7/29/17 Little Mud Pond to Loch Lamond Poconos with Corrin Dylnicki, Kralc Leahcim (Lerch), Jim “Uncle Soup” Campbell, Jason Itell, Megan Itell, John Kosar, ? Kosar, Celeste Fondaco Martin, Gina Zuvich, Janet Lynn McCourt-Finsen, Doug DeGroff, Galya ?, Karl Franz (Red Sean) Reardon, James Quinn, Marina Font, Anne ?, Sy P. Deunom, Angelo Ezzo III, Karen Ezzo, Sarah Jones, Denise Saraseti Pangborn, and Corrin’s friend Alex.
This next hike was manufactured at first because my friend Corrin was now living on the Pocono Rim and she invited us to have a hike to her home where we could have an event. I thought it over, and when I was looking at the area on maps one night, I just started looking at some of the Pocono Rim stuff I’d wanted to do.
Little Mud Pond
I knew of a way that with minimal road walk, according to maps, I could connect Delaware State Forest with Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. I had been looking for a way of doing it in the past, and when I finally did make the connection in May of 2008, I used a route out of Bushkill Falls to Taminent.
This way might even be better I figured, so I came up with a route I thought would work.
Our route in Delaware State Forest
My plan was to begin at Little Mud Pond. From there, Burnt Mills Trail would lead us south to Painter Swamp Trail, then we could continue around to Big Bear Swamp Natural Area on Thunder Swamp Trail, and continue on Bear Swamp Trail to the Checho Road. The map didn’t show it connecting, but I figured it must connect in some way. If not, it wouldn’t be a far bushwhack.
Burnt Mills Trail
This hike was looking like a real winner to me. I made the meeting point a local store, Arnold’s Country Mini Mart, so people could get food. We wouldn’t be passing anything else along the way, so I wanted to be sure people could get stuff, and I also didn’t want a mess of people showing up at Corrin’s home. I didn’t want the location posted on line either.
We shuttled cars from the store to Corrin’s place at Loch Lamond, and had a bit of trouble parking cars because there were so many of us and it was just too many vehicles. We did work it out though, and soon we were on our way shuttling to Little Mud Pond.
Burnt Mills Trail
I immediately walked over to the boat launch area at the pond. I had never seen the place before, and it was quite pretty. I walked into the water right away. It was already a hot day, and I looked forward to getting into the water a lot.
From there, the dirt road that accessed the pond led back out to Silver Lake Road. We crossed that, turned barely left, and then continued south on the Burnt Mills Trail, which is a multi-use ATV trail. I figured it would be a nice and easy start to the hike heading south.
Informal trail
We continued to the south on the trail, and I watched my phone GPS closely to see where we should turn. My plan was to come out to the south somewhere near the pond at Painter Swamp, but we made a bit of a wrong turn somewhere along the way.
I was watching the map and where it looked like we should turn onto a woods road that went to the left to Flat Ridge Road. I saw one at first, and knew it wasn’t soon enough, but when we came to another, I didn’t want for us to go too far and add extra miles. Jason got ahead a bit, and we soon caught up with him; he was taking care of a dog and so I think he was trying ot tire it out. Lerch assured me “Don’t worry...this is Jason; he’ll find something to fuck with and stop”. Of course, Jason always finds things that begs to be messed around with.
Herbaceous opening
When we were all together (Jason wasn’t messing with anything. That I know of.), we turned left on another trail that went off through more young growth woods full of Birch and Beech. We then emerged into a giant clearing.
This was a problematic point because I didn’t want to be in one of the state forest herbaceous openings. It’s very hard to walk if we are not on one of the cut management roads. Lerch went ahead and led the way through the mess, over logs, through brush, and eventually got us out to said management road.
Little Bushkill Creek Bridge
We turned left on the road, which was semi-overgrown, but not impossible. In fact, anything was better than the mess we had just gone through. The woods road led us out to dirt surface flat ridge road, and we turned right, although we should have turned left to reach Painter Swamp.
Regardless, this worked out fine, because we turned right on Coon Swamp Road. This would be a nice break from the mess we had just gone through to reach the point, a nice wide woods road. We would take it gradually down hill, ignoring the yellow blazed trails to the left and right, and reach the Thunder Swamp Trail, orange blazed.
I had done the entire Thunder Swamp Trail in the past as a series, incorporating it and other trails into three full day hikes to cover the entire main route and Big Bear Swamp route. Two of them were day hikes, and one was an overnight.
The last time I had done this particular section was in Spring of 2009, and it was one of the times when I had fallen and messed up my knee, which resulted in my having Chondromalacia Patella. Four separate incidents have led to the knee problems I have today. First was breaking my ankle/lower leg on the growth plate, after which my knee was never the same.
Injury on Thunder Swamp Trail in 2009
The second injury was this one, where I jogged most of the Big Bear Swamp loop, a 3.2 mile loop in Big Bear Swamp Natural Area. I was going too fast and took a bad spill, then limped my way back out. The next time I whacked it bad while trying to jump over a cemetery wall on a hike in Hampton back in January 2010. The final time was jumping from the second story of my house when it was burning in August of 2010. I later found out my inner thigh muscle was dead and I had to undergo electric shock therapy to bring it back to life.
Once we had our bearings, we turned left down the Thunder Swamp Trail, which brought back all of these memories for me, heading to Big Bear Natural Area.
Thunder Swamp Trail was first cleared in the 1970s by the Youth Conservation Corps, and is today maintained by Pocono Outdoor Club and state forest volunteers. The main trail is about thirty miles, and there are many other side trails. We followed this lollipop look to the east and soon crossed over Little Bushkill Creek on a high foot bridge.
Little Bushkill Creek bridge
Little Bushkill Creek is the same one that flows to Bushkill Falls to the south. We had a nice little break here and took a dip in the creek, waited for others to catch up.
From this point, the hike would get a bit more complicated, because we’d be turning off of the Thunder Swamp Trail some time soon, and I wasn’t sure if it would be blazed, and we’d have to follow my phone GPS as we moved on. I tried to load the maps ahead of time so I’d have them clear by the time we got to this point. There’s no service in the deep woods here, and I barely had enough imagery to be useful.
Little Bushkill Creek
We started along the trail on the left fork. Part of me considered taking the right fork, which was just about three miles longer, but then I decided against it because there was just too much questionable stuff coming up.
As we walked, there were more than one side path going off to the left. The map only showed the one, Bear Swamp Trail. Still, we managed to follow a good route to the east. There were no blazes at all, and we eventually got to a place where we could see houses. I wasn’t expecting that at all.
We headed past the one house, which didn’t seem like anyone was home, out in back. The woods road was overtaken by their back yard area. We then bushwhacked to the right.
Confused...
It wasn’t all that long before we reached another woods road heading to the north.
It was thanks to Angelo and John, who both had some sort of maps on his phones that I did not, and that worked off line apparently, that we found our way to this. John had the state forest maps working well, and Angelo had something that looked like Pen pilot that showed us that, sure enough, the Checho Road did in fact connect with the road that was known as Big Bear Trail, it just wasn’t shown on state forest maps doing so.
Dry Meadow on Checho Road
This was quite literally a forgotten corner of Delaware State Forest. It was some nicely shaded deep woods at first, which then gave way to scrubby lighter woods with exposed mantle rock below. The area was reportedly known as Dry Meadow.
As we walked, Angelo updated me on where we were as per his phone, and I compared with mine. He then noted that there was a fire tower shown on the map that was not on mine!
We continued on the woods road, and we came to a side road that led to where the fire tower was supposed to be, and some of us turned to check it out.
Dry Meadow Fire Tower site
Unfortunately, the fire tower was long gone. The concrete bases for the tower were still standing at a pile of rocks, and there was even a utility pole that would have carried electric or phone or whatever to it, but it’s long gone.
Checho Road
John did find a nice snake skin on a rock along the road to the tower, so that was kind of cool.
The woods road had some places where there were two options, but it was just ATVs that came in and made parallel trails to the main one. We continued on the most obvious route, and it was taking us right toward where we needed to be, which was a hairpin turn on Park Road near Richard Lake, just a short distance west of the Childs Park section of Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.
I wasn’t counting on there being houses in this area for some reason, and it ended up seeming kind of weird because the Checho Road became people’s driveways. We just quietly made our way from them out to Park Road and turned to the left without incident.
Along Park Road
We walked Park Road very easily along, and we could see some of Richard Lake on the right down through the trees. It was less than a mile before we got to George W. Childs Park.
Unfortunately, when we got there we found out that they did not allow dogs. Jason and Celeste would have to take their dogs out and around on the road to meet us at the other side.
Factory Falls
Corrin and her friend Alex met up with us at this point. We waited for everyone to catch up, and then moved on along the trail system. It was probably the busiest I have ever seen it at this park section. There were rangers out and about everywhere.
1930s view of Woolen mill
The earliest industry came to the area that became Childs Park in 1823 when the Brooks family began operating a woolen mill, which was quite uncommon outside the city. It remained in business until 1832.
By the time Philanthropist purchased the land in 1892, the building was already abandoned. Childs saw the area as an opportunity to make a park open to anyone, not just well-to-do land owners. Childs’ wife, Emma, donated the land to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and it was added to the National park land in 1983.
Woolen mill ruins
The ruins of the old woolen mill still stand within the park, though truncated down to about a third it’s height, probably done for safety. The original park entrance was stuck to the side of the old mill, and some of that still exists out in the woods.
Factory Falls
Factory Falls is named for the factory that once stood next to it. We crossed over a foot bridge and passed the ruins, and Factory Falls to our right. There were a lot of people around, so we didn’t stop too long to admire any of the falls except the lower one, Deer Leap.
Fulmer Falls
We continued along the nice walkways down hill to the east of Fulmer Falls, then crossed over Dingman’s Creek again below it, which afforded us another good view of the falls ahead.
The last time I had been to this site, it was closed because repairs were being done on the board walks and bridges. This time, an apparent new bridge had been installed just up from Deer Leap Falls with a triangular truss above it. We continued down stream from Fulmer Falls on the southwest side of the creek, then crossed over again on the new bridge. From there, we headed down to the bottom of Deer Leap Falls.
Deer Leap Falls
We took a long break at this point. I ran and got under the waterfall after it was taking too long. I think Red Sean joined me for that.
Lerch and Galya were behind, and I don’t think we waited for them at this point. We continued to follow the old trail down hill along the creek from here, which connected Childs Park with Dingmans Falls. Corrin said that one of the rangers said that it’s “Not illegal..but frowned upon”. I don’t mind a little bit of frowning, because it’s a beautiful and serene section of the creek to see.
I think we crossed the creek twice along the way, though it wasn’t really necessary. We met back up with Jason and Celeste at Milford Road and took a break there. I think I took a dip there as well. We then continued down stream along the creek to Doodle Hollow, where there is an abandoned road that crosses, and a foot bridge replaced the original road bridge. I recall taking another dip there.
I recall Lerch catching up with us at some point, but then falling behind again, and so we continued down stream toward Dingman’s Falls. We emerged at the top, and then followed the wooden walkways down to the bottom.
Dingman's Falls
A small secondary falls is off to the right on the wooden walkway coming down from the top of Dingmans Falls. We made it to the bottom, and I tried to regroup everyone.
A wooden spur trail at the bottom leads to a great outlook of the falls, another great outlook point. Not everyone stopped here, so we continued on down stream.
Dingman's Falls
It was really kind of too crowded to enjoy here, and so we continued to Silver Thread Falls near the entrance to this park area. Most of the group continued ahead to the parking lot by this point, and Lerch caught up with us at the base of Silver Thread Falls. We then continued on to the parking area to move on.
Fortunately, we had everyone back together at this point, because there is absolutely no way anyone would figure out what I had in mind from here on out. We walked down the access road from Dingman’s Falls, and then turned right onto the abandoned Johnny B. Road.
Silver Thread Falls
Johnny B. Road is one of those interesting roads that was abandoned because it really didn’t serve a purpose to get anywhere. There are no house on it now, and it has such a steep grade that maintaining it, especially in Winters, would be a nightmare.
The road is still paved, but more and more every year it is getting grown over with a layer of leaves, grass, and other vegetation. The occasional place still has exposed painted yellow lines to remind us that it was a road.
There is a small waterfall off to the left of the road, but it was not running strong this time, and everyone just blew on by it.
Soon, we reached the top of the steep hill where there is a pond on the left. A lot of the group was going ahead here, so I had to call them back. I had two options at this point for how to get to Loch Lamond. One was to simply follow the back roads, and the other was to go off trail and reach Wilson Hill Road to the south. My phone had died, so I would end up just making a best guess effort on which direction to Wilson Hill Road. It ended up making it a much longer bushwhack than I had anticipated doing when we had finished with it!
Abandoned Johnny B. Road
I should have headed south-southeast in order to reach Wilson Hill Road in short order, but instead I went south-southwest and we ended up in an expanse of woodlands in a swath between Wilson Hill Road and Mary Stuart Road. It was just about the worst south route we could take! Still, we managed to push on through, and then bushwhacked on out to Mary Stuart Road not very far from the Wilson Hill Road intersection. We continued on the road to the south, and then it was only a short walk to the left to get to the intersection to Loch Lamond. It was a relief to see the stone pillars at the entrance after that.
Loch Lamond
It was kind of neat to finally get to see the place back there. I guess it was abandoned for some time; we had hiked by the site several years back, 2010 or 11 I think, and I’d wondered what was there.
The place was really very nice and cozy, and reminded me of when I lived back at White Lake Natural Resource Area. A lot of the group left and opted not to stay for food, but Lerch, Galya, Sarah, Uncle Soup, and I forget all who else hung around. Additionally, Stephen Argentina and Christian Alexander showed up, and Scott Trinkle came to make food.
Party situations are awkward for me, and I didn’t hang out for very long. In fact, I was so dead tired that I went to my car and took a nap for a while. I only ate one taco that Scott made before heading out. Everyone tried to get me to stop by blocking me in, but I still got out somehow.
Overall, it was a great day though, with a great group. Doing this hike really opened my eyes to so much stuff I have to explore in the Delaware State Forest region of the Poconos, as my absense from there has been too long.
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