Hike #663; Spruce Run/Voorhees/High Bridge Loop

 Hike #663; Spruce Run/Voorhees/High Bridge Loop

11/16/12 Spruce Run/Voorhees/High Bridge Loop with Joe Tag, Gregg Hudis, and Ernie Philips Jr.

THe group with a large root ball on the Highlands Trail in Voorhees SP

This next hike would be another night one, this time between Spruce Run Recreation are and Voorhees in a loop.I've been doing night hikes for years, and it's just really cool to still have people showing up for night hikes, despite the shorter days, colder weather, and less than convenient conditions (still so much damage due to Super Storm Sandy). This hike went to prove that more seasoned hiker just might be tougher than the hiker in his twenties or thirties. Everyone handled it with the greatest of ease. It ended up being a really nice time, and we finished much faster than I'd anticipated.

For a time, I thought I wouldn't have friends up for this crazy stuff after my dear friend Kyle passed, but I was of course wrong, and we would all pay him a visit this night.

We met at the 24 hour lot at Spruce Run, and then Ernie, Joe, and Gregg piled into my Metromobile and headed over to the Spruce Run main office to start hiking. We headed over the hill and made our way to the Highlands Trail northbound. For the most part, the trail was easily passable, but there were more blow downs on the Spruce Run property to my great surprise than any of the other sections that we walked.We got around all of them, crossed the boat launch road, and continued briefly up Van Syckles Road to Serpentine Drive section. The section of the HT through Union Furnace Nature Preserve was actually in pretty good shape. I think the Spruce Run section was just bad because it was more open. Less big trees make them more susceptible to the wind, because the ground is mostly low lying Autumn Olive.We continued up hill to nice seasonal views of the reservoir, then continued down hill to the former mill race along Spruce Run Creek. The trail emerged at the parking lot where we'd met, and we continued on the trail route across Rt 31 and up Buffalo Hollow Road, then into Voorhees State Park.

As we headed onto the abandoned driveway where the HT enters that park, someone was parked there. A hunter came out of the woods as we were walking in. It wasn't totally dark yet, but it would be pretty soon. We followed the HT up hill, over the nice little bridge, and then out across Observatory Road, kicking branches out of the way as we went.When the HT reached the Cross Park Trail section, it was mostly clear and easy except for one section just beyond the power line which turned out to be one of the toughest parts of the hike, definitely the toughest for me. There was a huge mess of blow downs in one spot that we couldn't get through. We tried going around them, and somehow crossed over the trail, and kept searching. I ended up having to back track, and even without a flashlight (I can see better without it anyway) I was able to find the trail again. The others did a really good job of grouping up and getting back to me, and we crossed the next section pretty easily. The trail became much more obvious as we reached  Hoppock Grove. From there, we got off of the HT to follow the Brookside Trail, because it's wider and much easier to follow despite the dark. We kept on this until we got to the east side of the park, then followed the loop road and the edge of the fields out to Rt 513 to join the current HT route.We headed over to Bunnvale where we stopped for some snacks. I had unfortunately lost my debit cart (it was in  my car fortunately, I dropped it out of my pocket), and I had carried five dollars in my pocket, but I lost it when I took my phone out of my pocket on the stretch of 513 from the park to the store. We chatted with the guys running the store who thought what we were doing was pretty cool.We headed further down 513 along the trail, then cut to the right into Ken Lockwood Gorge WMA, along a woods road, also the HT route. I had trouble the last time I did this same hike because I couldn't see well where the trail turned off. Fortunately we had a bit of an easier time this time, and headed down hill. This section of the HT was the part with the least obvious tread, so it took us longer to navigate the section, and we relied on flashlights more here than elsewhere.

There were a couple of blow downs, but nothing major really, and we descended soon to Ken Lockwood Gorge. From there, we turned right to follow the Columbia Trail back toward High Bridge. We headed along Lake Solitude, then before reaching the end of the trail, we turned left on Taylor Steelworkers Historic Greenway, which I helped to develop with Union Forge Heritage Association. The trail was in pretty good shape, and volunteers had cleared some blow downs already, but there were some big ones at the bottom of the hill, evergreens with too many branches to really move (I went back a week later with Bill Honachefsky, VP of the organization, and we moved the trail around the outside of the trees, installed carsonite trail marker posts there and several other locations on the route, and did more blazing).We passed the TISCO building, crossed the Carnegie truss bridge the volunteers and I decked in 2009, and continued to Kyle's grave. Ernie and Gregg never met Kyle, but Joe knew him well, and had not yet been to the site. We took a moment here before moving along.We continued to the turn where the spur trail went to Solitude  House (Bill and I installed a post here later as well), and headed out into town to the right. Instead of continuing into the Nassau Tract, we headed through town and turned into Union Forge Park, then followed the streets through town. I gave a history talk about the area as we passed through, and I showed everyone where the High Bridge was which the town was named for. At the parking area at the southeast end of Columbia Trail, we followed the former rail bed out to the former CNJ track and followed them north to Cregar Road. Joe commented that the toughest part of the hike was climbing the ballast rock up to Cregar at the bridge. I was texting my work buddy Kevin "K Dawg" Ritz, since I heard emergency vehicles and he's an EMT in town, and let him know where we were. No sooner did we get to the top of the bridge, did Kevin show up in his Jeep, and we chatted for a bit.We continued from here down Cregar and along the golf course back to Rt 31. We tried to go out to the edge of the reservoir, but it was dark and the others weren't into doing that when we could see the cars in the parking lot just across the way. Note: Bill H told me that Union Furnace was actually at that causeway along the parking lot, and that it was on both sides of current Van Syckles Road. I had no idea, and have to go back and look at the site differently.We finished the hike in good time, and it felt really nice to be finished earlier, and still feel energetic.  Unfortunately, I had to get grief about it at work for leading a night hike through a "closed" section (despite the fact that the group members are volunteers as well, and that I was able to report all trail problems without being paid), but I made the mistake of reporting the problems when I should have made like I did the scouting at work. No matter, it does not deflect from the good time had on the hike.