Hike #1245; Worthington Loop
8/14/19 Worthington Loop with Ryan Short (Peeps) and Annika Krystyna
This next hike would be me weekly night hike, which I thought would rope in a lot of people, but ended up just being the three of us anyway.
A train going by on the PA side
It was kind of surprising to me, because people keep asking me to post things like the Delaware Water Gap, which is overly popular, but when I do it they just don’t show up.
I made the meeting point the Kittatinny Point Information Station. The 24 hour lot is along the Appalachian Trail route, and I figured this would be the good jump off point for a loop.
I had two loops in mind that we could do, one of which was Pennsylvania, and crossed some roads as well as passed some stores, and the other was entirely in New Jersey, but crossed no roads at all.
View to Arrow Island
When I arrived, only Peeps had shown up. He was out for an extended visit before another move out west. He’d been putting his time in the military and would be able to retire young, so he was seeing that through.
View from the first lookout
Annika showed up a little bit late, but we just hung out until she got there. Peeps wore his kilt again, which made it somewhat humorous.
When Annika arrived, we decided on the New Jersey route, and began following the Appalachian Trail out over the bridge over Dunnfield Creek and then beneath Rt 80.
Rather than go to the left or right to get to the trail, once we got across to the frontage road off of the exit for Dunnfield, we went straight up hill on a beat up social path to get to the Mt Tammany Trail, which used to be the Red Dot Trail.
My then and now
I think some of that trail section, between the Dunnfield lot and the Tammany Trail lot, might have been the old road. Where Rt 80 is now used to be the New York, Susquehanna, and Western Railroad, and Dunnfield was once a station stop.
Historic image of Dunnfield Station
The station used to stand, according to Don Dorflinger, at roughly where the last eastbound exit ramp from the visitor center where we parked joins Rt 80.
View on the way up
Once we were on the trail, there were some nice steps heading up from near the parking lots. These weren’t there the last time I was there.
Three girls were there coming down, thinking they were on the Appalachian Trail, but we gave them the right directions. They asked us to get a photo for them before we started heading up the hill.
The trail was not blazed as well as it was in the past. It was also well beaten down more than I’d ever remembered it being. Social paths went off in almost every direction, which was kind of surprising.
Steps up Tammany
The turn blazes were not all that obvious. I knew the route pretty well, but the amount of side paths was enough to confuse just about anyone.
The trail was substantially rerouted some time between when I was in 7th or 8th grade and just after I graduated high school. I remember going up the mountain and using the steep sections with friends as well as my ex girlfriend Cathy. There were some really steep spots that they moved where it no longer required hand holds. I was really surprised to see in some of the steeper spots that stone steps had been intalled somewhat recently.
View north on the way up Tammany
Peeps was handling the climb really very well. When he showed up to do this, he thought he had signed up for a seven or eight mile hike. He didn’t realize that all of my night hikes were also fifteen miles. Still, he didn’t cut out. He committed and went for the entire thing.
The climb up has some plateaus along the way that give us some reprieve from the otherwise steep ups. The climb up Tammany to the elevation of 1,549 feet above sea level is the single highest climb in one shot you can do in the state of NJ. I was definitely feeling it on the way up, and drenched with sweat.
Gap view
I got to the top first, and there was a hacidic jewish family with a young baby enjoying the overlook. It was odd that the baby was not in a carrier or carriage at all, and they were just carrying it. We saw them again later holding the screaming baby near the higher peak of the mountain.
We stopped at the overlook at the top, with the great views of the bends in the Delaware River, and across to Mt. Minsi.
It was surprising not to see more people up there, but we did pass several on the way down.
View to Minsi
Most everyone we saw was trying to describe how awesome it was, as if we might not make it to the top, or we had never been there.
After a little bit of time at the top, we continued from the end of the Tammany Trail to the Blue Dot Trail. I’m not sure if they renamed it or something, but it was no longer with with a blue dot on the markings. It was now just a solid blue marked trail. We followed it along the ridge to the northeast a little bit, and there were some nice views over the trees of the interesting cloud formations.
View into Delaware Water Gap
The blue trail took us onto the middle of the ridge, and then started descending, with a nice view nearby down the Delware valley toward Columbia and Delaware.
On Tammany
We turned off of the blue trail and began following the unmarked Mt Tammany Fire Road to the right. They did have a nice sign on this trail now, which didn’t used to exist there either.
I had hiked the Tammany Fire Road many times before. Peeps had even done it with me a couple of times, with the first time being in the Summer of 2001 when we did a loop from Dunnfield out to the Copper Mines area and back. In a short time, we did big loops in both lower Worthington State Forest as well as upper. This hike would be alike a combination of the two of these.
The Tammany Fire Road was pretty nice, and seemed a little wider than I remembered it being on some of the past trips.
We made our way out to one familiar spot known as “Helispot #2”, where we had passed through on a couple of occasions before. I don’t have a clue where Helispot 1 is.
On Tammany
I reminded Peeps that we had been out there before on another hike in 2002 where we were looking for the end of the abandoned Yellow Dot Trail, and we were making such good time that he, my brother, and I all decided to stop and take a nap in the middle of the trail.
I did spend some time trying to spot the start of the Yellow Dot Trail on this hike as well, but I was unable to pinpoint exactly where it broke off this time. There used to be some faded blazes and a rock cairn that seems to have disappared. I never saw a sign of it anywhere.
Clouds
We continued on along the Tammany Fire Road, and the next point of interest was the intersection with Mountain Trail.
This trail breaks off to the right, and is not included on the maps. It leads down to the Lakota Wolf Preserve and really isn’t a legal connecting trail. There used to be a sign on the tree at the intersection that said what way goes to where on the fire road. That has long since disappeared, but the same tree with it’s three branches was still in place, where there is an old photo of Peeps and I standing and gesturing in front of it. We tried to emulate it but screwed up.
Peeps on Tamany Fire Road at Helispot, 2002
Annika took several pics of us in our silly poses, but I neglected to download the photo first, so I didn’t know how to stand for it. I realized I goofed later.
Peeps at Helispot 2, 2019
We continued on the Tammany Fire Road a little more east from here. I was originally thinking we might continue all the way out and get on Sunfish Pond Fire Road.
Peeps and I at Mountain Trail intersection in 2001
I decided against that because it might be a little sketchy up near the upper Yards Creek Reservoir, and it was going to be dark pretty soon. I really wanted to try to get to Sunfish Pond some time just around dark or just a little bit later.
We continued on the Tammany Fire Road until we got to the left turn marker for what used to be known as Turquoise Trail. The trail had now been officially renamed the Buckwood Trail.
We turned here and the path got really narrow, probably more so than it had been in the past. We made our way down hill gradually as the blueberry bushes brushed up against our legs. It was easy, but you could barely even see the trail it had grown in so densely.
The trail descended to cross over the upper end of Dunnfield Creek, and then climbed with less brush up the other side. We soon came out to the Sunfish Pond Fire Road, where the trail is superimposed to the left for a little bit of distance.
Peeps and I, same spot, 2019
My grandfather was on the survey crew that laid out the Upper and Lower Yards Creek Reservoirs, and it was that crew that laid out Sunfish Pond Fire Road.
We continued from here until the turquoise blazes turned off into the woods to the right. It didn’t take too long before we could see Sunfish Pond gleaming in the last sun of the day off to the left.
As we made our way up the trail a little further, a group of people were setting up camp throughout the woods just off the trail, a short distance from the intersection with the Appalachian Trail. I warned them ahead of time that the ridge runners usually check this spot, and that it’s illegal to camp there. When I started working for DEP, I was Ridge Runner Liason, and Steve Ellis used to send me up to Sunfish Pond to kick people out of the water and check for those illegally camping. I don’t really care, but I wanted to warn them anyway.
The new trail sign at former Turquoise Trail
We headed back down to the Appalachian Trail and started making our way toward Sunfish Pond. The trail went right along the edge of it more so than I remembered the previous time, following the original route. The trail in this area I recall had been moved, and so I guess maybe it was moved back to where it was before.
When we got to the rock cairns along the shore, where it’s the best spot to take a dip, I went in to cool off. I was barely in for a couple of moments when I young guy shouted out “We don’t allow swimming in Sunfish Pond” and told me to go to Turtle Beach. I was kind of surprised because my whole life I’d never come across that.
Sunfish Pond through the trees
I guess the area has gotten so overrun that now it gets patrolled far more than it used to. It’s not like anyone really cares much, and I knew the ridge runners themselves were always swimming in there after dark anyway. I was just surprised to see someone when I did. The guy also tried to deter us by making up some fairy tale about how there were leeches in the pond.
The guy headed directly from us out to the campers I just warned about this very thing. I could hear yelling through the trees in the distance, and wondered if he was making them move or what exactly was going on. In a way I felt bad for them, but they also said “Oh we know, we just say hello and there’s nothing they can do”.
Sunfish Pond
I got out of the water and we headed back to the Appalachian Trail. I was originally thinking of heading back toward Douglas Trail and making our way down to Rockcores Trail. However, to go there would mean going right past the Ridge Runner camp at the backpacker site, and I didn’t want to have a run in with him again.
Instead, we backtracked on the northbound AT for a bit, until we got to the intersection with Garvey Springs Trail. That leads down the mountain and toward the Worthington State Park campgrounds area. We had a little light left, and might be able to get the steep stuff done.
Sunfish Pond
We didn’t see the ridge runner again when we got past the intersection with Buckwood Trail. We also didn’t hear the other campers that were only a short distance away. I figure the guy must have gone all the way around the lake and then headed back.
Sunfish Pond
Just a little ways ahead, we continued to head down Garvey Springs Trail. It was pretty steep heading down that slope, but we did have enough light at the start of it that we could continue on through without a problem.
Going down Garvey Springs
It was fun walking along and reminiscing with Peeps about the previous times we had been out there. We’d gone down Garvey Springs on another version of this hike back in 2001 also. I’d sort of tricked his brother Ronald and cousin Alf into doing a full day hike rather than just a couple of miles because I deemed them to be lazy at the time, and only Peeps and I ended up finishing that one. Much of the remainder of this hike was just about the same hike we did on that day, following on or close to the road to the end. I had intended not to cross any roads and do more zig zagging, but that wasn’t working.
Near Sunfish Pond on our 2001 hike
It started getting pretty dark and the down hill seemed to go on forever. It was pretty as the sun was setting, but not that easy walking. The flash lights came out, so I powered ahead so I could use my night vision better without anything messing me up.
Moonlight escepade
I waited up when I got to the intersection with Rockcores Trail, where Garvey Springs Trail turns to the left to follow it for a little while. Rockcores Trail is named because of giant rock cylinders taken from the ground as test cores for the development of Tocks Island Dam.
The trail follows what is said to be an old carriage road from before 1900.
We turned to the right when Garvey Springs Trail cut away, and switched back and forth down hill on it. When we got near the bottom, I held back and pointed out Laurel Falls. It was hard to see it in the dark, but it was very audible.
We soon reached the Old Mine Road, or rather, River Road. Old Mine Road technically would start at the old Pahaquarry Copper Mines a bit to the north of here, and it was River Road until that point historically. Today, it’s typically referred to collectively as Old Mine Road.
We crossed directly and then passed the gate into the Worthington Campgrounds. We followed an unpaved road ahead to the Delaware River and stopped for a break.
Moonlight happy
There’s a calm in the river at this point, and so Peeps and I went for a very nice swim. It wasn’t so dark that we couldn’t see anything, and the moon was soon coming up, which provided a great amount of light for us.
After this break, we made our way back up to the campground road and used it to follow the river downstream. First we went through the open field area, then passed by the park office and made our way into the wooded section. This was a long and pleasant stretch. I was surprised that there were so few people camping at the sites directly off of the river.
If it had been lighter, we’d have continud directly along the river for the rest of the hike, onto the Karamac Trail by way of an informal path at the end of the camp grounds, but that gets to be pretty tough after dark. Instead, we continued on the road to a closed off access to the left, which led back up to the paved road.
We then followed the road up a big hill, and then down again past the Farview and Karamac parking lots. I considered going down Karamac Trail at this point, but it has some sketchy parts. We instead opted to continue on the old road.
Kittatinny Point
Going this way only had one liability: the three minute traffic light where it’s one lane for a while. It’s a really cool walk, and I wouldn’t want to do it during the day again (I ran it once before with Peeps in ‘01). Fortunately, we got through the whole thing and not a single car came by.
When we got out the other side, there was one car heading toward the light. They started going down it, but then backed all the way back up and got out of there. They looked kind of panicked.
We headed under Rt 80 and then around to where the Appalachian Trail joins from the bridge to the left. It was not much farther before we got back to our cars at the lot.
This was really a great send off for Peeps; he rarely gets two hikes in when he gets home, and it had been too long since we’d hung out. Even he was impressed with himself for having been able to do a rough terrain hike after doing none for so long.
Hopefully his next visit isn’t nearly as long a wait and more crazy fun will ensue.
HAM
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