December 2011: Cannonball Trail

Normally, the troop schedules a camping trip every month (except for August), however over the last few years, we normally don't get a lot of attendees for the December camping trip. The reasons are several, but the top two are either the Scout needs to go and visit family for the holidays, or the parent doesn't want their child getting sick so close to Christmas and Hanukkah.

So, in wanting to keep the outing in Scouting, we decided this year to do a day hike on the Cannonball Trail, which runs through the Ramapo Mountain Range in Oakland, and parts of Ringwood State Park. (Frankly, its a beautiful hike that more people should be on).

The Cannonball Trail itself is about 15 miles from Oakland heading North - however (like we did) you can take one of the many side and additional trails that run through the mountains, and turn the hike into a giant loop - and I do mean GIANT. The SM had his pedometer running on his phone (an app that is a must for any regular hiker), and when the battery ran out at 3/4 of the way through the hike, we had just about hit the 8 mile mark. A rough guess would be that we hiked around 10-12 miles.

The weather was brisk, but nice, which made it interesting getting the amount of layers need correct. When heading up some of the more steeper areas, your body was warming up and sweating profusely - so you remove a layer - only to be shivering as you descend the other side of the rise. The trail was pretty wet and muddy due to the volume of rain, but there are ways around everything, and for the most part, we survived quite well, and had a great hike. Special kudos go to Mike "The Foot" who was our trail leader for the day.

Total time on the trail was roughly 7 hours or so - which may be a record for a hike of that long for 101!

Pictures can be found here.