Hike along Taylorstown Reservoir and then past Whale Head Rock and Bear Rock plus Yellow and Black Dot trails.
The great thing about keeping a Trail Blog is being able to track info about your hikes – but the downside is that it underscores how quickly time passes.
I was sure we were just at Pyramid until I noticed that the last entry for it was over a year ago – and that was for the Butler Reservoir area.
We’d last done the main part of Pyramid Mountain three years ago. Yikes!
For hike details visit our main Pyramid Mountain – Tripod Rock page.
We’ve done the Tripod Rock – Whale Head – Bear Rock route a ton of times – because it’s wonderful – but we decided to skip uber-popular Tripod Rock entirely and take YELLOW and ORANGE along the Taylortown Reservoir.
I’d forgotten how nice this section of trail is. It hugs the water with views of the reservoir, but also is quite rocky in places with just a little minor scrambling.
After passing Whale Head and arriving at Bear Rock, we picked up the YELLOW/WHITE trail around the other side of Bear Rock so we could add in an out-and-back on the Kincaid YELLOW/BLACK DOT trail.
This is somewhat newish and we’d never gotten around to checking it out. [This out-and-back section added about 3.7 miles to the loop, skip it to shorten a lot]
The turn for YELLOW off of YELLOW/WHITE is a sharp right and we blew right by it on an easy stretch of trail, busy talking and admiring the lovely forest until we realized the blazes were just WHITE and no longer also YELLOW – whoops – and had to backtrack.
No viewpoints or water features along Kincaid YELLOW/BLACK DOT but it was quite nice, and there were a few old mining pits (basically big holes with the rocks taken out piled next to them… not much to see really).
After the Kincaid section we were back at Bear Rock. We took the WHITE trail under the power lines to see if it was as “eh” as we recalled – only having hiked it one time years ago in the summer and it was hhhhot.
It was OK – the path winds under power lines and over a few plank bridges. Stick with taking the RED trail as it’s better and the destination is the same.
Note: This parking area and fills up quickly… when we arrived back at 1:30pm the lot was full and cars parked along the road.
Miles: 7.9
Parking: N40 56.820 W74 23.268
Route: BLUE (Mennen) – YELLOW – ORANGE – WHITE – RED STRIPE on WHITE – BLUE (Mennen) – YELLOW (Kincaid)/WHITE – YELLOW (Kincaid) – BLACK DOT – YELLOW (Kincaid) – WHITE – BLUE (Mennen)
Wildlife Spotted: For the last few hikes we’ve been traveling fast-n-light and not lugging our SLR… so of course we see:
A pair of swans with multiple babies in tow, a pair of turkey vultures that stayed perched by the reservoir while we walked by (got a whiff of something dead, so that’s why they weren’t leaving), lots-o-toads, and startled half dozen turkey vultures drinking at a little stream under the power lines.
They flew up with a big WHOOOFFFP sound, then perched in the power lines, spreading out their wings… and stared at us.