Hike #1051; Warren Glen to Asbury

Hike #1051; Warren Glen to Asbury

6/25/17 Warren Glen to Asbury with Tea Biscuit (Scott Helbing), Amanda Lance, John Kosar, Wilma Vargas, James Quinn, Justin Gurbisz, Ellie Zabeth, Galya, Sarah Jones, and Tom ?

Our next hike would be a Saturday night point to point trip. I had planned it so that it would end at the home of our dear friend Lowell Perkins, however he ended up fortunate with good fortune with a vacation. Sometimes we just have too many good things going on and can’t do them all.
Regardless, we did the hike and parked on School Street in Asbury, then shuttled from there to the west, to Musconetcong Gorge to start the hike on Dennis Road.

Little falls at Scout Run

The main body of this hike as I had it planned was the Highlands Trail, the 170 plus mile trail that connects the Hudson River by Storm King Mountain in NY with the Delaware River at Rieglesville PA. Plans are in place to extend it beyond the Hudson and Delaware in both directions, but most consider just the main mid section to be what counts for the trail as of now. The section to the west of where we were is mostly just road walk, so I picked it up to do the section where it starts to get really great, at Muscy Gorge.
The trail goes into the woods at a hairpin turn on Dennis Road. It can be a bit rugged.

View in Muscy Gorge

We followed it to Scout Run, and I stood in the water. Beyond there it gets steep again for a bit, and then gradually descends past one limited view point before reaching Pine Run.
Musconetcong Gorge is probably the worst blazed park in Hunterdon County as the Highlands Trail blazes are the only ones that make any sense. Many trails have two colors, and others have three. People get lost up there constantly trying to follow the mess that the county has created.
When I worked for Hunterdon, I was copied on an e mail from someone that had gotten lost. From the e mail, I could clearly tell that they had gone on the white blazed trail (paint blazes) to Pine Run and went down hill. The problem is the county does not acknowledge this trail any more, but it’s still in regular guide books that are in print. The people in charge decided it was best to just reblaze all the trails, and so they pulled the absolute IDIOT move and changed the colors of all of them.
Not only did they change the colors of all of the trails, they left the old blazes up too! In some cases, some trails ended up having three different colors, and to make things worse, double blazes the way Hunterdon does them don’t mean trail turns, they mean start or end of trail.
I brought it up that it was irresponsible of the county to re-blaze everything knowing that publications by NY/NJ Trail Conference, Appalachian Mountain Club, and others would be the most used trail guides, and be in print for years with what would now be the WRONG information. I was simply told that this was not their responsibility.
So, since that time people have continued to get badly lost in the gorge, and we even came across one of those hikers on this occasion. We thought we might have had him coming along to join us, but he opted instead to turn back to his car.

Highlands Trail on Staats Road

Before we reached where the trail emerges on Staats Road, but after Pine Run, newcomer Tom had his dog run off on him. He was fortunately able to find it and soon met up with us. We hung out at Staats Road for a short while because we had a couple of people meeting us at the intersection ahead.
We continued walking, and the Highlands Trail went to the left on Schaaf Road, which has a wide area of nice sidewalk. The trail follows the road to the west for a little bit, then turns right into the western portion of the Sweet Hollow Preserve, through open farm lands.

View in Sweet Hollow Preserve

We turned right along the fields, then left heading to the south. The trail goes through a little swath of woods, then makes it’s way out onto yet another field and goes straight across.

Highlands Trail, Sweet Hollow Preserve

We entered another tree line, and the trail follows the top of a stone row and crosses one more open area before descending into Sweet Hollow itself.
The section ahead is quite nice, and has been a spot we’d visited many times. There are the ruins of a Japanese Garden House along the trail, just to the left after an old stone foundation of a much older home. Today, the old house is very badly collapsing, but the first time we had found it, it was still standing fine and was full of all sorts of interesting little trinkets.

The old stone ruins with garden house behind

It wasn’t in great shape the first time we’d found it about nine years ago, but it was far better than now. There is really no roof, and the floor will collapse if walked on. The weather is slowly turning it into just a pile of rubble.
We had a look around a bit at the place, then made our way back to the trail and started heading gradually down hill to cross over the Sweet Hollow Brook below. The trail then comes out to Sweet Hollow Road and turns left for a bit, where Sarah met up with us and parked her car.

Garden House, 2009

Sweet Hollow Road has a few houses that have been abandoned, but it looked like this time a couple of the formerly abandoned ones are lived in again, which is nice.

Garden House, 2017

We continued down the road just a bit more, and the Highlands Trail cuts to the left, up hill into the eastern portion of the Sweet Hollow Preserve. It picks up an old road and passes an old chimney before heading into a lovely little swamp area.

Garden house

We weaved back and forth through the wetlands, crossed a power line, and then emerged along Rt 579 where the Highlands Trail turns to the right briefly. It then turns to the left to follow Turkey Hill Road heading gradually down hill to the east.
We continued on this road until we got to the old spring house at the entrance to the NJ Audubon Society’s Deer Path Sanctuary, where the Highlands Trail turns right up hill. After a break, we turned right and started following it up hill through the overgrown Autumn Olives.

Sweet Hollow Preserve

We peaked the top of the hill and descended to Tunnel Road, where the Highlands Trail turns to the left along the roadway.
The group was really cool and I figured they might be up for going to the old Musconetcong Tunnel, so I posted the question to the group. If we went, we would skip the Highlands Trail over Jugtown Mountain and add the option mile in, mile back through the longest railroad tunnel completely in New Jersey.
The Musconetcong Tunnel was once the longest tunnel in the Eastern US. It was built by the Easton and Amboy Railroad, which later became Lehigh Valley Railroad, and completed in 1875.
The Lehigh Valley Railroad built a newer tunnel and opened it in 1928, and the old one was abandoned, or used by other vehicles to get through to the other side for a time.

Historic postcard image of Musconetcong Tunnel, 1913

Everyone was keen on the tunnel idea, and I had an entire group, save for Justin, who had never been through it. Justin was already through it earlier the same day.
We hurriedly went down the access road and got over by the tunnel mouth. Amanda was having some leg trouble, and actually shouldn’t have been walking, because she’d had a motorcycle accident, but she made it this whole way with weird bandages.

1958 tunnel image from West Jersey history page

A few of us started going through the tunnel. It’s full of water, but it’s at least not as bad as either Oxford or Manunka Chunk on the old Lackawanna main. Tea Biscuit was having a fun time getting our entire jaunt through the tunnel on video, which was hilarious.

Tunnel

After a short bit, it ended up just being Tea Biscuit, John and I going through. Tea Biscuit had never been through this tunnel with me for some reason, which is kind of crazy because it’s the longest one and he’s covered more miles with me than most anyone.
It seems that whenever I did a hike that went through it, he either somehow didn’t make it out or on one occasion when we were planning to go through, we didn’t make it to it and skipped it to go another way.
The three of us made it all the way through to the other side, and then turned around to head back. I always forget how long the tunnel really is until I end up going through it again. It seemed extra long because we went through it twice this time.
Once we got back out the other side, Tea Biscuit and Amanda cut out somehow, and th erest of us continued on. We headed back to Tunnel Road and then went across Rt 173. We took Asbury-West Portal Road east to Valley Station Road, and turned to the left.
I didn’t realize it, but we paused and took a break and somehow left without John! The rest of us got on the tracks, and when I realized he wasn’t with us, James and I went back to find him right where we left him.

1906 dated postcard of Ludlow Station NJ

We continued on the old Jersey Central Railroad line, now out of service, east toward Asbury. I’d been walking this line since I was very little with my grandfather. I remember I dragged an evergreen tree for miles just because I wanted to bring it to my grandmother who made wreaths at Christmas time.

Musconetcong Tunnels when both in service, 1920s.

We passed where Ludlow Station used to be, then turned left on the road to head down hill into Asbury. I like walking this route because it’s the route the townspeople used to walk to get to the station so many years ago. It’s really an historic walking route.
We turned right at the intersection out to River Road, and there is a nice access to the Musconetcong River straight ahead, and so we went in one last time to cool off. From there, we turned left and went across the bridge into Asbury. We checked out the steps down to the former graphite mill platform and I pointed out the nice swim spots there, but we continued back to the cars anyway from here.
Very quickly we were back at the cars and on our way back home. This had been a really good, fun trip, and also a real eye opener for the passage of time.
The garden house is almost down. Musconetcong Tunnel, when I first went through it, was passable by regular truck, and now was blocked off an completely inaccessible from the east portal. Trail sections that I initially cleared in successional meadows are now woods. The mill where we finished was now part of a River Resource Center.
For some reason people tend to expect things to stay exactly the same. With everything changing, I’m just glad the experiences I’m having having lost the spark. There are times we’re laughing harder than ever, and we can preserve that part of it, we’ll be fine with just about any change.