Abraham S. Hewitt State Forest - Bearfort Ridge and Surprise Lake (West Milford, NJ)

Well, you knows that last weekend we had a snow blizzard. Yesterday it rained all day. Guess wot? It melted all of our snows! And today it was in the 40 degreeses. So mom scrapped our original hiking plans and taked me to the mountains instead thinking the snow must has melted up north in the mountains too! I did not think I woz going to see the mountains again until springtime. Shore enuff, we gotted there and the snows woz almost gone. But the pwoblem woz that all of the melted snows and rains from yesterday was coming down the mountain! There woz a gabillion waterfalls and rite off the bat we had to cross a slickery bridge over this one:

Those steps woz steep and they skeered me but mom put my leash on and maded me go up. It woz only 3 steps so once I gotted up those, I GI Joe crawled across the bridge and then we was off with our hikings.




We climbed up the mountain and there woz some nice seenik overlooks:




At one point mom went down this big rawk wall and it was way too steep and skeery for me. I could see that mom was hasing a hard time with it. She gotted to the bottom and looked up and this is wot she sawed:

I woz saying "No way is I climbing down that rawk. It is way too steep and skeery. You has to come back up." Mom woz telling me she could halp me if'n I would come closer and I would be safe but I woz not believing it at all! So mom climbed back up. She woz not happy with me. We had to go a diffrent way coz mom sayed she could not climb back down while holding me, it woz too dangrus. But the udder way we wented woz very nice. There was a moss path wot woz like soft carpet unner my paws:


And then we wented thru a rhododendron tunnel:


Even tho we wented a diffrent way, we still camed out at Surprise Lake. Surprise!!!!! Had I not weirded out on mom, we would has come around the lake from over there on the udder side.

Surprise Lake woz pretty frozened still so no swimming there today. But there was no shortage of waters. The way back to the car woz through downhill instead of uphill so the trail woz flooded out in lots of places. It woz not a pwoblem for me but mom was hasing some difficulties and one time she slided in the water and her waterproof shoos went under and her feets gotted all wet BOL!




Then we gotted back and had to cross that bridge to get back to our car wot is way up the hill there to the left. But it woz not so skeery this time. And sides, I was tired and wanted to get to my car. We only hiked 6 miles today since we had to cut 2 miles off coz of me (see above). But they was rilly, rilly hard miles and it taked us over 6 hours to hike them coz of all the floodings and sometimes slickery ice spots in the shades. We had to be rilly careful.

But we still had funs and it mite be the last time we can hike in the mountains until springtime coz winter is coming back tonite and it is getting rilly cold with more snows. Bye mountains! Mebbe I see you again soon, mebbe not till springtime.