About NJ Hiking

The focus of this site is providing resources for hiking in New Jersey, as well as New York and Pennslyvania. Most people do not associate "hiking" with New Jersey, and even people who have lived in NJ for years have no idea that hiking opportunies even exist.

The site is useful for anyone already hiking who is looking for hike ideas, for someone interested in trying hiking out to see if they like it, and for out-of-area hikers who have moved to NJ (or are visiting) and want to know where the best hiking is.

This site isn't trying to convince anyone to go hiking. There are tons of other hobbies to take up, a bajillion things to keep your entertained in the Jersey area, and hiking is certainly not everyone's cup-o-tea! If you want to give it a go, cool, then this site has plenty of info to help you out.

Why We Created This Site

We've been hiking in New Jersey for many years, and just when we think we've hiked every trail – we find a new one. It took us some time to figure out where to hike when we started, but over time we've collected a lot of great resources. This made it much easier when the weekend came around to figure out where to hike.

We couldn't find a site that had all the New Jersey hike info we wanted in one spot, so we basically created the site we wished existed and put it online in case anyone else was looking for the same thing.

The site went live in March of 2009. We've been amazed at the response and traffic to the site - we had no idea so many people were interested in hiking in New Jersey.

Tom hiking Mt. Tammany, 1981.

Who We Are

We are a married couple with roots in New Jersey and a love of the outdoors since we were kids. Tom is from central Jersey, Dawn is from south Jersey, and we met at college in north Jersey.

We spend a lot of time in front of computers for our graphic design business (shameless plug: OpaqueDesign.com) but any chance we get, we hit a trail.

We're into technology and photography, and tend to carry a variety of tech gear such as a GPS to keep track of our hikes, plus a digital SLR camera, and a compact video camera. We've been testing GPS apps for the iPhone but haven't found one that we love yet.

We also love to travel, especially to National Parks and other natural areas. In the last few years, we've been fortunate enough to visit Glacier, Yosemite (and climbed Half Dome), Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Sequoia, Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion (and hiked Angel's Landing), The Redwoods, Crater Lake, Lassen Volcanic, Shenandoah, Smoky Mountains, Acadia, Haleakala on Maui and Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii, and we've even climbed Mt. St. Helens. In the fall of 2010 we climbed Mt. Washington in New Hampshire's White Mountains.

We also like to wander out of the country. We've visited Machu Picchu in Peru and hiked to the top of Huayna Picchu - the peak that overlooks the ancient Incan city. We've rambled around the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico to check out the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza, Uxmal, and more. The vast, flat, unbroken expanses of trees seen from atop Mayan Pyramids reminded us of looking out over Jersey's Pinelands from Apple Pie Hill fire tower - go figure!

Our most recent adventure was to Olympic National Park – where you can hike mountains, through a rainforest and along beaches... all in one trip.

We hope you find this site useful. If you really dig it, consider popping over to our store and getting a t-shirt or other snazzy item we've designed... it helps support the effort we invest in the site.

You can contact us here.

–Tom & Dawn