Hike #1049; Mount Olive/ITC to Long Valley

Hike #1049; Mount Olive/ITC to Long Valley

6/21/17 Mount Olive/ITC to Long Valley with Jason W. Briggs, Sue Bennett, Sarah Jones, Ken Zarouni, Dan Asnis, Anthony Auriemma, Jessica M. Collins, Celeste Fondaco Martin, Rob Gearhardt, Veena, and Jennifer Berndt

This next hike would be another point to point, again covering some stuff I was familiar with, but also adding a bunch of new things I’d been wanting to do for a while.
I’ve been looking at the hikes in terms of swim spots for one, and then for areas around them that I had been wanting to explore further. Putting these criteria together I come up with hikes that will it what I want to do.

Rain...but not on us

I came up with this one between International Trade Center, at Walmart, in Mt. Olive to Long Valley based on opportunities to get in water as well as preserves I had never hiked before, or had more to explore.
We met in Long Valley at Krauszers, and then headed north to the Mt. Olive Walmart to begin. It was raining somewhere off in the distance, and we could see the rain letting loose from the clouds from where we stood atop the high mound the Walmart and other businesses are on.

The trails in the Land Conservancy of NJ map

Anthony met us here. Together, we all walked out behind the Walmart and onto old Gold Mine Road, which used to be a through drivable route, but now was not. We walked by the Quickcrete place, which is what John Kosar works for, and continued on the road.

When we got toward the end of the closed off road, there was some equipment parked and the trail went off into the woods to the left. I did not realize it at the time, but apparently this trail continues through to the north almost to Rt 46 now. I have never been on that section, but I have already planned another hike where we will explore it.
We followed the trails to the south, and passed through what seemed like pretty deep woods, even though it was near development. There was alway a section in here that I couldn’t figure out, and it was further confusing because there was a new trail that branced off to the left, and another to the right. I found the above map to show some of this, but not all.

White trail

We got to a point where there was another trail, which was shown on past maps as “developers incentive”, and other mowed trails go off around the edges of former fields. The main white blazed trail is not well marked here, so I just kind of tried to go with memory of how we passed through. We turned to the right, then to the left and headed south to Flanders Road. Here, we turned right on the road and soon saw some other blazes. We continued to a side entrance to Turkey Brook Park and entered there. We took a break for people to use porta johns, then continued to the left, away from the main open field areas into more woods.
While on this, another trail went into the woods to the left. I’d never seen it, but I also didn’t see any blazes. I figured “why not?”, and so we turned down it.
Shortly, a lady walking her dog was coming toward us on the trail. She was wondering where we were going. I told her that we were headed toward Maiers Pond. She said “Well...this trail leads to my house...but you can follow it and turn right, and it’ll take you back to the white trail!”.
With her blessing, we followed this trail. It was actually a really nice route, and it was good to get off of the obvious path that I’m sure I’ve done and follow something different.

Maiers Pond

The trail took us to the main white trail, then down hill to a power line. I remembered this spot from before, but there wasn’t a crossing where I was expecting to find one. I think a connection to the trail along the Turkey Brook itself must have been eliminated.
We turned right on the power line and followed it to where the trail turned off left, crossed, and then passed through woods to an old road that leads to Maiers Pond. We turned left here to the pond, and I decided to take a swim. I think only Sarah wanted to go on other than me. I’d been severely missing out on swimming because of my leg issue, so it was good to be in.

Maiers Pond

I didn’t have a map in front of me, plus the trail system was quite different in ways than I had remembered it. I wanted to come out near the elementary school or by another development to the west, but the trails had a sort fo different plan.
We continued along the south side of the pond, and there was a trail going off to the right, probably to where I was expecting to get to, but there were now signs on them saying that this was not a trail. We opted instead to continue on the white blazed trail, which led along the south side of Maiers Pond to a beaver dam.

At Maiers Pond

From there, the trail turned to the right, away from the pond, and then weaved through the woods crossing over a small weaving tributary. Someone had spay painted the white blazes pink through this area, which was just further confusing compared to what is on the maps.
We just remained on this trail, which brought us out to Schoohouse Lane in a small development. I didn’t see it at the time, but apparently the trail crosses the road and continues over toward Mt. Olive High School from there.
I was not where I wanted to be. This was too far east. We had to backtrack the way we had come to Maiers Pond again.
We got to the north side of the pond, followed the woods road up hill toward the park, and then found an informal path off to the left that took us out to Farmstead Court, a cul de sac.
We followed the road to a right turn on Vista Drive. Jen met up with us here after some problems trying I had figuring out where we were ending up (I initially told her Schoolhouse Lane, not at all expecting that we’d be near it, and then told her elsewhere!).
Anthony cut out here and got a ride, and the rest of us followed Vista to Mt. Olive Road where we turned left.

Mt Olive church

The intersection of Mt. Olive Road and Flanders-Drakestown Road was actually the center of the village of Mount Olive itself. It was founded in 1768 on land donated by James Heaton. Both Baptists and Presbyterians shared a single log church here until the 1850s when each built their own newer church at the same site, with the Mount Olive Academy standing directly between them. Sadly, the church to the west of the academy building, which had been converted to a residence, burned down only a few years ago, maybe 2011.

The old church

The church right on the corner was undergoing renovations and still had scaffolding all over it, so that was nice to see.
The other one burned and basically the flames went right through the roof and gutted it. The sides were still standing, and I had some hope that they might restore it one way or another, but that never happened and what was left was demolished. The academy building is still in pretty good shape, although it doesn’t look like it’s ever used for anything. Jillane grew up just a few houses away, and I used to check the building out regularly, and really never saw anything going on.

Mt. Olive Academy

We walked past the fronts of these buildings and then cut into the cemeteries. I had been wanting to do a hike where we walked through these cemeteries for a really long time, but never got around to it. This was the perfect opportunity to put that together.
We walked the length of the second newer cemetery, then got back on Flanders-Drakestown Road for just a bit before making a left hand turn onto Stephens Mill Road heading south.
This is a beautiful road, and I’m not sure that a single car went by us the entire time we walked it. I’ve always loved it, so wanted to incorporate it into the hike.
While walking we passed some lovely sites including a house that I felt looked like it had a colonial main frame. The owner was outside working, so I asked him. He was happy to give information; he smiled and said “Nooo, it was around 1850 or so it was built”. As if we were disappointed, he went on to say “But...the sculpture who created the Atlas statue at Rockafeller Center lived here for a time...”.
That was pretty cool. I figure he must have meant NJ native Rene Paul Chambellan, who was one of two guys responsible for the creation of the Greek Titan statue. The other was the principal creator, Lee Lawrie. The Atlas was installed in 1937.

Stephens Mill

When we got to the bottom of the hill, we crossed over the South Branch of the Raritan River, quite small at this point, and then passed an historic mill building. I figure this must bee the Stephens Mill for which the road takes it’s name. I can’t find any historic documentation on the mill or year it was built, but it’s pretty old. The house just past the mill was likely the miller’s house in the old days. The stone wall in front of it has an old mill wheel built into it.
We continued ahead to the intersection with River Road. We turned right here briefly.

Abandoned road

The next leg of the trip would be another weird part I’d been looking at doing for a while. After the brief right on River Road, we turned left onto a long abandoned road that used to go all the way through to Drakestown Road. This one is shown on some maps as Yalda Court, but the main road going through is Shop Lane.
The land up on this hill had been somewhat recently preserved along with some of the other South Branch properties, and I’d been wanting to have a look at it. It turned out not to be anything I was expecting, but still interesting.
The road was not only horribly overgrown with a lot of Japanese Barberry, it was also washed out. A spring and it’s tributaries were all flowing into the entire lower end of the road, causing both washout and plant growth. Fighting up through this old road was probably the most difficult portion of the hike.
We managed to stay on it for a bit, and eventually had to move off to the right, where we skirted the edge of a very tall deer fence. It was surprising to see something so substantial erected up there.
When we got to the end of the fence and went around, and the road cleared out as an access road, we found that there was a formal trail into the property that required going through a weighted lift gate in the fence. We didn’t have time to do this particular trail on this occasion, but we would return to it on a future one. Ken told me later he went back and explored it, and had some thoughts on another hike up there.
We walked from here on the gravel lane access and out onto the paved regular part of Shop Lane. This was an apparent stalled development. There was only one house on the left side as we headed out, and one that probably predated the community on the right when we got to River Rd. Off to the left, we could see stalled development in the form of modern block foundations, where work looks as thought it simply stopped some ten or so years ago and never started back up.
When we got to River Road, we simply turned left. Our next leg would be another new park.

Maureen Ogden Preserve

I watched my map closely, and when I could see we were skirting the property of NJ Conservation Foundation’s Maureen Ogden Preserve, we turned to the left into the woods. It was only a short distance in before we reached the Blue Loop Trail.

Blue Loop

Maureen Ogden was a conservationist with countless years of service for these environmental and preservation issues. She was involved with not only NJCF, but also served as a Commissioner on Palisades Interstate Park Commission among others.
The trail system is actually quite big, much to my surprise, because I had never hiked a single bit of it. I wished we had reached this preserve with more day light to enjoy it more, but it only means we’ll have to return for another hike another day.

Maureen Ogden Preserve

The trail led across a few puncheons as we headed to the right. It weaved through lovely woods and soon emerged at a large open field. The corners for the trail were not very well marked, so I relied on looking at the map to be sure of where we should be going.
We turned right along the first field and followed it to the north a bit, then turned left and into another section of woods heading to the west. At one field section, we went straight when we should have gone to the right, and I fortunately caught it by looking at aerial images on both mine and Dan’s phone. Dan had a larger screen with sharper image, which was a benefit to me at this time. It was just about dusk and I wanted to be sure of where we were heading.
We were alright once we were away from that one field section. We went through more woods, and came out along more fields. One last field section gave way to a bit more trail, which had us descend to Fairview Ave.
This was not a busy road. We had an easy time following it down hill to the southwest. We didn’t pass anyone really until we reached the intersection with Naughright Road. We turned left here heading down hill, and it didn’t take long before we reached the Columbia Trail, the poorly named rail trail following the historic High Bridge Branch of the Central Railroad of NJ.
We had a wonderful relaxing walk along the High Bridge Branch heading west toward Long Valley.

Historic image of hub factory in Long Valley on High Bridge Branch

This section of the hike was always rural, even in the days of the railroad. Not until we reached Long Valley area did we approach any industry. We could see the ambient lights of Frazier industry, which works with metal nearby, but other than that nothing.
That used to be the site of many industries. Once a hub factory, later Welch Farms, where my dad once worked.

Station in German Valley

Back in those pre-World War days, the town was known as German Valley. It was a reasonably busy station in it’s day, with it’s own share of drama and fatalities like any railroad location.
We left the railroad bed and turned left on the Gillette Trail, which headed near where a house used to be, then out to an old farm bridge over the South Branch of the Raritan.

Crash in Long Valley

At this bridge, we had one final swim before finishing the hike. This is a really deep spot in the river, where the water backs up a bit after the bridge. It was a nice little relaxing spot with only a little over a mile left to go for the hike.

Sarah is checking out some corvettes in Long Valley

We continued on the trail up hill through old orchard areas, and soon came to the open field before reaching the Gillette Trail parking area on 513. We simply crossed over and started walking the couple of blocks worth of distance back to the Krauszer’s parking area.
When we got there, a Washington Township police officer pulled up to us wondering what was going on. He mentioned all of the stores were closed, and I explained that we couldn’t have cars parked on park land after dark, but that we were doing a night hike. He was really friendly and quite interested in what we were doing. I think he said something about it being the night with the meteors too, though I didn’t see any. It was also the Summer Solstice, and he said it was cool that we were out for that.
It was really nice to have another hike that overall went pretty well again. I was pretty dead tired again from the crazy schedule, but still plenty to look forward to and keep me going.