If you hike High Mountain Park Preserve often enough, you stop reading the blazes and start reading the mountain. You know the fork past the golf course wall leads nowhere good if you're aiming for the summit. You know the yellow trail thins out into a meadow before it thickens again into forest. You know the solar-lit star near the top means you're close, even if you can't remember the last time you actually looked at a map.
That kind of memorized navigation has worked for years at High Mountain, a 1,200-acre preserve with 11.5 miles of trail winding through the Watchung Mountains, the largest tract of forested land east of the Highlands. It's the kind of place where the trail system feels permanent because nobody's had much reason to update it. This year, that's not true anymore. The Nature Conservancy is mid-project on a real rework of the trail network, and the changes aren't cosmetic. Some of what you've memorized is about to stop matching what's on the ground.
Three New Trails, and They Don't Use Paint
The most visible change is also the newest: three mountain bike-friendly trails, named Turtle, Butterfly, and Bear, were on track to open by the end of summer 2026. With mid-September here, that target has either just been hit or is about to be, which makes this the first hiking season where you should expect to run into them rather than hear about them secondhand.
The detail that matters for anyone who's hiked here for years is how these trails are marked. Instead of the painted blazes that have defined High Mountain's system for decades, red, yellow, white, orange, the new trails use decals. It's a small shift with a real consequence: your eye has been trained to scan tree trunks for paint. On these three trails, that habit won't find anything.
The Nature Conservancy, which manages the preserve alongside Wayne Township and the state, says the broader trail update is happening in phases specifically to protect sensitive habitat and build a more sustainable network for both hikers and bikers. The preserve stays open through the work, but signage and markers are shifting as each phase rolls out.
The Doors on the Franklin Lakes Side Have Moved
If your usual route brings you in from the Franklin Lakes side, two access points have already changed.
The Beech Mountain Trail, which starts at the Reservoir Drive circle, is now blazed pink. The trailhead itself moved roughly 50 yards east of where it used to sit, a small adjustment made to stop the path from cutting across private property. If you've parked at the old spot out of habit, you'll want to walk a little farther before you find the actual start.
The Brookside Trail has moved too. It now begins at Indian Trail Drive instead of its previous starting point, and completing the loop back to your car now requires a short stretch of road walking that wasn't part of the route before.
Here's a quick reference for what's different heading into this fall:
| Trail | What changed |
|---|---|
| Turtle, Butterfly, Bear (new) | Three mountain bike-friendly trails on track to open by end of summer 2026, marked with decals instead of painted blazes |
| Beech Mountain Trail | Reblazed pink; trailhead relocated about 50 yards east at the Reservoir Drive circle in Franklin Lakes |
| Brookside Trail | Now starts at Indian Trail Drive in Franklin Lakes; the loop back to your car now includes a short road walk |
None of these changes are dramatic on their own. Together, they mean the trail folklore that's carried people around High Mountain for years is due for an update, not a full rewrite, but enough of one that showing up on memory alone is a little riskier this season than it used to be.
What Hasn't Moved
Not everything on the mountain is in flux, and it's worth saying so plainly, because the two landmarks that anchor most people's sense of the place haven't changed at all.
The solar-powered star near the summit, installed by the Borough of North Haledon as a symbol of hope during the pandemic, still lights up at night and is still visible from parts of North Haledon, Franklin Lakes, Wyckoff, and Hawthorne. It's still the marker most hikers use to know they're close to the top, whatever else has shifted around it.
Buttermilk Falls, the 40 to 45-foot waterfall near William Paterson University where you can walk behind the cascade, is also untouched by any of this year's trail work. It still freezes into ice formations in winter the way it always has. If the rest of the preserve feels like it's being redrawn under your feet, these two spots are the parts of the map that haven't moved.
If You Still Do the University Drive Loop
One of the most familiar ways in is the small lot off University Drive, on the Wayne side of the preserve near William Paterson University, with room for about 15 cars. It's a short drive from North Haledon and a common starting point for people on this side of the mountain. From there, the familiar route takes the Red Trail out for roughly three-quarters of a mile, picks up the Yellow Trail at the T-intersection, and climbs to the summit for a loop that runs close to four miles round trip with a clear view of the New York City skyline at the top.
That specific loop isn't one of the three newly named trails, and it isn't getting decals. But it does run through the same preserve where phased work is underway, which means a stretch of blaze you've always trusted to be there might be freshly repainted, temporarily unmarked, or rerouted slightly around construction. None of that makes the hike harder. It just means this is the first season in a while where checking the current trail status before you head out actually tells you something useful, instead of just confirming what you already knew.
A few habits are worth adopting if High Mountain is part of your regular rotation this fall:
- Glance at the Nature Conservancy's preserve page before a hike you haven't done in a while, especially if it touches the Beech Mountain or Brookside access points.
- Expect decals, not paint, if you find yourself on anything that looks new near the bike-friendly sections.
- Don't assume last year's trailhead parking spot is still the start of the trail on the Franklin Lakes side.
Why This Is Worth Noticing at All
A trail system that quietly rewrites itself says something true about the place it runs through. High Mountain has always felt like a fixed backdrop to daily life here, the mountain you can see from your yard, the hike you do without thinking about it. This year it's a reminder that even the parts of a town that feel permanent are still being maintained, adjusted, and improved by people paying close attention to them.
That's the same kind of attention Fast Track Real Estate Company brings to North Haledon itself. We're not out on the trail crew, but we notice the same kind of thing: the small, real changes that make a place worth knowing well, long before anyone needs a reason to call an agent. If a hike through the preserve ever turns into a conversation about property here, we're glad to have that conversation too.
