Hike #1256; Bound Brook to Bedminster
9/19/19 Bound Brook to Bedminster with Chris "Cupcake" Kroschinski, Justin Gurbisz,, Peter Fleszar, and Celeste Fondaco Martin
This next hike would be a point to point one that I had sort of planned out over a month earlier, but because of forecast rain, I changed it somewhat.
Flood berm on Middle Brook
I wanted to return to do the same hike originally planned, so I slapped it back on the schedule again.
This time, we met at the point we discovered the previous time, in a large lot just to the south of the post office in Bedminster we could get away with parking in.
It was a surprise to have Pete out on this one because he’s from so far out in Pennsylvania, but his work brought him to Stroudsburg during the day, which was conveniently close enough for him to jump on board for this night hike.
After meeting, we shuttled in my van south to Bound Brook Shop Rite lot.
Wall thing
I picked up a couple of drinks, and we were on our way.
From the lot, we walked behind the liquor store, and up onto the flood protection berm along the Middle Brook. We simply turned to the right and were able to follow that to the north. Justin and I walked atop the concrete wall thing that’s kind of narrow for a section. I noted that some people to the right of us gave us a look as we precariously walked the high thing. We then climbed around the chain link fences on the other side and continued on the easier section of the berm ahead.
The route continues past an apartment complex that had burned about a decade ago.
My then and now comp
We continued out to where we came close to Rt 22. I posed the possibility of going beneath Rt 22 through the Middle Brook underpass, but no one seemed keen on it.
Old sign on 22
We instead turned to the right and followed the path out to where it sort of ended along Rt 22. We then passed beneath the Thompson Ave underpass, and then climbed up to the same road to cross over Rt 22.
We continued to the north along the road, passed the Chimney Rock Inn, and fought Cupcake’s temptations to enter the establishment and eat and drink heavily.
We soon came out to Chimney Rock Road, where we turned to the right for a bit. It’s a pretty busy road, which made this probably crappiest part of the entire hike.
Dam spillway thingy
We had to walk up the road for a bit, and eventually came to where the East Branch of the Middle Brook broke away to the right. The main branch of the Middle Brook, sometimes known as the West Branch, continues parallel with Chimney Rock Road and goes over to Washington Valley Reservoir. We would get to that a little later. My plan at first was to head to the East Branch Reservoir, and then continue to visit some of the other popular sites such as the Chimney Rock itself.
We continued along the road until the turn off where we could access the park lands.
East Branch Dam and Buttermilk Falls
There was a little dam structure of some sort just in from the road, which was much more ry than normal. We were able to walk across that and continue on informal paths upstream.
Rocks in the East Branch
The trail led us through woods and to the large pool of water at the base of the Buttermilk Falls, which is back dropped by the large concrete East Branch Dam.
Buttermilk Falls
Swimming isn’t allowed at this spot, but it didn’t stop me from jumping in really quick. I was all sweaty and gross from work, so I really needed it. Cupcake was going to jump in, but I got in and out more quickly than he could even get undressed so he didn’t.
Dam thingy
We continued on an informal trail, which follows the edges of rocks on the right side of the creek, on top of an old water pipe. At one point, the pipe is broken, and the foot can be placed in it as a step to continue along the tops of the rocks toward the dam.
There used to be a set of stairs along the dam going right up through a doorway, but they’ve been partially broken away. The bit of them that remains has now been turned the wrong direction, and appears to be quite loose. We managed to get up it anyway, and then turned to the right to climb toward the overlook at Chimney Rock.
Chimney Rock
The trails in this area are blazed with different colors and shapes, depending on what part of the park the trail is in. I really hate that way of marking, because it’s still so confusing.
We soon reached the top, and the white painted Chimney Rock was in prominent view.
The quarry operation beyond did not appear to have any dust collection stuff going on. It had a cloud emanating from the whole thing that was quite huge. Apparently the quarry paid for a bunch of county buildings or something along the edge of Chimney Rock Road, so they overlook such things.
View of valley of the East Branch
Cupcake told us that the area used to have some serious copper mines, but that the quarry operation had covered them over with the work they had been expanding on.
View toward Finderne
He also commented that this bit of the First Watchung Mountain and the part across from our overlook was geologically different. One of them was a sort of reddish material and the other wasn’t.
We had a pretty good view from this point out toward the Finderne area to the southwest, and the Bound Brook area to the south.
We made our way back the way we came, down the trail to the East Branch Dam.
From there, there was some somewhat new trail construction that had been done along the East Branch. It was pretty well side-hilled as we continued to the north.
View toward Bound Brook
We only continued a short bit more, and then could see the top of the original East Branch am out of the water in the middle of the East Branch Reservoir.
Chimney Rock
There was a couple fishing from it, but I figured we could go and walk across it since it wasn’t really in the water. We went down and crossed the reservoir on the top of the now underwater old dam, and then followed trail up the other side.
Quarry dust view
The trail here was not marked, but going up hill took us soon to a trail that actually was marked. we then continued on that to the south a bit.
This trail weaved around, and there was an informal side path to the left that led us to a lesser known little overlook from which we could see Chimney Rock from a bit further away.
We continued back to the main path again, and continued slightly up hill further to the west. The trail had several side paths that were also marked with the weird shapes making it more confusing. We eventually started to descent.
The group near the start
We soon made our way down to where we were close to Chimney Rock Road. The first trail made it’s way out from the woods and across the road to the south side of Washington Valley Reservoir, which was directly across the road from where we were.
Hidden overlook in Washington Valley Park
A second trail turned to the right, a bit more indistinct, and paralleled Chimney Rock Road. This was our route. It soon made it’s way out to and crossed over the road.
The group early on
On the other side, at both trail access points, the trail was closed off at some point by yellow caution tape. I figure this might have been done because they might have had the harmful algae blooms like other places did, but I’m not sure.
The dam for this reservoir had been partially purged to bring it down to a lower level, but I’m not sure why they would want this section closed.
The tape had been broken, so we just continued on in the same direction anyway.
The trail made its way past the dam, and then along a pretty section of the lake shore.
Washington Valley Reservoir
We continued along, and some private land owners had their own accesses to the lake to the right, with picnic benches and such above us. We continued along to the west.
Lake view
We came to the point where there is an inlet to the right. The trail goes out and follows that for a bit, and then crosses over it by way of a long bridge. I didn’t know this before, but that bridge was one of Cupcake’s projects through work. Before that was in place, the Middle Brook Trail used to go up and around on a puncheon at the end of the inlet to get across.
We continued out and back to the edge of the reservoir on the other side. The trail split in two, and there was one directly along the water, and another up hill just up hill by a little bit. Soon, both trails came back together anyway.
Washington Valley Reservoir
We continued along the shore as the sun began to set over the end of the lake. It was really a beautiful time to be out in this area.
We made our way to the far east side of the lake, where the Middle Brook was just flowing in. The trail, now the official Middle Brook Trail route (that one stays to the north side rather than the south, and passes through the municipal Chimney Rock Park), took us across the Middle Brook on a foot bridge parallel with the Newmans Lane bridge.
Cupcake's footbridge
Once on the other side, we crossed Newmans Lane and headed into the woods on the greenway.
This section of it doesn’t remain directly along the Middle Brook like most sections ahead. It goes up and down slopes utilizing the county park lands a bit more.
After a bit, the side trails all went away, and the main Middle Brook Trail descended to beside the brook.
The section of the trail ahead is particularly nice, after we crossed over the first of many little foot bridges over the brook.
Cupcake's Bridge
The Middle Brook Greenway from here to it’s start was done through a developer’s incentive. They allowed for cluster development with the stipulation that the area around the Middle Brook be kept public open space. That way, the public got a free greenway, and the developer could move forward.
Most of the structures on this stretch are all boy and girl scout projects. It’s among the best I’ve seen of those organizations. Typically, these days it seems scout organizations are all about fund raising, selling cookies or popcorn and not doing as much community service.
Cupcake's Bridge
This trail system is not like other places. I think they must have had some leader that encouraged each scout to follow a previous one and do something on this trail. I wish we could get something like that together for the Warren Highlands Trail.
We continued along the creek and soon crossed over the Tullo Farm Road. We passed through another swath of woods, and then came out in the Crim Road Soccar Fields. The trail took us along the access road to this and then out to Crim Road, next to the Crim Road Elementary School. We continued past this and into more woods.
Washington Valley Reservoir
We had a nice long stretch of woods ahead with some more good trail, boardwalks and such.
In this stretch, I got a phone call that I’d missed, and a voicemail.
View at washington Valley Reservoir
It turned out to be someone writing an article for Appalachian Mountain Club’s Outdoors Magazine. They were looking for statements on the recent closing of Glen Onoko, in the State Game Lands adjacent to Lehigh Gorge State Park PA.
I was glad they considered me as an authority on this, and I spent a good while on the phone explaining that it was in fact not that the trail itself is dangerous, but that it gets far too overused. There are plenty of more dangerous trails out there, but this one had no way of weeding out the inexperienced hikers the way back woods places do.
I proposed that the trail parking should be shut down, and make people wanting to get in there walk in from Jim Thorpe, to the south, which is much farther away. That would certainly weed out a lot of the people who could not handle it.
I drew a parallel to some of the sections of Pennsylvania’s Mid State Trail on the Tussey Ridge. It’s a rough trail section, but there’s no need to close it off. It just doesn’t get the use that an area like Glen Onoko gets. It ended up being quite a happy coincidence that Pete was out this night, because he is Vice President of the Mid State Trail organization. I asked the interviewer if he would be interested in chatting with Pete.
Middle Brook Greenway
The two of them ended up chatting for a while, and the interviewer seemed very happy to have the level of expertise he got when he called. Hopefully it will be a prominent article and further solidify out statuses as authorities in matters such as these.
By the time we got done on the phone calls, we were well out of the Middle Brook Greenway.
We had walked out across Mt. Vernon Road, and then reached the end of the trail, where it turns either right out to Argonne Farm Drive, or left out to Wishnow Way. We turned that left out to Wishnow Way, and followed it.
Middle Brook Greenway
At the end of that, we turned right on Papen Road and started following that to the northwest.
Some of the Middle Brook Greenway is superimposed with the Washington and Rochambeau historic trails. I thought it was kind of cool that they used the road walk between different parks that I had been using for years. It was now totally formalized.
we continued along Papen Road out across Brown Road and Roger Ave, to the dead end section of it where we entered the woods to Gene G. King Park.
This section was a bit more rustic trail, but still very nice. We continued through woods, and struggled a bit to find the correct way, but we did it. The trail took us through and out to the corner of Dogwood Drive and South Shore Drive in a little development.
Middle Brook bridge
We continued on South Shore for a bit, and we could barely see Sunset Lake through the trees to the right.
We reached Coriell Drive at the end of the lake, which crossed over the main dam, and we descended to below it so I could find some of the trail that breaks off and passes through the woods to the former lake pond back there.
I had first found this trail when I was doing a variation of this hike with Matt Davis and Shelly Janes back in 2009. Matt had the idea of focusing a hike around the Middlebrook Encampment, and I had wanted to do the Middlebrook Greenway and the Bedminster Hike and Bike Trail, so we put our ideas togetehr and came up with a really good route.
In doing this, we found our way to the Bridgewater Township lands below Sunset Lake, along the Chambers Brook. It’s been public land for a while, with nothing done to it.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/SUTiJgKsZ8c
Matt's Middle Brook Hike vid
Sometimes it seems like we were poised to do a lot more interesting things, and Matt made this great video of that hike. It almost feels at times like it’s gone from being something that had the potential to be so much bigger, to something that’s more like a secret society.
I’m not really dissatisfied at all with any of it, but I wonder what more could happen with a little bit more refocused effort to different areas.
We followed along the Chambers Brook through a wooded area, and I managed to find the foot path I was looking for. This was the part that I was most concerned about. It’s not in any way blazed, and I had to kind of go by memory. The path follows along the edge of what was once another pond out there, and there are several side trails. Somehow, we managed to keep going along one of these, although it was not the one I had originally intended to pass through on.
Either way, we made our way through the woods and out to the old dam that held back the now near empty pond, which is basically a swamp land. There used to be an abandoned building in this area, but it’s long since been demolished.
We had to move to the left of where the original path would have come out from this property, and instead came out behind the Vizzoni Law Firm. This took us out then to Route 202 where we crossed and then turned right. We then walked beneath Interstate 78.
On the other side, we climbed a steep grassy slope and headed up hill to the edge of the Gain Capital Holdings property. We followed the grass along the edge of the parking lot to this. It makes for a nicer, less busy route with almost no cars out to cut the corner to Burnt Mills Road.
We headed out to the road and turned left. From there, the old school house was on the left side of the road. It was here that Celeste parked to join us for the remainder of the hike.
The group in Bedminster
There was some sort of art show going on while we walked by, so she just used that for parking.
The old Pluckemin School House, built in 1912, is a four room, two story school that operated until 1958. It was used as municipal offices until 1993, and then found new life as an art center.
We continued from here across the street, and then followed Burnt Mills Road to the west over Rt 287.
We turned to the right into Burnt Mills Park when we got to the other end of the bridge, and then cut directly across the open ball fields heading sort of northwest.
When we got to near the middle of the park, we switched to just about due north so that we could get onto the trail that headed from here northward. I didn’t want to follow the park all the way to the end, because it goes right by someone’s house, and I didn’t want to alarm anyone.
We followed the path into the woods, and around the deer extruder fences, then out to where it ran parallel with Rt 202. It used the 202 bridge to get across the North Branch of the Raritan River, and then turned to the left slightly to River Road Park.
We walked through the gravel lot of River Road Park, and then climbed the pedestrian bridge to the right side to cross over Rt 202. It then descended to follow along the edge of the AT&T corporate office access road. The trail soon reached the older trail route that had been there for longer, along the North Branch, and then turned left.
The trail continues beside a pond, and then through some woods weaving around a lot. It continues through an open park field close to the police department, and then weaves around a little bit more before coming out at a Bedminster Township School. We followed the access road from this out to Rt 202.
From there, we simply walked across the street to two older buildings of Stonehenge Resources, went to the left and then right between two buildings on a sidewalk to reach where we were parked.
This is always a great hike to get in the mix here and there, and I got to cover a little bit of some of the trails I’d not done as part of a hike before. There’s still a lot more I want to do throughout this area, and hopefully I’ll have plenty more days and nights to do them.
HAM
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