ABOUT THE PARKS:
DIRECTIONS:
GPS Coordinates 40.90668, -74.76996
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| Parking along Kinney-Bell Road at Tilcon Lake. |
TRAIL MAPS:
HIKE DISTANCE: 14.4 miles
THE HIKE:
This hike consists of all unmarked, yet well-maintained trails. Using an app like Gaia or Trailforks will make navigation much easier.
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| From Kinney-Bell Road, up a very steep but short path ... |
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| ... then steeply down the other side. |
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| Tilcon Lake |
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| The Tilcon Lake Trail around the lake ... |
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| ... was flooded out in several areas. |
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| A side path to the left leads to the Musconetcong River. |
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| From the side trail back to the Tilcon Lake Trail. |
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| More parking at the gate at Waterloo Valley Road. |
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| There is another path a few steps to the left on Waterloo Valley Road. I wasn't sure I was going to do this part since I could find no information on it and wasn't sure if the trail was clear or not but from here it looked good so what the heck, give it a try. So glad I did because it turned out to be a very nice trail. |
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| Looks like an old paved road. |
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| At the end of the paved section, left on a footpath along a creek with I-80 on the other side of the creek. |
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| After rock hopping to the right over the creek (picture did not turn out, will show it on the return route) under I-80 ... |
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| ... continuing along the Musconetcong River. |
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| Coming up on Waterloo Village on the other side of the river. |
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| I remember hiking through Waterloo Village and seeing that wonky bridge that was closed off to the other side, where we were now. |
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| At the intersection, there is still a path that goes to the old bridge. |
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| From there we would be heading back to the intersection and straight up Plane 4 West ruins. |
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This is what that bridge and Plane 4 West looked like back in the day.
By Detroit Publishing Co. - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID det.4a07619.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88854074
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| Looking back at Waterloo Village. |
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| Heading up Plane 4 West to the right and would be returning from the left. |
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| The trail turns left with I-80 on the right. Who knew driving up I-80 all these years that this existed? |
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| All of a sudden there were trail markers for the Morris Canal Greenway. |
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| I noticed some old blue paint blazes so I was thinking that this trail existed (it is shown on the 2011 version of the trail conference map) and is now being revitalized as part of the Morris Canal Greenway as the markers look brand new. |
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| So do some of the bridges. |
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| A path to the right leads to Continental Drive ... |
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| ... we turned left heading back to Plane 4 West. |
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| Definitely a new bridge with building materials still off to the side. Looks like this is a work in progress with no information available yet. |
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| Ruins far off to the right. |
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| These old blue blazes indicate a left turn but there is no obvious trail; straight ahead is the correct way and at this time there were no more Morris Canal Greenway markers. |
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| Coming back up on Waterloo Village. |
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| Now retracing back to Waterloo Valley Road. |
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| This is the rock hop over the creek that I didn't have a good shot of on the way out. It was tricky at first but I cleared debris off of the rocks then it was no big deal to rock hop over. |
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| Back at Waterloo Valley Road a right turn then after a few steps, left on the path. |
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| At the top a right turn would lead back to Kinney-Bell Road for about a 5 1/2 mile hike but we weren't done yet. We turned left. |
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| Right under the live railroad tracks. |
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| From here it is a maze of unmarked mountain bike trails where you really need an app to reference if you don't want to get lost. Even though I had a route planned out, I missed turns and had to improvise. Some have trail names posted that correspond with the Trailforks app, others do not. I only encountered a total of 5 mountain bikers the entire hike and no other hikers. |
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| Teepee Rock |
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| Sometimes trails are single track, other times double track. |
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| With the pond on the left and a swamp on the right, I stood just before the bridge watching all kinds of birds on the swamp side. I got pictures of tree swallows, white-breasted nuthatches, and the only one that stood still and wasn't blurry ... |
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| ... the belted kingfisher. |
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| Coming up on a power cut ... |
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| ... where we turned right. I was heading to the fire tower but do not recommend going this way. There are other ways to get there and I picked the wrong one. |
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| This is the path making a right turn out of the power cut. It was more of a bushwhack. |
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| The Gaia app shows it as a trail but it does sometimes show trails that no longer exist. |
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| We made it up, covered in tiny ticks even though I had sprayed my legs with picaradin. I was able to pick them all off of myself and Brodie and saw no more the rest of the hike. |
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| I only went up one flight on the fire tower. It was very windy and I suffer from firetowerphobia as it is. It is called the 95-Mile Tree Lookout Tower - maybe from the top but I will never be able to confirm that firsthand. |
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| We headed down the gravel access road from the fire tower. |
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| Green comes in from the right ... |
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| ... then we left on purple to the left ... |
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| ... which becomes Pepe's Stick and crosses over where we had bushwhacked up. |
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| There were tons of white-breasted nuthatches around but this was the best I could get. They move FAST! |
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| Starting to work our way down off the mountain. |
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| Tilcon Lake comes into view down below but we would have to continue on a while to get to a point where the live railroad tracks could be crossed. |
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| Balloon #12 of the year. |
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| We came out on the pink trail where we turned right. |
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| This leads to the train track crossing. |
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| A short distance along the gravel road to a trail on the left. |
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| This trail comes out on Kinney-Bell Road ... |
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| ... where we turned left back to the car. |
