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It's great to be back on the trails! We missed the entire month of February because a series of major snowstorms dropped several feet of snow on our region! And the following
weeks the temperature was well below freezing almost every day. So none of it melted. Checking the snow coverage maps this weekend, it looked like Sourland would be snow-free. But it
wasn't! Thank goodness we had our brand new Kahtoola EXOspikes. They work better than our old Kahtoola Microspikes. About 75% of today's hike was on a snow-packed, icy surface. The going
would have been much slower had it not been for the EXOspikes.
We have hiked this beautiful preserve three times in the past. But the last time was nearly ten years ago when we hiked the western area near Roaring Brook. Today we returned to re-visit Devil's Half Acre in the northern part of the preserve, an area we last hiked 13 years ago. This place has become quite popular since then. The lot was already quite filled when we arrived just after 8:30 in the morning. We started by heading west into the preserve using the only trailhead, the one for the Orange trail. Since everyone seemed to be continuing west on Yellow, we made a left on Orange at its intersection with Yellow, and then took Yellow west to Devil's Half Acre in a clockwise direction. But first, when we got to White, we made a left and headed south to the view east in the gasline cut. Then we backtracked on White to Yellow. Eventually we arrived back at Orange, which we took directly back to the car. Total distance hiked today was 3.3 miles in 2 hours and 20 minutes. (Click on the thumbnail to bring up a bigger image in a pop-up window)
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Photographs and content copyright © Dan Balogh Web design by Dan Balogh |