2018 - Hike 29 - September 8 - Hacklebarney State Park - Chester, NJ

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 mileage up (it isn't a huge area) it weaves around a bit.  Despite the lack of epic scale, it's a very lovely park with lots of water sights and sounds and just enough ups and downs to make it interesting.  This park seems very old.  There are a lot of old picnic tables and little viewing areas on little concrete pads in the middle of the stream which they wouldn't likely build these days.

Photos by Brian:




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