One month ago we hiked the western part of Jenny Jump State Forest, traversing most of the Mountain Lake trail. Getting bagel egg sandwiches at the tiny deli in the
town of Hope, New Jersey afterwards was one of the highlights of that day. On that day, in perusing the trail map in the state park service brochure, I noticed another trail the almost joins the
two non-contiguous park sections. On the map it is labeled the "Jenny Jump Trail" (pretty original, huh) and it doesn't appear on earlier versions of the map. A new trail?
The thought of hiking something new, and revisiting that tiny deli in Hope, set us off for another hike in this lovely state park today.
We parked in the large dirt lot off State Park Road, opposite the road to leads to the park office, at the eastern trailhead. We then headed west. While initially the trail is blazed in light blue, it almost immediately comingles with a white trail coming in from the left, and it remains comingled with this white trail for at least the next two miles (and is blazed only in white), at which point the white trail veers off to the right. As expected with the state map for this park, the white trail is not on the map, nor are the countless woods roads that we crossed and ran parallel to. The NYNJTC is coming up with a new map set that covers New Jersey parks not heretofore covered by their Northern NJ set. I believe it might cover this park. If so, thank you, NYNJTC! In any event, we headed west all the way to CR 611 before turning around and retracing our steps. Total distance traveled was 5.2 miles in just under 3 hours. (Click on the thumbnail to bring up a bigger image in a pop-up window)
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Trail head |
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Pond above trail |
Beautiful green hue |
Wizard of Oz tree! |
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Ruins of some sort |
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Tower on the mountain |
Beautiful road ... |
... lined with stone walls |
White trail not on map |
Saplings |
Spring bud |
Beautiful mossy boulder |
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Mushroom |
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More blooms |
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Starting the climb ... |
... to the ridge |
View from ridge |
Hope, NJ below |
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Farm silo |
View of hills ... |
... to the south |
West along the ridge |
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Taking a breather |
Tiny blooms on ridge |
Descending |
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Creek [photo by Laura] |
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Laura crossing |
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Continuing on blue |
Lined with stone walls |
Ascending to county road 611 |
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Blow-down |
Views north |
Delaware Water Gap |
Buildings in Hope, NJ |
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Hills to the south |
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NJ farm and Tammany ridge in distance |
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Poison ivy |
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Photographs and content copyright © Dan Balogh Web design by Dan Balogh |