Paulist Fathers South

Paulist Fathers Retreat, South (10/19/2014)

Three weeks ago we visited this beautiful area, inhabited in the past by the Paulist Fathers, for the first time and hiked some of the trails just south of Ridge Road. Today, armed with this updated map from my friend and amateur cartographer Daniela, we headed back to explore some of the trails a bit farther south.

We parked at the small information kiosk on Sparta Mountain Road, where the Highlands Trail crosses (there is room here for 2-3 cars) and headed north on the HT into the woods. We took the HT to the Red trail (the beginning is denoted with a Red arrow on Daniela's map). The Red is a beautiful trail with more fall foliage than any other trail we did. Red eventually ended at a T-intersection with Yellow. We made a left here and headed north to the lake, making a left on Blue and then (shortly after) a right on Green, descending to the lake. (You have to be careful when hiking in here because many of the blazes aren't very clear, an aside from the Orange Lake loop and the HT, they're mostly painted tree rings, most of them very faded). When we reached the Orange trail (also denoted with an L, presumably for "lake") we circled the lake in a clockwise direction, continuing (after the buildings) east on the unblazed woods road east to White. We took White south climbing and climbing and climbing (we did this part three weeks ago as well), finally reaching a T-intersection and took the unblazed woods road south all the way back to Sparta Mountain Road. A 0.2-mile road walk (where only one vehicle passed us slowly) brought us back to the car.

Total distance hiked was 4.7 miles in nearly 3 hours.

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