Camelback MTB Pushed a Few More Miles

There is a lot of stuff to ride at Camelback/SG38. You can put down some serious miles. I've been riding a fairly short loop of sorts, hitting the trails named Three Bridges and Secret. I was then meandering a bit through part of Birches and looping back to the trailhead. That was equating to something around six miles of rolling about the top of the mountain.

The best seat is at the bar

However, there are other "deer paths" that I haven't been hitting this year so far. You can rack up several miles on these sections as they wander from one jeep road to the next through varying terrain like blueberry bushes, pine tree groves and otherwise root-infested knee-blasters.

These sections are all cardio-intensive. You have to pump those legs. In the case of this ride, I rode about a mile of these singletrack sections before taking the jeep road back to the parking lot.

Lens flare is all the rage, but I really was trying to escape it

There is a bunch more trail than this, and one day maybe I'll post it. In lieu of that here, I'll just post some more trail-related photos and drop the trail map down below as well.

The trail less travelled will get eaten by nature 

Tailgating is where it ends

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Early June Paddle Roundup

The season of Summer has finally hung up its coat and taken a seat in our region of the Northeast. This means more playtime outside, and likely more roundup posts about outdoor adventures in lieu of entries for each trip. That would probably be excruciating to read, anyway.

We hit the Delaware again on two successive weekends at the beginning of this month. Two relatively short jaunts in fine weather on what you could call bourgeois-cruises. OK, just "booze-cruise" works. The definition of which is casually paddling while drinking a can of beer.

Somewhere on the Delaware

At the crack of 1:30 PM on Saturday, June 4th myself and four others (Tara, Scott, Jaime and Eric) set out to paddle the Smithfield to Kittatinny section of the Delaware. Armed with a few beers and subs, we made it our mission to relax. I'd go ahead and even say we had a license to chill, but the cornball levels are already much too high.

This particular segment is 6-7 miles long. The ambiguity exists because I thought it was 6 miles, but my GPS track on this read almost 7 miles. It took us nearly three hours, which isn't that bad considering we stopped for lunch and very casually paddled.

Yes, these boats are secure

In fact, I'd have to say the most strenuous part is jamming five boats onto my truck. I've got it down to a science now... maybe more like a pseudo-science. At this point, a trailer would be actually worth the trouble. I'm thinking of something like a utility trailer that I could fabricate boat cradles and thingamajigs upon.

I will take selfies now and again

Mixed among these photos are evidence from the June 12th trip, whereas we navigated the Delaware from the Eshback access point to the Bushkill disembark. This makes for a good four-mile float where you are implored to not paddle too hard, as you'll knock it out in less than an hour. We had a strong headwind, so there was an impetus to work those shoulder muscles, after all. We packed this one in with a sedan left at Bushkill and jamming five people in the extended cab of my Tacoma to put in at Eshback. And I'd really perfected the sardine arrangement of the kayaks in the truck bed, so the looming threat of a boat trailer was kept at bay for a little bit more for the weekend.

 I've got too many projects as it is, so I can table the trailer discussion for now. And since it's Friday and another weekend is upon us, I'll wrap this up, sneak out of work and go generate some more photos. I'll leave the GPS track below for the Smithfield to Kittatinny trip, for curiosity's sake only, it's not very interesting. And certainly not athletic.

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Big Pocono Hike

This 90-degree heat gets me thinking about getting high. No, not that kind of high. I'm speaking of the altitude kind of high where the temperature is ten degrees cooler and you've got more than a fair chance of a breeze. Big Pocono State Park near Tannsersville, Pennsylvania fills this role perfectly.

We're looking at Delaware Water Gap taking on water

Big Pocono is also just a little bit "around the mountain" from one of my prime mountain biking locations, which I have written about as well, this post being a recent example. There are several miles of hiking (and some biking) trails skirt the mountain top and interconnect here and there occasionally. The trail markings are pretty decent and feature some great views, with several sweet spots.

My wife and I decided to make it a Sunday picnic/hike a few weeks ago. There was a small threat of rain, as you can see in the photo above. A funny note about this photo is that we're actually watching from afar as our house in Delaware Water Gap is getting poured on. You can see the Gap in the center, and our house is a bit to the right. It remained dry in Big Pocono, despite the storm clouds threatening on the three sides of the peninsula.

Scenic vista on Indian Trail

We ended up hiking for about 3 1/4 miles on part of the South Trail and the entirety of Indian Trial, which included the viewpoint from the photo above. It's certainly an easy hike, with parts of Indian Trail being somewhat rocky, but with some great glacial boulder droppings to be seen. The South Trial also features some wonderful viewpoints, as seen below.

South Trail, featuring a view of Delaware Water Gap 

Me, with the 'Gap above my wonderful hairdo 

 Tara looks out over the South

I believe that's Mountain Spring Lake behind me

We did get a few raindrops, and we had a few meager wildlife sightings, whereas you can see an alert chipmunk below, who circled around this tree trunk while we observed him.

I'll post the hiking track below. It's a nice spot to hike and explore, and you're at the top of the Poconos, so it's the best vantage point in the vicinity.

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