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It's not every day you get to see an alligator while hiking in New Jersey! Well, OK, I'm not exactly referring to the type of alligators that we saw while hiking in
the Florida Everglades. I'm referring to an abandoned piece of peculiar equipment just west of Shepherd Lake.
You can see it in two photos in the third row. Web research yielded a few possbilities, the most likely being something called the Alligator Amphibian, which was
originally designed by Donald Roebling in 1935 for civil rescue work in flooded areas and for travel in swampy regions. But, it could be something completely
different as well. In either case, this circuit begins and ends near the "alligator".
We parked in the huge lot west of the lake, walked along the road to the Ringwood-Ramapo trail and took that west, visiting the alligator on an unblazed road just west of where the R-R forks off and heads north. Then, back on R-R we took that the the blue-blazed Cupsaw Brook trail, skirting the perimeter of Cupsaw Mountain. We continued right on Yellow for a tiny stretch to get to the orange-blazed State Line trail. This we took SW to the R-R again, which we took east, then south. Turning left on the white-blazed Crossover trail, we took that to another unblazed woods road back to the parking area, once again passing the alligator. The trails were 100% covered in snow, with about 80% ofthem tightly packed snow with an ice glazing on top. It was another perfect ice hike with out Katoolah EXOspikes, the second such hike in about two weeks! Total distance was over 3.6 miles in about 2 hours and 15 minutes.
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Photographs and content copyright © Dan Balogh Web design by Dan Balogh |