Pickell Park

Pickell Park to Cushetunk (10/27/2012)

We climbed Cushetunk Mountain earlier this month. On that day we climbed it twice, the first time on one of the absolute steepest trails in New Jersey, the Blue trail heading south up the mountain. Today we returned to climb Cushetunk on a lollipop of my own invention.

This time we parked east of the mountain at Pickell Park. We parked in the huge parking lot off Mountain Road (so big it could easily fit 100 cars), and using this map we took Blue (yes, the same Blue) south starting outside left field at the baseball field. The trail begins by skirting open fields before entering the forest (after the power line cut) and climbing and climbing and climbing. Blue from the east seems less steep than Blue from the north, but there is still a good climb. We took a White spur (not on the map) to see if the views of Round Valley Reservoir were any better than earlier this month. They weren't. So we continued on Blue until the end, at which point we headed north on White all the way to the powerline cut. We took the cut all the way back to Blue. But instead of taking Blue all the way back to the car, we took two Yellow segments. The first segment parallels Blue when Blue is in the cut (this segment is not shown on the map), while the second skirts open fields north of Blue on the way back to the car.

There was a bit of color still hanging on but this year's fall foliage is just about gone. Hurricane Sandy, scheduled to hit New Jersey in a couple of days, is sure to blow every remaining leaf off every tree left standing. It seems winter hiking season is just around the corner, even though the temperature today was in the low to mid 60s F.

Total distance hiked today was 5 miles in under 3 hours with a decent amount of climbing.

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