Blue Lake, Sterling Forest

Blue Lake, Sterling Forest (9/16/2018)

Today we intended to hike a circuit starting and ending at Blue Lake, just west of Route 84 (Long Meadow Road) in the southern section of Sterling Forest. We were going to use woods roads south of the Lake-to-Lake trail, to where that trail meets the Sterling Ridge trail, perhaps take in a view or two, and then take the Lake-to-Lake back east to the car. But the woods road just southwest of the "Gates" on the NJNYTC Sterling Forest map, was serverly overgrown. So, we ended up doing an out-and-back instead. We did manage to get in the first view north of the intersection between the Lake-to-Lake and Sterling Ridge trails, but were running out of time and couldn't do the second view, about 0.5 miles further north. Had we had more time we would have kept going north along the ridge trail and then returned to the Lake-to-Lake by heading south on the woods road that runs parallel to the ridge trail to the west. But the woods roads in this area are not well-maintained, so the might have been tricky.

You can see our track here. Total distance hiked today was 5.3 miles in over 3 hours.

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