For detailed hike directions, maps, photos and GPS coordinates, visit our Best Hikes in NJ – Wawayanda State Park – Old Coal page.
11 miles, mostly easy surface. Wawayanda’s trails are mostly level, woods roads. Really just pleasant, easy hiking in a beautiful park.
Wildlife spotted: A bear along “Sitting Bear” trail — how cliché… He was gleefully tearing into a dead tree looking for buggy snacks, well off the trail. We stopped cold in our tracks, looking around for mama. He was a young bear, but thankfully not a cub with mom in tow.
We had been making noise as we hiked so he was aware of us; and he couldn’t have cared less we were there, was too engrossed in snack time. We decided to continue past, keeping an eye on him.
At one point, he stood up and hugged a standing tree stump and started tearing into that… amazing to see, yet a little unnerving to see the raw power as he shook and clawed the dead tree.
For detailed hike directions, maps, photos and GPS coordinates, visit our Best Hikes in NJ – Bearfort Ridge – Surprise Lake page.
Mileage: 5.9 miles, challenging… We debated on whether to rate this as “challenging” or not. It’s not a long loop, and in some spots the trail is actually easy… but on the Bearfort Ridge trail you have some rugged quick up and downs, as well as some minor rock scrambling and wet sections to cross. It’s also rated under the “challenging” secion in the Hiking the Highlands book.
Basically, this trail falls on the high end of difficulty for a beginner, and on the low end of challenging for a more experienced hiker.
It’s a great loop at any rate, and offers a little of everything Jersey has to offer: a mix of rugged and easy trail surface, including long patches of exposed rock, some short scrambling sections, nice views from the ridge, a rhododendron tunnel, and several wet areas/streams. Surprise Lake makes for a pleasant break spot, and the return is on a woods road…
For detailed hike directions, maps, photos and GPS coordinates, visit our Hikes in NJ – Musconetcong Gorge page.
Thanks to RidgeSearchers for the hike suggestion.
Mileage: 3.1 miles (about, our GPS lost sats a lot at the end).WHITE/YELLOW/TEAL Ridge Trail to WHITE Switchback Trail to WHITE Railroad Trail to BLUE to WHITE/YELLOW/TEAL Ridge Trail.
We found the trail map for this park to be annoying… trails are marked with various dotted lines on the trail map – this makes the map somewhat confusing. The trails are blazed with colors, but the colors are not noted on the map, just the name of the trail.
The trail starts heading up on the Highlands trail, and is not as rocky here as Highlands trail usually is. There are no views from the ridge, just nice forest walking. We rock hopped across a stream.
At this point, the waterfall and gorge are to your left, and I imagine the majority of visitors just hang a left here and go to that area and then return for a small loop or come back via the nature trail – and we’d recommend this option. But this is only at around .7 miles in so we kept going.We continued following the Highlands trail, up a short muddy scramble.
For detailed hike directions, maps, photos and GPS coordinates, visit our Hikes in NJ – Point Mountain page.
Thanks to RidgeSearchers for the hike suggestion.
3.7 miles. BLUE (briefly from lot) to ORANGE to overlook to BLUE along the river.
This is a small park in Hunterdon County with a nice overlook and a trail by the Musconetcong River. The trail had a quick rocky climb to the summit, then followed the ridge. The overlook and river areas are quite pretty. Lots of Poison Ivy on the trail edges however.
This is a local park more suitable for someone looking for scenic easy/short hikes under 4 miles, for a short hike to a viewpoint, or stroll along a river. This is not the park for a hiker looking for a challenge. In fact, we did this trail in the morning, then headed to nearby Musconetcong Gorge and did a trail there in the afternoon.
The section of the BLUE (Riverwalk Trail) after it crosses the road is quite overgrown and not really worth it – the main trail by the river is quite nice. We did briefly spot a fox in this section – we think – only got a glimpse.
Parking: Rt 287 to 78 W to 31 N – detailed directions here. It took us about 1-1.25 hours from central Jersey (New Brunswick area).
For detailed hike directions, maps, photos and GPS coordinates, visit our Hikes in NJ – High Point AT/Iris page
High Point State Park is alllllll the way in the northwest corner of New Jersey, in Sussex County. It’s a bit of a drive even from central Jersey (2 hrs).Makes for a nice overnight trip, we hit two trails that way.
9.1 miles. This route is a figure-8: AT to where it crosses Iris, continue on AT, then where it crosses again, turn onto Iris and head back. Stay on Iris where it crosses the AT again.
Very rocky start on the AT but moderate after that; a couple minor steep areas, mostly rolling elevation changes. Several nice viewpoints.Iris trail on the way back is a mostly easy woods road, with some wet rutted areas. The trail skirts by Rutherford Lake but doesn’t go right up to the shore, and no swimming is permitted anyway.
This route seems not to be popular: on a perfect spring day we only saw a handful people: a few AT thru-hikers, another couple of day-hikers and 2 guys on bikes on the multi-use Iris trail (we managed to scoot an adorable little ribbon snake off the trail just in the nick of time – the bikes were heading right for him)
BONUS: Heading home on Rt. 23 in Sussex, there is a Dairy Queen on the left hand side. We recommend the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Blizzard.
