Long Pond Ironworks/Monksville

[elzoller]

What is the deelio?

Wasn't there an entry for this on the trail directory here?? :hmmm:

http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/parks/longpond.html

I was there once, somewhere around 2002, and don't remember anything special, otherwise I would've been back, but I also don't remember it really sucking.

I have been going to Jungle Habitat lately and I drive through here to get there, so I was wondering.....

Does anybody ride there? perhaps there is some super sweet stuff waiting to be discovered??????

The state site says 'Mountain Biking trails'.

 

[VelocityBoy]

Not sure if they are legal, EZ.

Double check and if so I could lend you my NY/NJ Trail Conference map if you like.

 

[Cyclopath]

I stopped here today on my way home from JH.
The museum was closed but we were able to coax a curator out of the building for a few. He said that riding within the historic district was illegal but that was a relatively small area of the park. The trails on the opposite side of the Wanaque river are legal for multi-use.

The legal part of the trail does go out to Ringwood Manor, but currently, a portion is closed to the public with no reroute. SO, though it looks like a great place to explore someday, right now it is a four mile almost straight trail before turning around and re-tracing your steps or your ride.

map: http://www.longpondironworks.org/virttour/folpi_map2.htm

 

[soundz]

I don't know whats up with me and bushwacking / hike-a-biking these days, but I ended up doing it again .. I think that's the 3rd time this month 😛

So I was out at JH today trying to hit all the trails I haven't hit. One of which is the green fireroad heading South on the map. I'm not sure if I took the right fireroad or not, but well, turns out there is a teal colored trail blazes which starts towards the south and runs North all the way up to the powerlines .. the trail is very well marked. Did some research when I got back home and turns out the trail is part of the Long Pond Ironworks. According to NYNJTC, you can mountain bike there:

http://www.nynjtc.org/park/long-pond-ironworks-state-park

Towards the end, where the powerline is, there were some signs saying that trails were temporarily closed, but it looked like they were pointing more at some washed out fireroad and not the teal trail. The teal trail is a mix of ridable rockiness, unridable rockiness, some smooth stuff - kinda reminds me of the yellow trail from skyline heading up to ringwood, but more sucky - there's a bunch of good rock features though. All single-track. There was too much hike-a-bike and enough downed trees to get any kind of flow going. There was this one cool lookout facing Ringwood with a nice roller:

A bit after the lookout, there was a split to the yellow trail (which seems to head East toward the lake), but I kept on following the teal:

It got kind of weird once I hit the powerline and I was running out of time, so I just looked for the fastest way to the road which was through a construction vehicle type of yard. GPS (I started it around where the teal trail starts/ends on the South side):

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/32798985

It would be nice if Jorba can get in here since it already links to JH 😀