ABOUT THE PARK:
Delaware Water Gap NRA - National Park Service
DIRECTIONS:
GPS Coordinates 40.979776, -75.141934
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| At 7 AM there were two other cars in the lot. At 1 PM the lot is full and people are hiking up in droves, even in the middle of the week. |
TRAIL MAP:
NY/NJ Trail Conference - Kittatinny Trails Map #120
HIKE DISTANCE: 6.4 miles
THE HIKE:
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| The hike starts on the Appalachian Trail right off the parking lot. |
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| The trail starts out as an old paved road, |
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| Passing Lake Lenape on the right. |
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| The old road is wide and smooth starting out. |
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| The AT leaves to the left. The return via the fire road comes in from the right. |
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| Now the trail is a footpath. |
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| Mount Tammany, NJ on the left and Mount Minsi, PA on the right. |
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| Crossing Eureka Creek |
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| The trail turns right but a few steps ahead before that turn is Lookout Rock. |
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| A little bit of a smooth spot before ... |
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| Rhododendron Bud |
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| ... more rugged uphill climbing. |
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| Mount Tammany |
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| Canada geese started flying in front of Mount Tammany. The line took forever to fly by. There must have been several hundred geese. |
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| Old fire tower footings on Mount Minsi. |
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| The last time we were here that same sign was on a tree. Well, it still is, sort of, except not the whole tree. |
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| An unmarked path on Mount Minsi to... |
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| ...views of the Delaware River. |
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| Break time. |
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| Traditionally, Shawnee and I have always hiked out to Tott's Gap on the fire road before returning. It's a very quiet and peaceful stretch on grassy woods road. But this time it would have made the hike too long for her so we just went out a quarter of a mile and back for old time's sake. |
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| Bake at the Mount Minsi summit to head back. |
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| Enjoying the 70+ degree weather in March! |
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| We ran into some other hikers who asked "Is that Shawnee?" They are blog followers and immediately recognized Shawnee. How nice to meet them! |
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| Heading back down on the Mount Minsi Fire Road. |
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| It's a long trudge down on chunky rocks. |
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| We don't find this very pleasant so... |
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| ... we left the fire road on an unmarked trail ... |
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| ... to a pond ... |
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| ... but instead of looping around back to the fire road, we kept going and met back up with the Appalachian Trail. |
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| We had never returned this way before we got to see the views again. |
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| It was really getting hot at this point - 82 degrees according to the car once we finished! |
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| Meeting back up with the fire road where we would have come in from the left had we stayed with that route. |
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| Back at the parking lot. |
We had hiked Mount Minsi in March of 2010 and March of 2011. Here are some comparisons to 2011 pictures taken in approximately the same places.
