Hike #1459; 12/5/21 Pochuck Mountain to Warwick with Kirk Rohn, Serious Sean Dougherty, Brittany Weider, Gregory Andres, Robin Deitz, Justin Gurbisz, Tina Chen, Carolyn Gockel Gordon, Diane Reider, Professor John DiFiore, and Jenny Tull
This next trip would bring us between Sussex County NJ and Orange County NY, covering stuff I'd been meaning to get back to for years.
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| Bob Hohowski photo, gas elecric car M1, used 1928-31 |
As I've stated in previous journals, it has become a sort of initiative to finish things I started. There are countless series of hikes we have been working on, some of them dating back to the very beginnings of Metrotrails, but we never got around to seeing them through.
This all came about because we'd been hiking the Maybrook Line of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad. This ended in Maybrook, but so did the Lehigh and Hudson River Railway, which went right through my home county, and for a year I lived literally right on it. I had just never followed it farther north than the Appalachian Trail in New Jersey.
Part of the problem with this was that I'd gotten away from doing hikes on railroad tracks for entire days. It just didn't appeal to people in the group so much, and I didn't want to ruin the group with hikes that were less good.
Instead of just doing these hikes on the Lehigh and Hudson, I found some area trails that I wanted to get around to. I had still never gotten back to the Pochuck Mountain area and the Janet Van Gelder Preserve of the Audubon Society.
I had recommended the preserve over dinner with Priscilla Estes whe she was tasked with writing Appalachian Mountain Club's "Best Hikes in New Jersey". I told her it was an opportunity to showcase more off the beaten bath that was actually off the beaten path. Such writings that we typically find feature very popular spots, not the amazing places that I typically enjoy. Priscilla did a great job showcasing these great lesser known spots in her book and gave me a very nice mention for the recommendations.
I could honestly have written such a book, but I still prefer to keep most of my writing to places like this and sharing my specific journey at this point.
I found a bunch of interesting stuff that I thought would fit into this, and labored over various routes that might work to get us between Pochuck Mountain and Warwick.
I chose the meeting point to be at the Warwick Valley Chamber of Commerce which had a good parking lot, and we would shuttle together to the start point from there.
Before we headed out, adjacent to where we parked was the former Lehigh and Hudson River Railway station, a handsome structure, which I decided to get some then and now shots of. It was a good thing I got them in the morning, because it would be dark before we would return.
The Warwick Valley Railroad was first constructed through the area in 1862, and became part of the Lehigh and Hudson, which was once a major part of the northeast corridor until the burning of the Poughkeepsie Bridge in 1974. After that, it was far less important, and while much of it remained active through New York and northern New Jersey, from Sparta down to Belvidere was abandoned and ripped up in 1986.
I really didn't know what to do about the starting point. The Janet Van Gelder Preserve has been removed from the Audubon Society's web page, and little mention of it is found online.
The trail map could be found nowhere. Really, the only thing I had left to go by getting through there was Priscilla's book, which detailed it better than I did when I last hiked it, because she did all of the trails and I had only just walked through some of it. I was determined this time to go through more stuff I hadn't seen.
Where to park was a stressor. The last time I used a local school to the south, and then road walked around to get to the trails and did a little back road walking. This would have to be somewhat similar, but all of the preserves I wanted to do were not going to work out if I didn't do Janet Van Gelder from north to south.
I used Google street view and located a pull off parking on Lounsberry Hollow Road that seemed to do exactly what I wanted it to do. There were no signs saying not to park there, and it was close enough to the actual preserve to start the hike.
Nearby was a utility clearing and an access road onto it.
We followed the access lane for a bit, but the power line was not going where we wanted to be. We had to cut off trail, going up Pochuck Mountain heading southwest, which was rather steep at first.
We were afforded a pretty nice view almost right away, all to the east, because there were no leaves on the trees. We made our way onto the trail that skirted the overlooks, and some places were nice, but others were hard to find. ATVs had taken over much of the area, and so the ATV trails would traverse where they could go, but the trail sometimes went over rocks the ATVs could not. So we had some issues accidentally following the ATV paths where the trail actually went another way.
We skirted one major rock outcropping and headed into a bit of a saddle in the ridge, and Serious Sean got behind us somehow. We lost the trail somehow in this area as well, and I got a hold of Sean and tried to give him a point of where about we would be.
I was trying some new Triple Dog IPA from Flying Dog brewery this time. I was never a fan of Flying Dog at all before; their Double Dog IPA was okay, but their other stuff just came across as caustic and not really well flavorful. I didn't have high hopes for this one, but then I tasted it. It was outstanding.
This was the strongest beer I had ever had. It was not written on the label, but there was a QR code on the side, that revealed this to be 18.2% abv. I think that boozy taste was what put it over the top and made it awesome.
We continued to the south, and had some good views to the west. We could see the Glen Meadow Middle School from one vantage point, and that was where we would be just a little later.
Eventually, we reached the southern tier of Pochuck Mountain where there was a nice overlook to the south. I really loved this spot the first time I was up there, and I wanted to get up there to enjoy it without snow on the ground like the previous time we'd done it. It was really nice.
We waited at the vista for Serious Sean to show up, and then we headed down the mountain by way of a trail at first, but it looked as though this was not going to work out favorably for us for long.
It had already taken us much longer than anticipated to get through the first section, and I wanted us to get through and move along.
We bushwhacked directly down the mountain, which was sometimes quite steep.
We meandered between rocks and such, and then hit a woods road when we got to the bottom. I had walked through on this before, but a lot of it seemed unfamiliar. I guess it's changed some since the last time I was there.
The most substantial change was the thought that the woods road would take me through easily and clearly. That was not the case.
The woods road that went kind of southwest, crossed a small creek near a former dam site, and then headed gradually uphill toward Drew Mountain Road. I thought we would have it easy, but then we came upon trees that had fallen over the route.
This was really rough to climb through, and there were tons of briars. I tried going up parallel with the road, as well as down below it to the left, but there were really no good choices. I was going to get cut up no matter what.
Eventually it got a bit clearer. This area was state park land, which made access to the Audubon land. It brought us up a narrow swath between houses to Drew Mountain Road, and we turned left.
There was a side trail to my left just before we got out of the woods, which might be used by folks to get down through. I wonder if I might have used that on my previous time in there, but I can't be sure. I don't remember anything except the fact we were trudging through terrible snow that time.
We reached Black Walnut Mountain Road on the left, and turned there. I believe this road became unpaved along the way, and hardly anyone was on it. It was the perfect road to be walking for this stretch.
After a curve in the road, which skirted the base of the mountain, we turned left on Orchard Terrace, a dead end street. At the end, there was a little path that cut through a line of trees to reach the ball field of Glen Meadow School. We continued from here to the left, along the back of the mowed school fields, heading north.
There was a hill after passing through baseball fields, so we headed down and continued through a parking lot past the Cedar Mountain Primary School. We continued past a retention pond, and then followed the access road out to Sammis Road. We turned left there briefly, and then right toward the Lounsberry Hollow Public School.
We walked across the parking lot of the school, and around the school to the north. We skirted the school yard, and in the back was a mowed path down to a lower field. Below that was another field of solar panels. More paths went through these fields and around the solar panels, with a view of Hamburg Mountain and Wawayanda Mountain.
The mowed paths went down around the right side of the solar panels, and then to a tree line. Through the tree line was the Vernon Dog Park, and we skirted this to the left along a line of trees until we got to McAfee-Glenwood Road. Here, we turned to the left only a short distance through a lovely farmstead, then reached the intersection with Sand Hill Road. We turned slightly left, then right into the parking area for an odd bi level strip mall building made with arched lower levels and steps. It must have been done many years ago due to the lack of ADA accessibility.
We went up the steps to the upper level, where we stopped in at Smokey's Tavern for lunch.
They didn't really have any good strong beers on tap, but I talked to the guy running the place and he has some really good taste and said they had some stuff coming up that was going to be really good. I haven't had the chance to go back, but it was all pretty good there. The menu had a lot of good stuff.
Since our hike, the place has been re-branded "The Glenwood".
Once we were done eating, we headed down Vernon Crossing Road (the bar sat on the corner) just a bit to another little swath of businesses and an automotive mechanic place. Just behind that is the municipal road department, and Google Earth shows that there is a trail from this point back into Maple Grange Park.
The problem was, everything was locked off. We couldn't get into any of the lots to even get back on the trails. We went down the road a bit, and then skirted the other side of the fence of the automotive place.
When it ended, we were able to skirt the back of it where there were wrecked cars parked, on the border between the auto place and municipal department. Just a step up in a sandy area and we were on one of the trails in the park, which looked to be kept clear by ATVs.
While going by one of the wrecked cars, I think it was Brittany that pointed out there was a bottle of unfinished Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey sitting in the back seat. The problem was, it looked piss yellow. Everyone was like "noooo way" when it came to the prospect of drinking the piss water.
I went ahead and started directing the group, because it was only unofficial trails at first, and I wanted to make sure we took the correct direction.
Behind me, at some point during discussion, the Jack Daniels was opened and sniffed, and no hint of piss was found. Discussion ensued that the only reason it was usually dark was the fact that it is dyed, and this Jack was probably just bleached by the sun. So, someone in the group decided to try it. Followed by someone else. Then from the back I hear Brittany shouting "It's NOT piss!".
When I saw a good number of group members passing the bottle and drinking it, I had to join in. We were all overly happy from food and drink at this point having just stopped, and we were shouting out "NOT PISS" as we walked down the trail. The trail became paved and other people were walking by, including a young couple we offered some "not piss" to, referred to as such. They smiled and laughed a bit but continued on their way.
We continued along trail out to open ball fields on the left, straight ahead a bit, until there was an informal trail going uphill to the right. I knew from aerial images that this led to an official mowed trail on a slight ridge above the park.
We ascended through sparse young evergreens slowly taking over the field, and then at the top turned left. I had wanted to do a little loop on this trail that was to the right, but we were running low on time and would already run over my planned mileage, so we continued more directly.
The trail was pretty nice, with some views over the area and toward what I think was Mt Adam and Mt Eve over the NY state line. Pochuck Mountain was of course in plain view.
The trail descended a bit, then turned ninety degrees to the left at the bottom of the hill and probably the boundary of the township property.
I think some of this land was state park property adjacent to the Maple Grange Park, known as Black Creek Conservation Area. The Black Creek is a tributary to the Pochuck Creek.
We emerged in Maple Grange Park proper again and took the access road to the right along trees to come out to Maple Grange Road. where we turned right and paralleled Masker Marsh.
We continued across the Pochuck Creek on the road, and then turned left on Canal Road, which leads to the Appalachian Trail. When we got to that, we turned to the right and went across a series of puncheons through wet areas, and over a stile through active pastures of cows. It's a really odd section of the trail that I've always liked.
We soon came to the spot where the trail crosses the Lehigh and Hudson River Railway where we regrouped. When together, we turned left here toward Warwick.
We crossed the Wawayanda Creek a couple of times, crossed Rt 515, and stopped at DeKay Road because there was a sign reading that the historic DeKay Cemetery (1757-1890) was nearby. We looked a bit but never found the thing.
There was a mile marker in this area reading that it was 25 miles to Maybrook. That really put it in perspective that I'd only had really a day's worth of walking and I would have walked the entire Lehigh and Hudson. Still, I didn't want to do rail walking the entire time so I planned differently.
We crossed Wawayanda Creek one more time before crossing the state line, denoted by a simple yellow sign with "NY" on it.
We crossed over Ryerson Road and then paralleled Onderdonk Road before crossing Covered Bridge Road. There was no more covered bridge here, just a boring modern deck one, but there was a really oddball house along the right side of the road and tracks, which looked to be at an odd slant and partially in the ground.
This crossing was the site of the New Milford Station. There was both a small passenger station and freight station building at one time. I noticed as we walked by the site, where there is no station today, there were a couple of structures that resembled what the station buildings were, on a farm to the left of the tracks.
I wondered if perhaps the station buildings were sold or even just given away to the adjacent land owner. We've seen many examples of old stations repurposed as houses and moved to other sites, so this certainly could be the case here, but I've not heard from anyone who knows.
The track walking would have been a lot worse, but we got a lot of that mileage out of the way with the help of the "not piss". The experience has become so legendary that henceforth, Jack Daniels of that or similar sorts is known to us as "not piss".
We skirted some pretty fields, crossed Baird's Lane, crossed the creek again, and then crossed Sanfordville Road. It was about dark by the time we got to this point.
We crossed Rt 1A before reaching Warwick and crossing the creek one more time. Ambient light from the town made walking this particular stretch very pleasant. We crossed Elm Street followed by Oakland Avenue, then passed the station which was lovely with night lighting, then came to our cars across South Street.
This was really a fun trip, far better than I was expecting with the crazy little things to make it more interesting.
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