ABOUT THE PARK:
Campgaw Mountain Reservation - Bergen County Parks
DIRECTIONS:
GPS Coordinates 41.051821, -74.191408
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| Parking Area Q - almost at the far end Park Drive away from the more heavily used parking areas. |
TRAIL MAP:
Campgaw Mountain Reservation - NYNJ Trail Conference (free map)
North Jersey Trails Map 115 - NYNJ Trail Conference
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HIKE DISTANCE: 9.25 miles
THE HIKE:
My intention was to hike trails I had not hiked back in December 2014 in addition to newer trails added since that time. I initially regretted my decision to hike here. At 7 AM there were already too many people and too many (MANY) off leash dogs. I dodged both through the more popular areas but once on the Backslope Trail there was nobody else around. Then later in the hike I found a whole network of trails not on the map and had that all to myself. It saved the day!
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| From this parking area you literally take two steps into the woods ... |
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| ... and turn left on the red trail. |
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| Red soon crosses over Park Drive. |
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| Passing through a power cut. |
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| At the end of red we turned left to loop around the pond on orange. |
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| Authorized personnel go into that? |
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| A baby! |
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| I really don't want to touch litter in this era of COVID so I treat it like poop when picking it up. |
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| Managed to wrangle another one into that same poop bag without touching it. I will never be able to wrap my head around the fact that so many people think this is OK. |
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| Coming out on the ski area parking lot where the trail turns right following the perimeter of the lot to ... |
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| ... the corner where there are no markers and where it is overgrown. |
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| Once through the overgrowth several downed trees block the way. |
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| Beyond all of that, the trail is clear the rest of the way up the mountain. |
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| Coming up on views at the top of the ski trails. |
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| Female house finch. |
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| Birds seem to enjoy hanging out on the ski lifts. |
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| Two male and one female American goldfinch. |
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| Eastern bluebird and barn swallow. |
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| Looping around over to the yellow Backslope Trail where we encountered nobody else. |
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| These two ... |
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| ... let us get very close before they took off. |
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| The first cistern. |
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| Second cistern. |
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| With nobody else around we took a break right on the trail. |
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| At the end of yellow back at the top of the mountain. |
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| Swinging by the overlook one more time while nobody was there. |
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| The birds were all gone but the barn swallows returned while I was standing there. |
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| Heading over to the newer silver-blazed trail via blue ... |
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| ... then red. |
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| After a very short distance on silver ... |
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| ... right on an unmarked woods road. |
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| This woods road is clear and easy to follow. I had intended to follow the loop around back to silver. |
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| We passed a couple of very distinct trails to the right. |
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| A bridge on the left where the loop of the woods road continues. |
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| But I decided to follow the path along the dry creek which would be very nice with water flowing. |
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| Some very faint paint blazes. |
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| A bridge! Instead of turning left over the bridge, we turned right on a trail to see where that would lead. From this point on none of these trails are on any map. |
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| Some green paint blazes along this trail. |
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| As I suspected, confirmed by the tire tracks, these are mountain bike trails. |
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| This trail crossed a creek at an old dam. This part is on the map and it looked like continuing would lead to Route 202 so I backtracked a bit then kept left on a different trail in hopes of connecting back to one of those two bridges. |
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| Indeed, we ended up about half way between those two bridges and turned right heading to the second one. |
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| Now left over this bridge where we had turned right previously. |
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| A marker, the only one I saw. |
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| There are several trails splitting of in this area but we headed to the left in search of that first bridge ... |
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| ... where we ended up coming in the opposite direction from where we had been previously. |
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| We backtracked a little then kept left staying with the remainder of the woods road loop we had started. This side of the woods road was not as well-defined as the first section. |
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| Old horse riding trails? |
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| The dashed like on the Gaia app is the silver trail and we were on course to meet back up with it. |
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| And here we are back on silver where we turned right. |
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| Passing by Mevo Farm. |
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| Back on red ... |
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| ... coming out right where I had parked. |
