Hike #1235; Chester Area Loop
7/11/19 Chester Area Loop with Dan Asnis, John DiFiore, and Cupcake (Chris Kroschinski).
This next hike would be a loop around the Chester New Jersey area again. Every year, I try to run something around this area to visit a few different places.
First, the Japanese Wineberries, an invasive species of raspberry prominent in this area, grown insanely at Hacklebarney State Park, and I always try to do a hike through there when they are in season. I also like to visit the old pool area in the park to swim.
Cupcake in the Black River
This time, the weather wasn’t agreeable, but we managed to make a good run of it anyway.
I wasn’t really expecting anyone to come out on this one. Some people bagged it because of the rain predicted. But then, these three showed up, so I was good to go as well, as long as they were.
I had a plan to cover some new ground I had only rather recently found out about, to keep some new interest, but it ended up being a little tough to get through.
We started at the Chester Hill Mall, and then headed to the east along the awning to the place, and turned south along Rt 206 where we made a stop at Shop Rite Liquors. I found some sort of beverage from Evil Twin Brewing called “Even More Jesus” which was a strong one. I remembered it being really good, but didn’t notice at the time that it was a coffee stout.
Tiger Brook Park and McGregor Preserve map
From there, we crossed over 206 into the regular Shop Rite parking lot, and continued to the south side of the lot. I had figured out a way of getting through some of these places on past hikes, so I wanted to piece together some of that stuff.
From the back of the store fronts, there is a paved path that comes out at the cul de sac on Tiger Brook Lane to the south, but the fences block it off. However, there is a hole in the fence that people pass through when heading to shop, which can’t easily be seen from the store area. We took some time to find it, but we did and we got through to that development.
We headed from here along Tiger Brook Lane, then we turned left on Colby Farm Road. We took this a short distance to a right turn on Skinner Trail, which is another cul de sac at it’s south end. From here, we could walk directly into the woods via a paved path,which leads out to Cooper Lane and one of the parking areas for Tiger Brook Park.
Trout Brook falls
We continued south I think on purple trail or something. I can’t keep those colors in there straight. It’s the main road that heads down from the parking area. It was raining while we walked, so I didn’t want to be going through too much insanity.
We took the road down hill to the reservoir in the park and admired the scene a bit. I then took us further down to the bridge that carries the trail across the Tiger Brook and realized we were way too far. We had to come back to the north to be the way we were going. We backtracked to another trail that went ot the left.
This rockier path had others connecting with it from the left, and then came to yet another old road route, which we followed to the left briefly. Another trail led from here in to the west, which was used, as per my research led out of the park to the west.
Falls at Hacklebarney
There were other trails that connected here and there to it, which I’ll have to get to exploring another time. My goal this time was to get to an old cattle crossing under Rt 206.
Over a year ago, I saw a sign along the road where I sometimes pull out coming from Hacklebarney that read “Cattle Crossing”. I found on the maps that they had in fact put a trail under a cattle crossing beneath 206. In the past, I used to hike out the McGregor Preserve and do the short road walk, but I’d never done this before. That would be the main new thing I would add in to this hike.
We continud along the woods road section to the left a bit, and I told everyone we were looking for a trail that went into the woods to the right to get to the crossing.
Falls at Hacklebarney
The thing wasn’t easy to see. I saw a couple of vague blazes on a trail that went to the east, and then paralleled the woods road briefly. It went into an area with a lot of brush, which looked no fun. I couldn’t tell where it was supposed to go at all, and there was a stream back in there further, a branch of the Peapack Brook.
I made my way over to the stream and looked for a way that would be the crossing. I found a good spot, and eventually found where the trail was supposed to be on the other side. When I found that, I went to the point to usher everyone else across.
Once over, we continued on the rather overgrown trail through a swath of woods and out to some sort of clearing.
It didn’t really look like farm fields because it was so overgrown, and one point looked more like a retention pond. We continued up hill, and they had some trail marker posts to guide us.
Trout Brook falls at Hacklebarney
Once we got to the top of the hill, it was kind of unnerving. It was pouring rain, and then thunder and lightning. We were about the tallest thing out there, so didn’t really want to stay put.
We made our way along the field as best we could find the trail. It wasn’t very obvious, and pretty overgrown. At the far side of the field, there was a slight opening which took us toward the cattle underpass I had been looking for.
It didn’t look very welcoming. There was water flowing right through it from the rain. I suppose at times it remains totally dry, but at this point it was a mess.
Falls at Hacklebarney
We pushed our way up hill to the left when we got to the other side, which took us into another field. There was really no delineated path for us to follow there either. Just open field. We decided to just make the route through the field toward the intersections of Pottersville Road, Old Chester Road, and Route 206.
This worked out well enough, and we turned to the right to follow Pottersville Road to the west.
I had considered going into Elizabeth D. Kay Environmental Education Center, but then decided against it because the heavy rain would make following the Conifer Pass Trail seem like walking through a car wash. Besides, we had already gone the wrong way further back in the Tiger Brook Park enough.
We continued on Pottersville Road down hill to the intersection with Hacklebarney Road, and continud to the first hunters lot into the park.
From here, it was originally my plan to go down and then head to the old pool constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps, but it wouldn’t be great getting to it. Getting over to the main trail from there already meant crossing one sketchy log. A second on would be rough.
Hacklebarney
We headed down the trail, which was originally the orange trail closed because it went near Don Apgar’s house, a former employee that lived back there. Apgar’s house is now gone, so hopefully we’ll one day reopen it.
We had Student Conservation Association come in and rehabilitate the trail down to the river, although I’ve not yet been allowed to blaze it. It’s a really good switchback, but without blazing, people are all walking the wrong way to the bottom.
Fortunately, I know the way, and we followed it to the river. Cupcake and I continued ahaad to the right along the river, but Dan and John got behind us. We went back and ushered them through an easier way than what we had initially done.
We headed up stream to the log crossing of the river, and I helped everyone across by standing in the river. The water was flowing really heavy, and at first glance one might think it would be impossible to cross. It had the illusion of more depth than it actually was.
We walked to the other side, and I decided not to head to the pool area. Instead, I wanted to cover some extra mileage within Hacklebarney, which would be much more attractive. I wanted to see the river at the crazy height it was reaching, and all of the cascades.
John had carefully crossed the river on the log without getting his feet wet, but when we got to the little picnic area before the next formal trail, there was just no way to cross it without getting wet, so he just went for it. Fortunately didn’t seem to have a problem the rest of the way.
We turned to the left on the red blazed Hacklebarney Trail. Before I re-marked all of it through work, Hacklebarney was mostly only red and blue trails, which were really confusing. We since turned all of them into different colors, and put the redundant connective Rhinehardt Brook Trail, riverside trail, and one of the other stupid things I can’t remember the name of, all together and made it the main connecting loop.
We followed this up stream and saw how the high water was effecting the one spot where we could sometimes turn trucks around because it’s so low. Not this time.
We then headed along a spot with a fallen pine tree over rocks with rough terrain, out to where the Haki Trail comes in, at the now closed restroom #3, after crossing Trout Brook.
We continued along the river in much easier area, and then out to the Three Pools area, where Three Pools Trail comes in from the right. I wish I could have gotten more photos of how cool it all looked down in there, but it was just too rainy for me to get my phone out, and my regular camera was getting garbage shots because of it.
We had another rocky section, and soon came out to cross Rhinehardt Brook. A small falls just up that was looking pretty.
We continued up hill from there to where the trail reaches what should be the Main Trail. The white blazed Main Trail currently ends at the bridge where the yellow Windy Ridge Trail comes in, but it should have gone all the way to the border monuments at the end of the park. I had it blazed this way at one time, and the sensible move gained me a lot of praise until my former supervisor disagreed with it and went out to paint back over all of them.
Today, it still remains a stupid place to start the red blazing out there, but oh well.
We turned to the right to follow the trail down to another crossing of Rhinehardt Brook. Almost all of the railings had been busted off the up stream side of the bridge.
We continued past here, and then turned to the left on Windy Ridge Trail, up hill on some stone steps to gain the height of the land.
In the Winter time, there are some really neat views through trees down into the gorge from up on that trail. We continued along it, and past the first bits of the Japanese Wineberry. They seemed that they should have been in full bloom by this time, but they were late coming out, so it was only a fraction of the amount we would normally see up there.
We descended on Windy Ridge to the playground area, and then continued ahead on the white blazed Main Trail, losing a little bit more elevation.
When we got to the purple blazed Waterfall Trail, I wanted to head down to see the falls, but the others didn’t want to do it. John and I went down to check it out more closely.
There is a side trail to the right that leads to an outlook to the falls, and we took that.
The volume of water with the deluge of rain we had gotten was higher than I had ever seen it here. It was absolutely incredible. I was so glad we came down to check it out. Also, the rain had stopped enough that I could easily use my phone to take the photos of it.
We continued back to the trail from there, crossed Trout Brook on the bridge, and then turned left on red again to pass through picnic areas, past closed restroom #2, and then up the long flight of steps built by the CCC in the 1930s. Restroom #1 was at the top where we rejoined with Cupcake and Dan.
From there, we could check out a few more of the berry spots I knew of close to the area. All in back of the building are tons of the things.
My then and now comp
We went from there up hill a bit and through the fields toward Playground Trail, and along some of the picnic areas. We did manage to find some berries to eat through this area. Eventually, we had enough of that and followed the Playground Trail out to the main entrance road. We followed that out to the entrance monuments to leave the park.
Cooper Mill then and now
We turned to the right on State Park Road to the north for a bit. This took us out past the Hacklebarney Cider Mill. The family that runs that has been there for generations. There is an old stone homestead to the right where State Park Road joins Hacklebarney Road, which was the original homestead associated with that farm, I was told by one of the girls in the family who still runs the farm.
The concession stand in the cider mill area is the original concession stand from Hacklebarney State Park.
Halleluja yum
We turned to the left on Hacklebarney Road to head gradually up hill a bit. I pointed out where the Langdon Mine Railroad, a narrow gauge line only used for three or four years in the late 1800s, came across the road. The Langdon Mine is out in the farm land to the left. The same lady at the cider mill talked to me about the mines, and she said that her dad filled in the Langdon Mine when she was little so she wouldn’t fall into it.
We continued up State Park Road from here to the north until we got to the actually settlement of Hacklebarney, where there is a bridge over the Black River to reach the north end of the Langdon Mine Railroad and south end of Hacklebarney Mine Railroad at it’s namesake mine.
We turned to the right and crossed the bridge to the Patriot’s Path, Black River Trail section, which uses both of the old railroad grades along the Black River.
Chester Station
We followed the old grade up stream past Kay’s Pond, named for early horticulturist Elizabeth D. Kay who lived just up the hill from here.
The rail bed diverted from the trail into wetland after the pond, and then went to where it crossed over the Black River, and we continued around bends to the Cooper Grist Mill.
We walked to the right from there to get directly back. It was wet and messy on the trail beyond. We did go a little bit, and I showed everyone the tunnel and the U shaped dam, but getting further on that would have been just too messy, so we turned back.
It didn’t take long before we reached the parking lot just over a mile away, just past the former rail crossing (the Chester Mall lot used to be the railroad yard for the Jersey Central, with a small station).
I had covered the distance I wanted, seen some of the newer trail system that had been on my list, and somehow, despite the rainy weather, we managed to have a really good time.
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