Hiking the Delaware Water Gap

Hiking the Delaware Water Gap and Sunfish Pond

As I mentioned in a post earlier, hiking has been something my husband, and I have both gotten into recently. New Jersey isn’t the state you think of when thinking of great hikes but there are a lot of different fun and exciting trails we’ve taken.

I first got into hiking when I was completely injured from running. Hiking made me feel healthy and strong. Even though I’m healthy again, my husband and I are still enjoying the adventure of hiking.

Earlier in the week, we drove up to the Delaware Water Gap in northwest, New Jersey. It’s one of the furthest points from our house and took about 2 hours to drive. We wanted to hike to the Delaware Water Gap and specifically Sunfish Pond. While the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area is home to Sunfish pond it’s also home to the Appalachian Trail, Delaware River, Mount Tammany, Worthington State Forest, Forested mountains, and plenty of other hikes.

In fact from the parking lot at the Delaware Water Gap trailhead, you can get to the blue dot trail, turquoise trail, white blaze, blue blaze, Dunnfield Creek trail green, and many other natural areas. There aren’t many fire roads to hike on and most is rocky on the Appalachian Trail.

At the Delaware State Forest, I wanted to go specifically to Sunfish Pond which is a glacial lake formed from the last ice age. It took us about 4 hours for the entire hike.

We saw this trailhead at the start of the Delaware Water Gap…always a welcoming sign:

After hiking about 3 miles in the Delaware Water Gap, almost entirely up, we made it to the top of the mountain. It was a gorgeous view over the Delaware Water Gap, the Delaware River, and we could see into Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

We continued along the trail to get to Sunfish pond. Sunfish pond is long but was well worth the hike.

We spent a little while at Sunfish Pond and headed back home. Since it has rained recently, there were a lot of small waterfalls and creeks back from Sunfish Pond. Last time we hiked at the Delaware Water Gap and Sunfish Pond, most of the falls were dry!

In all, the Delaware Water Gap and Sunfish Pond are two of my favorite areas in New Jersey. If you get a chance to hike out there, I highly recommend it.

Other Hiking Related Posts:
Hiking the Hollywood Sign
Hiking to Hemlock Falls
Hiking at Bear Mountain Park (Getting Lost)
Hiking Bear Mountain Part 2

Questions for you:
Do you enjoy hiking?
Is it flat or are there mountains where you live? Have you been to Delaware Water Gap or Sunfish Pond?

9 Comments

I love hiking in that area. We often would drive up from NYC to Bear Mountain (totally missed that post). Just past Bear Mountain in the Cold Spring area is Fahnestock. That is another great area and you get to hike a portion of the Appalachain Trail.

That looks absolutely beautiful! I love that you guys hike together. And I really love the new look of your site!!! Nice job!!

Beautiful area! And YES! I am so blessed to live in western NC right at the entrance to Pisgah National Forest. We have a plethora of hiking trails, waterfalls and breathtaking views. I love hiking! It makes everything feel so peaceful and like the stressors of “real life” don’t exist. That and it’s an excellent glute workout. 😉

Hiking is probably one of my favourite things ever. It’s pretty flat where I live here in the prairies, but a 3.5 hour drive will get you to some gorgeous mountain ranges. I just wish I could make the drive more often!

I really do want to get into hiking again. There’s so many mountains within an hour of two of me now and I have a lot of family with ski houses. Once the novelty of being in Rhode Island by the beach all the time wears off, I’ll for sure be heading to the mountains more.

This looks like a beautiful area to hike! I’m not too much of an outdoors person, but I can always appreciate a good view.

Aside from speed bumps, it is pancake flat here. Well, we do have some bridges and many parking garages, but those are manmade ;).

It looks like you guys had a beautiful hike and a lot of fun together. I’m thinking i need to find some nice hikes a few hours away and see if Clay wants to do them. I haven’t been hiking in several years but the upstate of SC has some nice areas for it.

Great post!! We are heading out to the Olympic National Park on the Washington peninsula tomorrow to experience Hurricane Ridge and explore the various trails, waterfalls, and lakes in this amazing area.