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High Mountain & Buttermilk falls

Discussion of hiking from Maine to Florida
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Jon
Posts: 324
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2011 9:43 pm
Location: Bangor, PA

High Mountain & Buttermilk falls

Unread post by Jon »

So my wife wanted to go on a hike by our house up High Mountain. We climbed that, and went down the other side to look for the water falls.

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Trailhead

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Racing up the giant rock

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Approaching the summit

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Lower viewpoint, North Haledon NJ below.

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Manhattan

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The summit of High Mountain (A.k.a. Old Baldy)

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Falls are cut into the traprock

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Debris blocks most of the falls

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The basalt that they are pouring down makes up the whole mountain

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Sarah and I by the falls
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mike
Posts: 1442
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2009 9:20 pm
Location: Ravena, NY

Re: High Mountain & Buttermilk falls

Unread post by mike »

Looks like you guys had a great day in the woods. Great pictures too. Hope to see you in the Cats soon.
rkugel
Posts: 143
Joined: Wed Nov 25, 2009 8:54 am

Re: High Mountain & Buttermilk falls

Unread post by rkugel »

Hi Jon,

Based on the timing of your trip report, it looks like you were out on Saturday May 12th. I was also hiking High Mountain that day and I am amazed we didn't run into each other! In any event, the weather was "picture perfect" beautiful.

Saturday was my first "semi-free" weekend in many weeks, as I had to work a lot of weekends. The overtime has slowed down, but now I' m faced with catching up on all the chores and yardwork I didn't have time to do. Compounding the problem is I haven't done much hiking since last fall and I'm really out-of-shape - a point painfully brought home Saturday as I was climbing High Mountain.

I'm hoping to get a "completely" free weekend soon, so I can hook up with Mike again. Mike and I always have a great time when we hike together, and our mutual trust has allowed to us to venture into areas we normally would not attempt on our own.

Perhaps the three of us can plan a hike some time. I suspect I will need to do a couple of relatively easy hikes until I build my endurance and stamina back up.

By the way, have you seen the other two "Buttermilk Falls" in the High Mountain preserve? One is by the abandoned quarry along side the road leading into William Paterson University. The other is located near the northern end of the yellow trail in Franklin Lakes. This falls is the "true" Buttermilk Falls. On the way, you'll also see Franklin Clove, which is also pretty cool.

Lastly, from what I understand, there is a small (but growing) bear population in the High Mountain Park. In fact, I saw a bear cub last fall. We will need to maintain due vigilance while hiking.

Rich
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Jon
Posts: 324
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2011 9:43 pm
Location: Bangor, PA

Re: High Mountain & Buttermilk falls

Unread post by Jon »

We didn't start until like 12:30 . I don't know which falls this was. We followed the yellow trail until the other side of high mountain, then when it turned left (south) we kept going northwest, until we got to these falls. Then right on the other side of the falls is the red trail, which we took back to the car. yah we were there on Saturday.

If you want to see the GPS track of our route, I download my garmin and upload the Google Earth file to my webpage
If you have the program Google Earth you can check them out here:
http://splyke.com/gps-tracks.html

You can click on any google earth picture there and download the .kmz and look at the hike in 3D.
It's off by a few meters, but it gets the general location.

I also read some warnings about bear sightings in High Mountain. We had the cops by my house (oldham pond) chasing a bear back into the woods last fall. So I don't know if they're migrating down from Ramapo or what, but I doubt they have enough to live on back there.

If you are going out in NJ to warmup I suggest getting the new trailmaps. They moved some of the trails (like the one up Windbeam), I was going to holdoff as long as possible, but I just went and got them. Lots of little changes all over.

I got a pretty busy schedule coming up. Probably doing blackdome and Thomas cole next weekend for my 3500 progress. Then on Memorial day either going camping at Delaware water gap with the family (if I can get reservations), Or I'm going backpacking up hunter and westkill with my buddies if I can't. Then I start Summer semester, so I haven't made any plans that far ahead.
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