Stephens State Park Route Finding

Searching for new trails not too far from home, I pointed the shooting brake west last week. Stephens State Park is in Mount Olive. Since the one time I’d been there many years ago, parties unknown — possibly the Jersey Off Road Bike Association — have put in an extensive new trail network.

Green Trail meadow
Along the Green Trail

All this new singletrack augments the old hiking trails, but it comes at a price. The only printed map that I’m aware of is published by New York New Jersey Trail Conference, and it is so old as to be obsolete. At the urging of my physical therapist, who rides there regularly, I downloaded an app called Trail Forks onto my surveillance device mobile phone.

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No Hill for Old Men

“Man, you always make the best faces at the finish line,” laughed NENSA competition director Justin Beckwith at the finish of Sunday’s Climb to the Castle.

Utterly fried, I gasped for air. Someone asked if I needed help getting out of my roller skis. I shook my head no, even though back pain had made it difficult to clip into them down at the toll gate.

Another sufferfest on the Whiteface Mountain toll road. Just one hill; how hard can it be? Five miles, an eight per cent grade, 2300 feet of vertical. Unlike the previous year, mild temperatures, negligible wind, and dry pavement should have made for a good race.

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Sterling Forest Ramble

It’s been a weird summer. I spent most of June and July working and schlepping stuff to a self storage unit as I prepare for an impending divorce. I managed to choose the hottest day of the summer to move out of the place I’ve lived for 25 years and into a garret apartment in a nearby town.

McKeag’s Meadow Trail

For a couple of months, it’s been nothing but upheaval, and I’ve scrambled to get any sort of training in. Finally, I’m sort of settled down, and the opportunity for a long run presented itself.

Last Thursday, I drove up to Sterling Forest, just over the New York state line, to take another shot at a route that eluded me last fall.

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