Sunfish Pond

Sunfish Pond is a glacial lake in Worthington State Forest at the Delaware Water Gap. This time of year we like to hike up there to pick wild blueberries. Unfortunately, we hit it a week early, and about 90% of the ones we saw weren't ripe yet. We could have easily nabbed a gallon if we had gone later in the week, but it's supposed to get really hot later. No way could I have made that hike had it been pushing 100. We ended up with about a pint of blueberries--enough for a couple of personal-sized pies.

Normally, we take the Douglas Trail. It's really steep and rocky, but only 2.5 miles compared to four for the Appalachian Trail. The two trails converge about half a mile before Sunfish Pond. Somehow, we managed to take a wrong turn and ended up on some other trail that basically led straight up the side of the mountain through rock fields and narrow rock outcroppings where the trail was barely wide enough to stand with my feet side by side. That trail was BRUTAL. I've climbed trails that steep before, but it was in the Austrian Alps!

Hey--as long as it led uphill, we couldn't go too far wrong. It also ran into the Appalachian Trail, but it turns out it met up with it on the far side of the pond from the Douglas Trail. Not knowing that, we turned the wrong direction and didn't realize it until about half a mile along, when the trail and terrain looked all wrong. We turned around, and 0.6 mile back--Sunfish Pond.

Now for the pictures: This first one's actually a section of the Appalachian Trail adjacent to Sunfish Pond, on the west side. Compared to the trail we ended up on, this is quite tame; it was actually pretty flat.
These next two pictures are just looking across the pond from the trail.



Another picture looking across the pond, showing a stack of rocks that someone evidently spent quite some time building.



Enjoy! I'm going to be sooooo sore tomorrow.