Steeny Kill Lake

Steeny Kill Lake, High Point State Park (10/15/2011)

This is the Hike of the Week for 7/16/2009 as described on the NY-NJ Trail Conference site.

The Fall Foliage Network report for October 12 showed "high" color in just one tiny part of New Jersey ... High Point (the rest is shown as "moderate"). The last time we hiked the Monument Trail at High Point was way back in 2004, when the monument was still closed (since 1997) for major repairs. It opened the following year. For these reasons, and because I found a relatively new NJNYTC hike which begins at the boat launch at Steeny Kill Lake, we headed back again today.

We were not disappointed. The foliage seems to have exploded overnight. The ridge of the mountain was filled with red, orange and yellow. Unfortunately there was also quite a bit of leaf drop (I guess this is to be expected at the top of windy mountain ridges). And since the monument was open, we paid our $1 each and climbed the 291 steps to the very top. It gets very humid and wet inside the monument, so the metal steps and handrails were a bit slippery. And, alas, the windows at the top were foggy and speckled with water (on the outside) which obstructed the views a bit. But it was fun to do it just to say we did it, I guess.

Total distance hiked today was 5.3 miles (including the climb up the monument) in 3.5 hours.

(Click on the thumbnail to bring up a bigger image in a pop-up window)