Hiking and Bouldering

Intro and The Plan

I am writing my accounts of my day out on Saturday. Josh might be adding his comments as well.

The Plan

RobA:I got a call from Josh on Thursday and he wanted to got to the climbing gym on Saturday and i said ok. I told him we would finalize plans on Friday. So it turns out the Rock gym doesn't open till 1:00pm on Saturday's so that was out because we both had to work the next afternoon, so we had to do something that would get us back in Hackettstown by 3:00pm or so. I told Josh to give me a few minutes to go look at some maps and come up with a good day hike and I would pick him up from work that night to go over plans.

I decided that Wawayanda would make for a good day hike because it was a short hike (6.5 miles) had some unique trail features and we could do some bouldering on the way up or down.

Saturday

RobA: Josh and I both knew that we were going to be leaving between 7:00 and 7:30 but that did not change our plans for Friday night. When midnight Saturday morning rolled around we were just getting out of the movies, we saw Jackass 2 and it was freaking funny, then it was on to Applebee’s Restaurant where Josh works to hang around for a while. I finally dropped Josh off at his house at around 2:00 AM. We both got around 4 hours of sleep. When my alarm went off at 7:00 i still had to pack my pack and pick up Josh so we could leave town by 7:30. I was so tired, i wanted to call Josh and tell him to forget it, but i rolled out of bed and got going. I some how managed to be a t Josh's house at 7:30 and we were gone.

It looked like it was going to be a great day. The sun was rising and warming up everything and there was not cloud in the sky. We got to the A.T. trailhead on 517 in good time. And we were on the trail by 8:30. The first mile of the AT on our hike was on the Pochuck Creek Boardwalk system. It was built to eliminate a long road walk and saves about 3 miles of hiking. We covered the two miles to the base of Wawayanda Mt. in just under an hour. We stopped there so i could take off my sweatpants and to organize our gear so our bouldering stuff was on top of the inside of our packs.

As we began the climb Up Wawayanda we stopped every once and an awhile to check out boulders to boulder on, on our way down. There were a few good choices and it would take many trips to get to them all. The hike up to the top was pretty uneventful. We passed a few people on the way down. We did find a crack in a cliff that would make a nice top-rope route near the final switchbacks to the top.

The views were awesome. The views stretched from Catfish Ledges, in Jersey to the Catskills and Gunk’s in NY. As i was taking off my pack my camera fell of it’s strap and started to slide off the top it picked up speed and went over a 8 foot cliff and almost went over a forty foot one, it was stopped on a small ledge. Josh used his climbing skills to down climb the first cliff and rescued my camera. Some how it still worked. We took a hero shot on top, had a snack and prepared to descend.

I have never been bouldering before and was excited to try it. We got to a boulder that was right on the A.T. it even had a blaze on it. We tried 5 or 6 different ways up. This was a great intro boulder because of the back of it. It sloped to a height of about 2 feet above the ground so there was no down climbing needed. I have no clue about how hard the problems were bit if i could do them they must have been easy. We did that for 30 to 45 minutes and then decided to go.... we were hungry and wanted to make sure that were back in town to work with 2 miles to hike to get the car so we left.

Considering how easy the A.T. is in that section we did the two miles in a little less than 45 minutes, which was good. I was beat by then and had to be at work first so Josh drove home, with a stop at the BK lounge of course. Overall it was a good day that finished up back at the movies and Applebee’s when Josh finished working

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