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| Penn Branch Hell Hike, NJ | |
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| | Penn Branch Hell Hike, NJ | | | |
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Penn Branch Hell Hike, NJ
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| Hiking | 22.00 Miles |
200 AEG |
| | Hiking | 22.00 Miles | | | |
| 200 ft AEG | | 10 LBS Pack | | |
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| no linked trail guides |
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| no partners | | If memory serves, I barely hiked trails in NJ 18 to 27 years ago. I have distinct memories of 1 time on the Batona to Apple Pie Hill sometime in the late 1990s as a hike as I mostly biked it. I also did a section of the Batona with friends as a 1 way pack trip in May of 2000. Mostly, my "hikes" were sand road walks. I suspect I stuck to the wide sand roads for a reason: ticks. Also, they make sense, and can easily be navigated both with a 1:24000 topo map, or even with the small state maps that were produced in the past, and eventually from memory if you drive and hike them often enough as I must have. If this hike today was my first experience with hiking, it would be my last.
Trail here is largely pointless. They typically parallel existing roads that are better and easier to hike, though not always as mud lovers have really taken to destroying the roads in the pine barrens over the last 2 decades. A single track of trail does not last long. There is nothing even resembling the tread of the Finger Rock or Old Baldy Trail. Shrubs are thick and without frequent fires, as once occurred, they get incredibly thick and overgrow the trail. This wouldn't really matter, except the ticks love the shrubs. I had more ticks on me yesterday than I have had in the prior 18 years by a factor of 10. I hope I do not have any on me today that give me a nice blood borne disease. Mosquitoes are also a problem, but they fly. With so many swamps and borrow pits, there are ample breeding grounds all over the place.
I started on road where my gps route began. I followed road to the town site of Mount and easily found the trail east of there. I then started to hike north or counterclockwise. Most of this is just dull yet reasonably attractive forest of primarily shortleaf pine and some oak, black, post and southern red being the most common tree oaks, and bear and blackjack being the shrub oaks. I think most if not all of it is has not seen fire in decades, maybe over 50 years, but you can't really tell after a certain point. Ticks here are thick and numerous. I had lots of them, often from things I didn't even think would deposit many onto me. The lone star and dog ticks are racers, too.
Near the northern tip of the trail I came across an inaccurate confusing map placed by the state. This randomly placed map is not near any trailheads, and it isn't even near a road crossing of any type. I supposed that it is close enough to a better dirt road that it could have been a future access point, but nothing ever happened. I took a photo and continued on after studying the map, noting the color of blue used on the map to denote the trail I was looking for.
Eventually, probably south of the Quaker Bridge-Penn Swamp-Washington (ruin) Road, I entered a large burn area. This was by far the most attractive area of the hike. It was also tick free. The current appearance of this area is what happens when a hot growing season fire enters an area that has not seen fire in decades. It looks like it has burned once very hot, and then a second time later on. I enjoyed this area, and it would be nice if it had easy access for future visitation. Maybe it does by dirt road?
I followed the trail until just after the Penn Swamp Branch of the Basto River (creek). Here is where the hell began. If you look at the map I posted, you see one and only one trail intersection with a darker blue color used. This is for the Huckleberry Trail where I intended to create a loop back to my vehicle. It has blue marking it, and it both contrasts the obvious orange dots for the Penn Branch Trail and is the same shade as I would find painted on trees. There are NO OTHER TRAILS either on the map which is randomly placed in the forest near no trailheads, or on the websites where I found the Penn Branch Trail (all trails and hiking project). I also found no description for another trail in the Wharton Trails guide published online.
As it turns out, this morning I was able to find an online Wharton Trail map pdf which shows a trail called the Sand Ridge-Tuplenhocken Trail, which runs from near Basto north to Apple Pie Hill. I was unable to find any other information on this trail than this map. I did find some forums where people asked about it. On the pdf map, the claim was that it has blue and white marks for it's route on the pdf map, and so it should have had blue and white painted on the trees. It does not, it has the exact same color of blue that I found on the forest map for the Huckleberry Trail, although the pdf map shows a lighter shade of blue for the Huckleberry trail than what appears on the map posted in the forest. With the inaccurate and confusting information being all I had while hiking, and as there are no signs at trail junctions, and everything more or less looks the same out here, I took a left onto the wrong trail, which appeared to be correct at the time, and started north.
https://www.nj.gov/dep/parksandforests/ ... n-area.pdf
Making things worse, the Huckleberry Trail is very curly. I think they were drunk when they built these trails, as they meander all over the place, at times with no appearant reason other than being sloppy drunk when laying out the trails. That, or they intentionally laid the trail out to disorient you while on it. It isn't like you can see a 9,000' summit above you so you constantly know where you are in relation to that, and your starting point. So, I wasn't really able to tell I was going the wrong way until near sunset. It was obvious I was when the sun was not where it should have been, and also I really should have been done perhaps as much as an hour earlier. I was following a bunch of roads and some trails probably going faster making things worse.
I kept looking at my route thinking I should be getting close to my car, but the vegetation was wrong. I thought I was getting close when I crossed over Jemima Mount as the vegetation looks similar to where I started, and frankly their idea of a mount(ain) here is a complete joke. I once again found myself in a lowland and this was wrong. At some point I came to a section where black paint covered the blue markers (NJ people) and wasn't even sure I was on a route any longer. I doubled back, but eventually pushed on. The blue painted markers reappeared, but nothing looked right. With thick, thick vegetation and a sun that sets super slow this far north navigation is not as easy as you might think if you don't know where you are. If I could at least place myself, I would know where to go.
Fortunately, I remembered google maps and was able to quickly locate myself on the map with my phone. I was shocked at how far away I had gotten from my car and where I thought I was heading. I was all the way up by a massive swamp that feeds the Wading River near Hawkins Bridge. I was pretty angry at the state for both a grossly inaccurate map being posted, but also a pretty clear trail/ route being painted on trees (they love that here) which took me way the F out here. If you are going to paint 2 routes the same color, why can't you either have a correct map, or place a sign that names the trail? Personally, I think they want people to get lost.
Once I knew where I was, I back tracked to the last major sand road intersection which was Tuckerton Road. I am very familiar with this road and was able to easily navigate back to Mount and my car. Around 9:30 local I came across the first people and vehicle I saw all day. Lot of good it did me. I was almost back to my car. I drove out with no issues. |
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Wildflowers Observation Isolated
Turkey Beard is beginning, pepper bush is going. Smells nice. |
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