8.5 miles. BLUE – YELLOW – BLUE (Sterling Ridge/Highlands) – RED – WHITE.
From central Jersey: Parkway N, 87N to 17 to 72 Sterling Mine Road to 84. Visitor Center is very nice, several displays, a ranger, maps, exceptional bathrooms.
P11 hiker parking is across the road from the visitor center parking. Basically most of the trails in Sterling are woods roads, just the Ridge trail is a nice regular trail.
Took BLUE in front of Visitor Center. Huge ruin of a furnace from the 1700s was neat and the trail very nice… briefly then it turned into a road.
Different hike in the same park details on our main Sterling Forest page.
Followed Sterling Lake, but this wasn’t nice hiking along houses. Finally YELLOW came in on the left so we took that, but that was a woods road.
Hit P8 hikers parking on 17A with Porta, then backtracked back in and took BLUE Sterling Ridge/Highlands Trail which was very nice and a couple nice viewpoints.
Arrived at the Fire Tower and climbed that for nice views. There is a picnic table here as well.
Blue Sterling continues and we should have taken that but we opted for RED then at the junction took RED south… all overgrown woods roads, nothing thrilling.
Picked up WHITE and headed North to P12 then had to walk up the road, no trail, to BLUE at the furnace and to the parking lot.