Watchung Reservation

All in all, this was a strange hike. It's the first time I've done a true hike of over ten miles with a full pack in almost four years. Just thinking about that fact makes me feel old. Yet, here I was, standing in an almost totally deserted Watchung Reservation parking lot with two of my best friends feeling the misty rain coat us in a fine layer of moisture. Watchung Reservation is a two-thousand acre parcel of the volcanic Watchung Mountains, which run all the way up to Patterson. Contained in the park are the basalt outcroppings that mark the beginning of the First and Second Watchung Mountains. The park itself is hilly, but not hilly enough to stop the construction of almost 70 miles of various forms of hiking and bridle trails. Parts of the park are actually used by rock climbers to ply their trade. The park was established in the 1920s, and is both convenient to Central New Jersey and large enough to grant a sense of solitude.

It was fitting that this was the place where I would try to get my hiking legs back, considering that this was the first place I ever remember hiking. My mom spent a good chunk of her childhood in Watchung and one day when my dad went fishing, I begged her to do something. She took me to this place, Watchung Reservation. I loved every second of it, marveling in the simple pleasures of just wandering around and enjoying nature. This hike would be much of the same. However, I made two basic rookie hiker mistakes:
1) I never printed out or made sure I had a trail map prior to going (a problem made worse by the total lack of maps anywhere in the park except for the Trailside Center).
2) I didn't do my research on where to start the hike, trusting my GPS-enabled cellphone to take me to the main parking lot.

So, clueless as to where we began (it was actually the Sky Top Picnic Area, towards the west and center of the park) our intrepid crew took off. This day, it was me, Pete, and Ian. We started along the white Sierra trail (one I knew from a previous visit) and hiked down the hill towards the picnic shelter, dodging to the right at the fork and descending towards Blue Brook. We followed the white-blazed trail as we got up to speed, letting our descent warm up our legs.

Oddly enough, it was nice and warm out, and we quickly found ourselves shedding layers as we heated up. However, it was also misting out, the remnants of a storm that had turned the trails into a mire of puddles, mud, slick leaves, and the typical New Jersey style ankle-straining rocks. This trail is no AT, which in parts of New Jersey turns into a sort of slip-and-slide as the outwashes and other glacial treats get inundated with water. Instead this is a different type of rock and trail combination, going from really smooth to jagged as hell in a few steps, forcing you to slow down but not presenting the threat of imminent sliding disaster that the AT has. The trails are marked somewhat well, though it is really easy to lose them in parts of the trail where the markers have faded. Not helping is the sheer number of trails that have been blazed through this park. We quickly found ourselves on the Blue Trail, climbing up the side of a really pretty gorge. We then cut back along the trail, coming across a small graveyard. If I had a trail map at this point, I would have noticed that we were in fact right below one of the most fascinating parts of Watchung Reservation, the Deserted Village of Feltville. However, I didn't thanks to poor visual conditions (i.e. lack of an idea as to where I was) and we ended up blazing our own trail by accident up the side of First Watchung.

This would be a good time to point out one of the best and worst features about Watchung Reservation: it is virtually impossible to get lost in this place. While the seclusion offered by the Reservation does help you forget that you are in New Jersey, the overlooks in the park are almost invariably marred by roads, houses and other development. Along the entire north side of the park the incessant drone of Route 78 can be heard, with the occasional grinding of a truck's gears as it shifts to compensate for the change in terrain. Also, no matter what direction you hike in, you will find another trail or road. This made it a good choice for my rusty orienteering skills. However after leaving the graveyard we were now hiking along a totally unmarked trail into the woods. Following this loop we eventually found ourselves paralleling a road. It was then that we made one of the oddest discoveries I have ever seen in the woods, a crime scene.

Now, I'm normally a skeptical person when it comes to things like this. However, this is a bit of an eerie coincidence. Right before I left to meet Ian and Pete, I had looked up an article in the New York Times by John Schwartz regarding the Watchung Reservation. He had hiked the Reservation a mere twenty one days before we hiked it and had jokingly mentioned finding a body in the park. He then mentions that such a body was indeed found just prior to his hike. I heard about this when it happened but it sort of slipped under my radar. Now I put two and two together, realizing that this was probably the site where they found the body of a woman from Plainfield in November. Well, here we were...freaky.

From this spot, we hiked onward, stopping for something to eat and some relaxation time soon after. We rejoined the Sierra Trail at some point near Drake Farm, in the northwest corner of the park. Hiking south we came to Steely Pond and, walking further, we found one of the most naturally spectacular places in this part of New Jersey, the basalt ledges along New Providence/Diamond Hill Road. We also found an intrepid group of top-roping climbers. These guys were out in the rain (which by this point had gotten far worse, becoming a cold wash) belaying their hearts out along the hundred-foot drop. This helped inspire Ian and Pete to do some climbing of their own, scrambling up a notch in the escarpment as fast as they could. I, on the other hand, didn't trust my ankle enough, and decided to skirt along the Sierra Trail and meet them at the overlook. Still, watching them was impressive. I wish I had that sort of energy. By the time I got up to them, they had already begun eating their sandwiches. Show-offs.

After some time on the escarpment admiring the view, we made our way back along the Sierra to our car. We weren't done, we just weren't sure about where we were. So, we decided to go back to the graveyard area and see what we had cut out with our previous detour. Instead of heading east on the Sierra as we had when we had started, we took the west fork, depositing us right at a bridge in Blue Brook. Looking up, I saw something I had been looking for the entire time I was in the reservation, the Village of Feltville. To get to it, however, we had to ascend the south flank of Watchung Two. Eventually we made it, with Ian and Pete scurrying up the flank and me using a water line as my third point of contact as I schlepped myself along.

We emerged into a ghost town. This eerie place is a testament to the history of Berkeley Heights. Covering about 130 acres, Feltville is a throwback to the mid-19th century. Here, the residents used to be workers in a mill owned by a David Felt. Contrary to the name, Feltville isn't a textile town, but was rather based on the manufacturing of paper using a grist mill. Feltville went through several phases of ownership until the place went bankrupt in the 1880s. The village isn't really abandoned, much to my surprise. Some people inhabit the houses right next door to the abandoned ones. Now, I'm sure these people are nice, freindly, normal people looking for some quiet and solitude in their lives, but this place is a little too odd for my tastes, sort of a hop skip and jump away from the New Jersey version of "Deliverance" or "The Hills Have Eyes". It was here where a kind person, taking pity on us lost hikers, gave us a trail map. Thank you, anonymous stranger, you really helped us out.

Using our newfound knowledge of the trail, we now found some challenging trails for Ian and Pete to try with some bridle trails for me to skirt around the sections I couldn't complete. We hiked through patches of Orange Mountain Basalt, the same rock that forms the spectacular Great Falls of Patterson. Here the falls weren't so great, but they were fun to hike. I let the two tackle a really steep gorge that went up some 75 feet in an eighth of a mile, opting for a bridle path. After seeing our first real wildlife, some deer, we then decided to take on the creek bed which flowed past the Blue Trail, slogging along below the abandoned copper mine. This resulted in lots of fun, and me getting absolutely soaked. By this point I was pretty tuckered out anyway, and decided to try to find the car while the two intrepid explorers I was with tackled the Yellow Trail. I started off in the direction where we thought we were parked and kept going until I received a huge surprise: we were totally wrong about where we parked. There comes a time in every hiker's life where you just have to hit yourself for messing up. This was one of those times. Instead of taking us to the car, I had taken us in the opposite direction, towards the absolutely magnificent Trailside Center.

This is where you SHOULD start your hike in Watchung. The staff is incredibly knowledgeable (shown by their ability to get me reoriented) and the center itself resembles an interpretive center in a national park, trumping the usual centers placed by county parks. The place is amazing: part zoo/museum, part gift shop, and part conservation zone. However, by this point I was happy to just enjoy the oft-overlooked joy of just being inside. I sat, waiting for Ian or Pete to call. When they did, we got together and made our way an additional mile and a half back to the car, this time following Sky Top Drive in the settling darkness (doh).

This hike is a gem, the closest real oasis of forested nature if you're from Central New Jersey. I would recommend it to people who don't want to make the trek into West Jersey but would rather tackle some hills a little closer to home. I'd also recommend it to first time hikers and hikers bringing children to the trail, as the options for easy trails are abundant throughout the park. More experienced hikers will have to compensate for the relative ease of the park's trails by endurance hiking along the almost endless set of marked and unmarked trails. All in all, an impressive spot considering how close it is to some of the more major cities in New Jersey.