Hiking Wyanokie High Point with the Fam Trip Report

It was a beautiful Sunday and we wanted to go for a hike, so Hubby came up with Wyanokie High Point in Ridgewood, NJ to check out. It is labeled as one of the best hikes in NJ on njhiking.com. It is a part of the Norvin Green State Forest. We actually visited the area last year when we did Torne Mountain/Osio Rock. We had such a great time at that hike, we were hoping it would be just as good or better.

The drive from our place in Princeton to the trailhead took about an hour and a half. The trailhead does not have any bathrooms but we pass by the Highlands Natural Pool that I believe does have restrooms (people are swimming there so I assume there are restrooms, however I can't say for sure as we did not have to use the facilities on this trip). This is the parking area.

Here is the trail map of the area. The Parking area where we started is the P in between the Highlands Natural Pool and where it says Ball Mountain (mid right section of the map).

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

From the parking area, we walked up though what looked like some sort of camp that is no longer used. We walked along further following the green trail and crossed this bridge.

My 5 year old practicing his balance.

We pass the Highlands Natural pool on our left and then come across this kiosk, labeled “Richard N Warner Kiosk”. At the kiosk is a trail map you can take. Here is also where we start to follow the blue trail up.

There are some steep climbs up to several view points. I really enjoyed the big rock slabs we got to climb onto.

View points are always great picture opportunities. :)

We also came across this neat rock.

We continued on the blue trail up to High Point here.

It wasn't much further and we reached High Point. The view is pretty awesome and you can see NYC in the far distance. You can't tell from the pics but it was there and we could easily see it.

We had lunch at this spot and just enjoyed the wonderful views. I also took some time to jump for joy. I was pretty happy at the top because it's hikes like these that just remind me of how awesome nature is. There are so many wonderful places to see and I was so happy that the kiddos had fun enjoying this with Hubby and me.

They had a blast jumping from rock to rock at the top (no worries it was a safe area they were jumping).

From the High Point you can actually continue on, but we were content with our hike and just headed back down to the car. The total distance of the hike was about  2.5 miles according to my Runkeeper App's mileage. I really enjoyed this hike. There were lots of great viewpoints along the way, the rock slabs made the hike interesting and fun, and the view at High Point was pretty awesome since you could see the NYC skyline in the far distance. I would say this is a great hike. However, I do like Torne Mountain/Osio Rock a tad better than this one because there were more rock slab sections on the trail. However both are great! This is another one I would totally recommend to others. The short distance makes it doable for kids and view is definitely worth it.