Road Trips and Hike Reports

Ghost Lake, Summit and Orchard Trails Posted by Chris 9/30/18 Basics: Length - About 5.5 miles Elevation gain - 1200 feet Nearest city - Hope, NJ is nearby Difficulty - Moderate with lots of hills The Day: There were other things that needed to happen Saturday besides a hike and we didn't get a super early start.  So I turned to one of the very closest substantial hikes we know of.  We did this hike once before but I don't think it was 2018. The trails: The hike is sort a reverse balloon.  You start near the bathrooms in the campground and then walk the park road downhill for a few minutes before beginning to climb as the gravel road is left behind and the real trails begin.  As a fitness walk this is a very good hike with nice periods of moderate climbing alternated with rolling ridgelines and at least this time, a ton of minor streams to cross.  The biggest detractor for this hike is that I-80 is painfully close and can be heard for about 2/3 of the hike an

Rainbow Falls Loop Posted by Chris 9/9/18 Basics: Length - About 5.5 miles Elevation gain - ~700 feet Nearest city - I'd call this a semi isolated area but Kerhonkson wasn't very far away Difficulty - Moderate with some difficult spots requiring VERY good agility The Day: We headed out very early today.  It was 100 miles away but that was about where the chance of rain went down from 100% to 20%.  It worked, there was no rain at this place.  We initially were headed for a location that was in a preserve managed by some sort of foundation.  The trail guide on Alltrails looked good but when we got there we found out it was 15 dollars PER PERSON to go into the Mohonk preserve.  So we took the toll collector's advice and went to the state park up the road.  Then Alltrails hit it out of the park and found a beautiful interesting loop trail with no crowds (there were a ton of people at the park but most of them went to some other waterfall and we only saw a few p

Hacklebarney State Park loop Posted by Chris 9/9/18 Basics: Length - About 3 miles Elevation gain - Maybe 300 feet Nearest city - Chester/Long Valley NJ Difficulty - Easy but a fair amount of rocks and roots near the river The Day: We took our friend Bob out with us this trip.  We wanted to make sure it was a fairly easy and short hike since we didn't head out until 9 am and Bob doesn't hike often.  We ate breakfast at Panera in Hackettstown then over Schooley's mountain towards the park.  The car GPS initially took us to the back side of the park and we took a few  miles of gravel roads to get to the GPS coordinates provided in the trail guide that I should have punched in from the start but we were still hiking by about 10:40 am.  There were only a very few cars at the lot which made for a peaceful hike free from summer's crowds. The trail: The trail loop basically goes along the Black river on one side then back on the other side but to get the mil

Appalachian Trail to Sunrise Mountain Pavilion Posted by Chris 9/2/18 Basics: Length - Over 7 miles Elevation gain - Estimated at 500 feet delivered in many small ups and downs Nearest city - Montague isn't very far from the trail head and High Point State Park was very nearby Difficulty - Moderate The Day: We headed out about 9 am and arrived at the trail head by 10.  The guide we used had GPS coordinates for the starting point which is very helpful. The trail: This section of the AT was very enjoyable. Other than the road where we parked there were no road crossings and we didn't spot a single speck of litter or hear any intrusions from civilization which was great.  Though the trail guide said there wasn't much elevation change, there were actually a lot of ups and downs even if none of them were very long.  It was a little humid and warm but we still enjoyed the hike immensely.  On the way home I tried following CR-519 home all the way. It's an