Hike #1248; Belfast/Wind Gap Loop

Hike #1248; Belfast/Wind Gap Loop

8/23/19 Belfast and Wind Gap loop with Jillane Becker

This next one was a sort of spur of the moment thing done when Jillane and I had the day off. I always want to hike something; it’s really one of the only ways I can relax.

An old barn we found

There are a ton of places I’d like to go, but I have to go with the time available to do them.
The stuff I’d looked at on the maps where I’d most wanted to go recently were back to Blue Marsh Lake and the Union Canal, and through Reading, or otherwise back to the Delaware and Hudson Canal below Westbrookville on the sections I’d not seen during the daylight hours. Both would have great swim spots, food stops, and a lot of interesting stuff.
Unfortunately, we did not get out of the house nearly with enough time to do any of that, so instead I had to come up with something quicker that would be a nice loop.

Old industrial site

I wasn’t even thinking I’d do a really long one at first, but then things changed.
There’s a park and ride in Belfast PA just off of Rt 33 I’d used a few times for hikes recently that I thought worked out pretty well. It’s only a tiny distance from Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center, and you can get through it without really even doing any road walking hardly at all to the car. The worst of that would be at the start the way I planned it, from Belfast out to the Plainfield Twp. Trail.

Plainfield Twp Rail Trail

From the parking area, we started walking to the east up Henry Road. After a short bit, I saw there was a gravel road heading next to some sort of industrial building into some woods. I decided we should check that out.
We walked in there, and there was an old dilapidated barn. There was no good way out another way, so we turned back to Henry Road, and then went to the right out to Belfast Road.
We turned right on Belfast Road out to Sullivan Trail, where Petey’s Eateys was on the right.

Crossing Little Bushkill Creek

We had never eaten there before, and talked about it when we ate at a place across the street called Miguel’s, in an old handsome stage coach stop building.
We stopped and had burgers and cheese steaks for a late lunch, and then continued on our way.
We followed Belfast Road to the east, the worst part of this walk, out to Bangor Road. There is a foundation of a former commercial site or something across the street I had a look at, and the parking lot for it is still there and overgrown with weeds. We cut through this, and then through a line of trees to the state police building.

Old spring house on the rail trail

In the past, I had brought the bigger groups through and cut down to the next road, known as Gall Road, adjacent to the Plainfield Township Rail Trail (it’s in this area that I cheese grated my shin a couple of years back and it got deadly infected).
We headed down through the grass to descend, when all of a sudden four cops each in their own cars came flying out after us!
I was surprised to see that many of them appear, and I just let them know what we were doing, where we were going.

Old spring house on the rail trail

It was all quite silly; they told me they had evidence locked up in a small building nearby and that they don’t want people walking through there. There wasn’t really a problem; they just wanted to know what we were doing and told me not to go walking through there again. It was actually pretty amusing to me, but Jillane was angry about it the rest of the day.
We got down to Gall Road, and turned to the left a short distance to reach the rail trail, which follows a former Lackawanna Railroad right of way, and before that part of the Bangor and Portland Railroad.

Plainfield Twp Trail

We crossed Gall Road just ahed, and then headed to the north through woods. The trail base is a sort of red shale for a time, which looks different than a lot of other rail trails.
The Little Bushkill Creek flows parallel with much of this route. The main creek route is further over in Jacobsburg.
I love routes like this because you can literally watch the tributary grow or shrink, depending on which direction you are following the parallel trail.
The creek remained relatively close to our right side for a while, meandering far below.

Little Bushkill Creek

We next crossed over Engler Road. Beyond that point, the creek came even closer to the rail bed, and we could see the giant slate piles of the former quarry operations for which the “Slate Belt” got it’s name.
We crossed the Little Bushkill Creek on a bridge of deck girder construction.
We soon came to the former crossing of Rt 191, which was a grade crossing on the railroad.
The road is now a dead end with a business to the right. We continued ahead, and there is an underpass of the new alignment of Rt 191 where the trail passes beneath.

Little Bushkill Creek bridge

We took a break under the bridge, where there were bags of chips and a couple of tastycakes sitting. I didn’t think anything of it and ate them. Before we left, Jillane noticed there was a blanket and stuff up in the frame of the bridge. Apparently someone must have left it for a homeless person living up in there. I felt slightly bad on that one.
We continued north on the trail through a wooded stretch, then crossed Jones Hill Road. Just after the crossing, we crossed Little Bushkill Creek again.

Little Bushkill Bridge

Yet another crossing followed that one in a much more wooded section where we took another break, and I cooled off in the creek.
The wooded section gave way to more rural section as we passed over Merwarth Road and one of the township’s larger parking areas for the trail.
It wasn’t much distance to crossing over Gunn Road and then Delabole Road. Another creek crossing was right after that as the area around the trail became even more wooded.

The rail trail

The last road crossing on Plainfield Township Rail Trail was Grand Central Road. It became more rustic above that point heading further into the former slate industry lands.
The Little Bushkill Creek by this point was a trickle compared to what it was before. We crossed one more time as it was just a tiny thing on the right, switching to left.
We continued to the north with larger slate piles around us, and eventually the trail turned off to the left, away from the railroad bed, which continues to the north and becomes inaccessible in industrial areas.

Lackawanna Wind Gap branch

I had only once tried to follow that section through with my brother, and it was an absolute mess.
The trail took us up hill and over another former Lackawanna Railroad branch that went all the way out as a spur to Wind Gap. I didn’t realize where it went until more recent engagements on some abandoned rails forums that showed how it went on through.
We crossed it and continued on the trail route, and I considered going left on an old quarry access, because it would probably have gotten us out where I wanted to be earlier, but I didn’t.
There were some giant slabs of slate that my friend Mike Piersa had told us were some sort of counterweight objects, sitting just off the trail. Commando Tom had a conversation with him about making interpretive signs about what they were, because no one really knows these types of things. We meandered on north through Japanese Knotweed bending over the trail, which weaved around a bit with a gradual up hill.

Counterweights

We reached the parking area for the north end of the trail on Buss Street, which I believe follows a short piece of the former Lehigh and New England Railroad at this end. There were two main through routes of the LNE through Pen Argyl and Wind Gap, with the northern one being more direct without connections (except Saylorsburg Branch), and the southern one having junctions for the slate quarries, for the Nazareth Branch, and for Bethlehem Branch.
When we reached Buss Street, we turned to the left heading down hill.

Japanese Knotweed on the trail

At the bottom of Buss, we turned to the right on Glass Street and I saw where the quarry access road had come out. I wished I’d taken it more at this point.
Glass Street took us past some nice old houses, and then out with a wooded swath to the left.
There was a lady walking by walking her dog, and I asked her if the paths that are out in those woods would take you through to Mack Road. I seemed to recall there was some sort of way through there. She said “Yes, it does, but you have to come out on the gravel first”. I knew where she was thinking. This would get us off the roads a bit.

Old slate area

We followed these paths into the woods, which was quite pleasant for a while. Unfortunately, the ATV enthusiasts are really not what they used to be, and they haven’t been keeping these pathways open like they used to.
We got on one that got pretty bad, and then ended up out in a woods with a small creek in it. There wasn’t much undergrowth, and I had a bit of a path. Jillane wandered off of the path the other way, but where we had to get was a high fill of slate just above us within sight. I climbed up a harder way, and she came around it from the back.

Old slate quarry

The area was clear and wide, with only high grasses growing through it. An apparently abandoned structure with electric going to it was out in the middle. I went by it to have a look, then descended from the higher point in the clearing down to an access road, adjacent to a slate pit now filled up with water.
Once on that, I turned to the left out to a chain link fence gate. It was open to the sides of the gate, and so it was easy to just walk around through the hole. The access road to this point looked like it was probably a rail grade that accessed the quarry. It would have connected directly with the aforementioned Lackawanna branch to Wind Gap.

Old slate quarry

We followed the cinder driveway out toward Mack Road. This section was well maintained with the grass cut on either side of it.

Access road, probably rail grade

When we did reach Mack Road, a power line clearing crossed the grade first. It turns out, this is about where the Lackawanna Railroad branch to Wind Gap used to be. I just had no idea what it was at the time. I followed the power line briefly and then came out to Mack Road.
We soon turned left on E West Street. After a slight bend in this road, I didn’t realize at the time, it is built much on that same old Lackawanna branch. Just ahead, where Longcore Road intersects on the left, the road is closed off to traffic for new development construction.

E West Street, former rail bed

This could not have been better for us, because we wouldn’t have to contend with traffic. We could just walk this closed off road, and I’d be happier about it because we were walking an old railroad bed.
It was surprising that some of this development was going into old reclaimed slate quarry properties. It kind of looks like they’re going to incorporate one of the ponds created by the quarrying into the landscape for the development.
We continued on this road out to where it’s no longer closed near Fairview Street.

E West Street, former rail bed

At that point, there was a dirt road going into the woods to the left. I could see on my aerial maps that this was an access to the municipal park that borders Lehigh Avenue to the east. It was a perfect way for us to go on through and eliminate some more road walking.
The Lackawanna Ralroad used to continue ahead from this point, parallel with E West Street from the developed area.
There was apparently once a station out at Lehigh Avenue or Broadway in Wind Gap, and the railroad dead ended at that point. It’s pretty cool we were walking it without knowing.

E West Street, former rail bed

We followed the gravel road through woods, and then emerged in the park next to some ball fields. We skirted them to the left side, and then went up a hill on grass to a pathway along the edge of a baseball diamond.
We soon reached one of the entrances to the park, which had a gate over it, and came out to 3rd Street. We continued south on this, and then turned to the right on A Street. That took us out to Route 512/Broadway. We turned left, partially through a car dealership, heading south.

Lackawanna Railroad near where we turned off, looking toward the end of the spur in Wind Gap

We came out to 512 and then reached Wendy’s where we stopped for some food. I was actually getting a little bit hungry at this point, and we had a ways to go back.

Path to the municipal park in Wind Gap

We passed beneath Rt 33 on Rt 512, then climbed up slope to the left through grass and came out on Jacobsburg Road.
We followed Jacobsburg Road south past a few businesses, and after the last one there was another park I had never hiked before, Ballas Park.
It’s not really anything huge, just grass lands and a crushed stone trail around the outside of it, but it was something new for me.
There was a slightly mowed path off to the right of the road that led into the preserve and to the more developed trails, where we made a left turn.

View into Wind Gap on 512

The moon was starting to come up as we walked through the open field area, which I really enjoyed. I want to do another variation of this hike where I do more of the longer trail section to the north.
We eventually reached the main parking area for Ballas Park, and then headed out the driveway for it to Kromer Road.
We turned right on Kromer Road heading to the east, passed a few farmsteads, and then crossed the Sobers Run on Northampton County Bridge #69, which had a plaque. I thought it was funny for some reason that Bridge #69 should be over something associated with sobriety.

Moon rise

Just after this point, we reched the Bushkill Township Rail Trail, which follows the former Nazareth Branch of the Lehigh and New England Railroad.
This is another one I really liked a lot, which I first followed when the only part of it that was trail was in Jacobsburg State Park.
I’ve run a few hikes on it since it was made into official trail.
We followed this south for a while, and came out at Belfast Road. e continued straight across here into Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center where it’s used as part of the Sobers Run Loop Trail. A power line follows a lot of it to the

Bridge!

We continued on this until we got to the old State Road. The road used to continue through, but from Douglasville Road to Jacobsburg Road it is abandoned. We turned to the left here and followed it out to Jacobsburg Road, then turned right across Bushkill Creek.
I was going to follow the parallel trail, which actually does less hilly stuff than the road does, but Jillane wanted to follow the road, so we did that. We ended up just following roads back to the car rather than go through on Henry’s Woods Trail, which is the way I would have preferred because it’s so nice, but I didn’t mind it too terribly at this point in the night. We had gotten a bit lost in the woods for a while, so we did more than enough distance this time. I think we finished a bit after midnight.