West Plains Oswego, A PBX Hike

Teegate

Administrator
Site Administrator
Sep 17, 2002
25,984
8,737
All,

Around a month ago I was looking over aerial photo’s along Route 539 and thought that the area looked interesting enough to plan a PBX hike. So I threw together a line of waypoints and sent them off to Bob for approval. After a few minor changes Bob sent sent this edited invitation out to all members announcing my trip.



Get yer swamp stompers on boys! We're going hunting for Cedar Trees--great big gobs of 'em! In fact, were' going to hunt down some corduroy roads, pine plains, and spungs while were at it. To top it all off, we'll end up at Lucilles in Warren Grove and have a big slab of warm apple pie!

This trip was planned by Guy, and it looks to be a good one. We'll start out on route 539 just south of 72, and we'll dive into the pine plains with mucho gusto! We are going to pick up a wonderful little tributary of the upper Oswego from where she bubbles out of the ground in the West Plains area. We'll follow this creek right down to where the main creek joins in.

I hope you can make it. Let me know if you'll be there so's I can look fer ya.

Happy trails..............bob




So this morning just past 9AM we descended on the little parking area along 539 near 72 located here.


http://maps.njpinebarrens.com/#lat=39.793270598756&lng=-74.37400817871094&z=16&type=k&gpx=


On the hike today was Bobpbx, Teegate (me), Hewey, Paul who is not a member here, and my favorite PBX member, Buddy!. We had no idea what we were in for, and the day turned out to be quite intensive. From minute one we struggled to push forward. Our first stop was an interesting spung which we shared with two ducks.


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Another location.

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The water you see here is on a tributary of the Oswego River. You are seeing the headwaters that will eventually make it to Oswego Lake and beyond.

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This are is full of cedar swamps that have been harvested during various years in the distant past. Full of corduroy roads that are amazing to see are still mostly intact. This birds eye view shows what we had to go through.


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Buddy resting on a corduroy road.


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Bet you can’t see me 10 feet away!


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Try 20 feet!

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And the actual Oswego River along 539.


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This duck is made of wood!


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One area in the Warren Grove bog Preserve.


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And we found a rare small patch of Broom Crowberry and some of them are blooming. As I have mentioned before this is one of the first plants to bloom in the pines and are so small you can barely see them.


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Look closely.

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Bob made a detour, and I am so glad that he did. We stumbled onto a sawmill that still had the pulley for the belt along with the solid steel shaft. This is something you just don’t see everyday!


Picture the belt around this sawing the wood.


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Coupling

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Notice how long it is.

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The engines bolted on this.

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These were inline with the pulley. So something mounted on here and the belt attached to whatever it was and ran to the pulley in the earlier photo’s.


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Solid steel shaft.


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Another coupler buried underground.


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Complete shaft, or is it? We think it is longer but since it is underground we can’t really tell.


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And finally, here is a video of what we had to endure today. And if you like to revel in others misfortune, you can get a kick out of Bob falling down. But you really should not laugh because it was a really tough day. So tough, we never even made it halfway. We had to bail early for lack of time. In the end the rating was a 7.5 out of 10; however, a day in the pines is always a 10 to me.

Feel his pain! Give it time to load since I left it at full size, about 20MB. And turn up your volume to hear our reaction. Broadband only!

http://teegate.njpinebarrens.com/03142009/cedar.mov


Guy
 

woodjin

Piney
Nov 8, 2004
4,358
340
Near Mt. Misery
Damn I am sorry i had to miss this one. You know I like it rough (hiking of course). The discovery of that sawmill, so much intact, is enough alone to make it all worth wild. I like the rare video of Bob falling. Bob is the most graceful person I know in the woods. See, he even falls gracefully. Look back at that video...looks like he's falling on a mattress.

Hopefullly I can catch up with you guys for the second 1/2.

Jeff
 

RednekF350

Piney
Feb 20, 2004
5,064
3,341
Pestletown, N.J.
That looked very challenging. That's the way I like'em.
Now we have part two of this hike hanging out there and part two of the Bog Slog on the incomplete list as fill-ins.
Nice find on the sawmill boys.
 

bobpbx

Piney
Staff member
Oct 25, 2002
14,693
4,864
Pines; Bamber area
The first 3 miles of this exploring trek were the most intense we have ever had. And that is saying something since we've had over 30 PBX hikes in all kinds of places, including the Great Swamp many times. But, as all of them are, it was interesting to see how the topography changes.

Here is Guy in the dry section in the upper West Plains, in the area of Bass River State Forest North.

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On the big spung we came too, this pair of ducks were really pretty unfazed with us.

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Guy and Paul in the big spung.

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See if you can guess how I got this shot. I'll PM you if correct.

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Chris in the pitch pine lowland. It is starting to get damp here. Water underground is gathering and flowing toward the source of the creek.

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This is the first sign of a flow of this Oswego tributary.

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Hidden Spung, deep in.

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At one point we stuck our head out of the swamp and saw this using the zoom lens. Slump mountain. Do not let your kids play in these hills, you'd dig them out after a day or so.

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Closer to 539, this is where the map first calls this the Oswego River. This is how small it is.

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This was not a true picnic. Two of us went into water over our boots.

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whippoorbill

Explorer
Jul 29, 2003
675
121
66
Bridgeton
Hey ... I wanna know if you still had some apple pie! :)

Great reports and photos. You guys are crazy. Isn't it safer to stay on the beaten paths?

Whip
 

Teegate

Administrator
Site Administrator
Sep 17, 2002
25,984
8,737
Great photo's Bob. You take many I wish I had.


Guy
 

bobpbx

Piney
Staff member
Oct 25, 2002
14,693
4,864
Pines; Bamber area
Thats a great shot Guy. That shows the anthers at the end of the filaments. Crowberry is a dioecious plant, meaning one plant will be male and one female. This is a male. Its very interesting where we found it, and I wonder if any females are in the area, otherwise the pollen goes to waste.
 

Teegate

Administrator
Site Administrator
Sep 17, 2002
25,984
8,737

Teegate

Administrator
Site Administrator
Sep 17, 2002
25,984
8,737
Thats a great shot Guy. That shows the anthers at the end of the filaments. Crowberry is a dioecious plant, meaning one plant will be male and one female. This is a male. Its very interesting where we found it, and I wonder if any females are in the area, otherwise the pollen goes to waste.

BTW, there now are two photo's in the post above if you missed it.

Guy
 

bobpbx

Piney
Staff member
Oct 25, 2002
14,693
4,864
Pines; Bamber area
BTW, there now are two photo's in the post above if you missed it. Guy

Man, that one's really good. It shows the anthers just peeking out of the florets. You have a great little camera there for the price. The lighting was horrible but it compensated nicely.
 

Teegate

Administrator
Site Administrator
Sep 17, 2002
25,984
8,737
I am not always happy with my photo's from it, but I am now convinced that taking good photo's in the woods is extremely hard to do. The light is poor and the subject matter is not the greatest for photo's. However, when not in the woods, and using the macro, I have been very happy with it.

Guy
 
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