4/5/9 Devil's Hole/Seven Pines Mountain/SGL 221 to Analomink/Penbrook Park with Jillane Becker, "Amish Paul" and Wyatt Hassler, Kyle Zalinsky, Shelly Janes, Sophie Daubner, Dana Janes, Ron Phelps, Jim "Mr. Buckett" Mathews, "Commando Tom" Petrucci, Larry Butler, and Eric Pace.
This hike was another where the journal entry was lost first to the fire, then to facebook deleting it somehow. SO I have to rewrite it.
This was really a pretty big undertaking, and actually biting off more than we could chew for one trip, but I was feeling pretty ambitious I suppose at the time. I wanted every hike to be a more over the top adventure, which sometimes worked, but I was definitely trying to force it more to keep Jillane's interest since she had none in some of the other stuff like the Morris Canal.
This would be the first time I'd try to do Devil's Hole and Seven Pines Mountain without Rich Pace with me. He had something else going on this weekend, and so I figured I'd go for it anyway.
In addition to going through the enormous State Game Lands 221, I also opted to add on the former Lackawanna Railroad branch to Mountainhome, and the Lackawanna main line down to Penbrook Park north of Stroudsburg. I'd walked the entire line from way into New Jersey to Penbrook, but hadn't done anything further. I eventually wanted to walk it all since it was the line that was the subject of the first hike.
We met down near Penbrook and I honestly don't remember where we had parked, then shuttled as few cars as possible north to State Game Lands 221 on Devil's Hole Road where I'd parked several other times up there.
We started by following the old woods road into the gorge, and then to the rocky creek.
Up the creek, there used to be a road much of the way, but it crosses over multiple times, so it's better off bushwhacking on one side to get through if one doesn't want to just keep wading. I of course always wade to make it easier on myself.
We went upstream, and the first real point of interest after a rough distance is the ruins of an old lodge, many claim to be part of a former prohibition era speakeasy. It had three or so floors of chimneys, and two chimney stacks still stand, which we always climb on.
We continued upstream from here, back and forth and trying not to get wet (some of us) until we reached the main waterfall. We took a nice break there, and I bushwhacked a little further upstream this time by myself to find there were two more waterfalls of smaller size I didn't know about.
We had to go back downstream from this point to a side stream to the east to continue.
We climbed through this mess and then made our way to a series of woods roads through State Game Lands 221 that brought us all over the place. I kind of lost my bearings in this area.
Shelly brought her daughter Dana for the first time here, and her friend Sophie, and they both handled it really well.
Somehow, probably because Ron was there and he knew how to get through much of it from having gone so many times too, we made our way to Cresco Heights, an outstanding overlook off the side of Seven Pines Mountain featuring the Delaware Water Gap an Camelback Mountain. We took a nice little break there.
From that point, we started heading along more woods roads gradually down Seven Pines Mountain. I think my plan was to get to the Mill Creek gorge, which I'd also hiked much of before, and then follow it down to the settlement of Mountainhome.
The road we ended up going down had a lot of cut wood, a sort of private camp area, and then a couple houses. We quickly made our way out that way and it took us into downtown Mountainhome.
We looked around briefly at the circle in town, but I wanted to move on and try to find the old Lackawanna Railroad branch to the settlement right away.
I was surprised that we were actually able to get on some of the old right of way behind buildings heading south parallel with Rt 390. It went behind businesses and a home, then it became a nice mowed path through woods that led us out to a side path and steps to a dam, which impounded water for the pond next to what is now Weiler Abrasives.
We continued tracing the right of way next to the pond on nicely mowed grass and came out to Cresco Station where it joined with the Lackawanna main line.
The station is now a museum and looks to be in really great shape. From there, we were just going to follow the tracks to the end.
Everyone was getting pretty winded at this point. We had done some really tough hiking, and it was still a long way to go. There was a side woods road that went off to the left through the woods parallel with the tracks, and so many of us followed that for a while.
Around the time we got to Henry's Crossing, there were side paths that were the original route of the Lackawanna.
When William Truesdale took over as President of the railroad after 1900, there were a lot of cutoffs and improvement projects that happened. Most notable were the New Jersey Cutoff and Halstead Cutoff, but lots of little ones occurred all over.
We took some of these little cutoffs in this stretch and headed through rock cuts around sharper turns rather than the later straightened routes.
Along the way, I tried climbing up an old signal tower, but after that we started getting separated. I think it ended up being only Kyle, Wyatt, and I to continue to the end. Dana's father was called by Shelly to come and scoop everyone up.
It was totally dark by the time we got back to Penbrook area and got picked up. I was exhausted, and everyone else wanted to go out to eat, so I just stayed in the car.
I'd definitely make an effort not to push for something that hard for a while without definitely posting it as such.
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