Rockaway River WMA

Rockaway River WMA (12/17/2011)

Seven years ago, almost to the day, we hiked the Beaver Brook Trail from its southern end on Berkshire Valley Road (Route 699) to Lost Lake and back. Examining the NYNJTC Jersey Highlands Trails Map 126 (1st edition, 2011), I was able to piece together a circuit which traversed that trail once again past the two viewpoints noted on the map, and then visited new trails we hadn't done previously. It made for a very varied hike.

Like last time, we parked in the lot on Berkshire Valley Road (just north of Taylor Road), and headed north on the white-blazed trail. This trail climbs immediately, and it continues doing so for at least the next 20 minutes, right to the ridge. After the second viewpoint, labeled "Valley View Lookout" on the map, we continued north until we reached a narrow woods road used by hunters. This road is labeled Compton-Gobel Road on Google Maps. We headed east on this road, passing a handful of hunter SUVs, though we saw no hunters. We then headed south on another woods road which descended steeply on a badly eroded path until it reached Route 699 at exactly where Blue Road continues east. We took this road east, first visiting the wonderful waterfall at the southern dam of Longwood Lake. We then took a smattering of woods roads in the southwesterly direction, on the eastern side of Rockaway River. This area has dozens of criss-crossing trails, the vast majority of which do not appear on the aforementioned NYNJTC map. But if one keeps going in a general SW direction, one eventually comes out on Route 699 less than 0.1 miles south of the parking area. Straying east while in this area could get you arrested by the U.S. Military since the property is part of Picatinny Arsenal.

We covered 6.7 miles today in about 4 hours.

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