Norvin Green Mines

Norvin Green Mines, Norvin Green State Forest (6/20/2009)

This is the Hike of the Week for 6/18/2009 as described on the NY-NJ Trail Conference website. Instead of parking where the description says to park, we parked in a small pull-off on the same side of West Brook Road but one or two tenths of a mile east. And I'm glad we did, because the small section of the Highlands trail from that pull-off to the start of the published hike contained some beautiful ferns and flora on a path that clearly hasn't been hiked much.

The highlights of the hike are two mines within Norvin Green, the Blue Mine and the Roomy Mine. We visited both of these mines on several previous hikes in the past but never approached the Blue Mine from above. This was achieved via what appeared to be a newly-blazed portion of the Highlands trail. The return to our car was from a new extension of the orange-blazed Roomy Mine trail from the top of the Roomy Mine (still shown as a dashed line on the 2009 edition of the NYNJTC Northern NJ map 115). According to the hike description this trail was the work of a Girl Scout who received a Gold Award for her work. It's a very well-laid trail!

Total distance was just over 4 miles in about 2.5 hours.

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