Tom McGee's Blog

Ah, a three-day week­end. We’d been plan­ning a trip up to Pyra­mid Moun­tain in Mor­ris County for sev­eral weeks, and chose Fri­day after­noon to head up there.

Much closer than we imag­ined — even with after­noon traf­fic on I-287 — we found handy trail maps at the vis­i­tors’ cen­ter out­lin­ing many miles of trails to explore. I’d been to Tri­pod Rock before and led LF up to this local landmark.

The rock on top seems about the size of an Abrams tank. No exag­ger­a­tion — see the photo at the bot­tom for a more human scale. The small­est of the three rocks hold­ing it up is about the size of a large tele­vi­sion set. It’s been sit­ting up there for 18,000 years, since the Wis­con­sin Glac­ier receded. Nev­er­the­less you couldn’t pay me enough to sleep under it, no mat­ter how hard it was raining.

As you approach it you have to take a trip around to study it. There’s got to be a trick some­where.

Why isn’t this rock crushed already? Is it really sit­ting up on that lit­tle point?

After a while you can only just stare at it won­der­ing, “what the…“

We did three or four miles up the moun­tain, then down the far side and around the shore of the reser­voir. The park itself is beau­ti­ful, and kudos to Mor­ris County for the fine state that they keep things in. Unlike Essex County parks, which can get pretty dumpy, there was no lit­ter, no bro­ken glass. On a lovely warm and sunny Fri­day after­noon we saw maybe a grand total of one per­son the first two hours we were out.

The land­scapes are very dra­matic. Gigan­tic glacial boul­ders were strewn every­where, in one spot form­ing a giant fence at the top of a ridge. I wish I’d remem­bered the good cam­era instead of just my cell phone, but I won’t make that mis­take next time.