Tilcon Lake

Tilcon Lake, Allamuchy Mountain State Park (7/9/2011)

I've been discovering many new trails since the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference released their Jersey Highlands (Central North Region) map set earlier this year. With map in hand, and just an idea of a possible loop, we headed back to Allamuchy today, to a recent addition to the park situated between the rest of Allamuchy and Stephen's State Park. According to a sign on the big iron gate on Kinney Road, the park received a grant in 2008 to restore this area to a viable wildlife recreation area in five years. I don't know what it was previously but a wide paved road leads into the area which is now dominated by a large lake.

We parked at the iron gate on Kinney Road and headed to the lake. It's a beautiful area, bathed in sun for the first 30 minutes or so. We continued heading north (following an unmarked path) reaching the northern part of the lake, where the path swung to the east to Waterloo Valley Road, a road not well-travelled. We then headed back west on another unmarked path which took us all the way under Interstate Routh 80 and then east along the Musconetcong River to an area directly across the river from Waterloo Village (along the way we visited an abandoned house).

We intended on crossing the footbridge to Waterloo Village but it was demolished, so we had to replan. We decided to do a 2-mile loop using unmarked trails on the map. We headed east up the old Morris Canal inclined Plane 4, walking on the original sleeper stones that formed the base of the plane upon which huge vessels were pulled up from the Musconetcong River. We continued east until the canal trail became overgrown, at which point we headed north and then west along a blue-blazed bike trail (most likely blazed by JORBA) eventually arriving back at the bottom of Plane 4. At this point we backtracked to Waterloo Valley Road (still bereft of traffic).

We crossed the road and headed west along what appeared to be an old rail trail (now a bike trail) which runs parallel to an operational railroad higher above and Waterloo Valley Road below. Eventually we came back to Waterloo Valley Road, proceeded SW until we got back to Kinney Road, which we took north back to the car, passing a large field on the left where folks were flying radio-controlled model airplanes.

Total distance hiked today was 6.7 miles in just over 3.5 hours.

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