Winona-Highlands Trail

Winona-Highlands Trail, Mahlon Dickerson (6/8/2013)

Six weeks ago we did two hikes in this lovely Morris County area. Today we returned to do the remaining unhiked trails, this time southwest of Weldon Road. Using both this map and the NYNJTC Map #126, we parked at the Saffin Rock-Rill Area off Weldon Road and headed north on Yellow. Making a sharp left on the Highlands trail we crossed Weldon Road and then took what's called the Winona Trail south to the Highlands trail, on which we continued south all the way to Camp Jefferson. Neither of the two aforementioned maps contains the small network of trails between the camp and the powerline cut. These include a Yellow trail (of which mostly comingles with the Highlands trail), a Blue and an Orange trail. We hiked some of these back on Halloween, 2011, after a freak winter storm hit New Jersey causing power outages all over the state (on that day we hiked these trails starting at the parking lot of Camp Jefferson).

Today, upon reaching the lake at Camp Jefferson, we were greeted by huge, loud dump trucks and bulldozers. Some serious building activity was taking place on the NW bank of the lake. We came within feet of a giant bulldozer making its way over the narrow causeway at the northern tip of the lake. At this point we turned back, heading north on the Highlands Trail (which is also blazed Yellow here) but instead of taking this trail all the way back we took a Blue-blazed trail (not on either map and littered with Sandy blow-downs) until just south of the powerline cut, where we rejoined the Highlands trail, which we took all the way back to Weldon Road. We headed back to the car on Yellow, though not directly. We followed a small loop on east and then south to the car. The entire route can be seen here. In essence we did three loops today: one east of Weldon Road, another west of Weldon and north of the powerline cut, a third between the powerline cut and Camp Jefferson.

One notable thing about today's hike was the explosion of red efts! We literally could not walk more than 15 seconds without seeing one on the trail, often seeing a dozen or more mingling together, and many were quite tiny! Total distance hiked today was just over 6 miles in just over 3.5 hours.

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