Long Pine Pond Dam, then to Flatbrook-Stillwater Road. The road led us to the left across the Appalachian Trail, and it is abandoned going steeply down a switchback of the ridge to reach the bottom. We followed this route, and then reached the entrance to the Fairview Lake YMCA camp.
As I recall, we couldn't go through on that and there was a caretaker who found us. We somehow had a ride, probably from him, over to some of the cars so the rest of us could get picked up. Even though we didn't make it to the other side of Fairview Lake, this was still a really great time, and led to more related explorations to come.
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