i have been thinking a lot about the batona trail lately, partly as a possible trip for a church youth group, and partly because i might take it upon myself to create the first detailed trail guide. In any event, i hiked a bit of it this week and drove around and saw a lot of other parts of it, and collected a good bit of information. The map situation for the trail is a bit complex right now, and since i've seen the trail discussed several times on here, i thought it might be useful to others to list what i've found out:
1.) the most recent map of the entire trail (dating to 2010, i believe) can be found here:
http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandf...atona14web.pdf
2.) an older map (2000) can be downloaded in several parts from this page:
http://troop310.cyberpuppi.com/batona.htm
the first map gives you a much more extensive view of the surrounding territory and how to get to the trail from many of the major roads in the area, particularly north of batsto. The second map has much greater detail, and gives names for many of the smaller roads, which could be helpful in finding your way to the trail via car.
Neither of these, however, shows the two major relocations to the trail that were completed last year. They are as follows:
3.) the bigger of the two is that the trail has been moved to run through the franklin parker preserve, a area owned by the new jersey conservation foundation which connects brendan byrne (formerly lebanon) and wharton state forests. This eliminates a long and, from what i understand, not always aesthetically pleasing roadwalk. Fortunately, the preserve has created a very nice map of this, which can be found here:
http://www.ocsj.org/images/batona-franklin_parker.pdf
4.) the other relocation is in bass river, and takes the trail off stage road, coming into the southern terminus from the north instead. I have not been able to find this map online yet, so i took the liberty of scanning the paper map that is available at the terminus. It is attached below.
5.) lastly, for those that may be interested in doing loops involving the batona or taking alternative routes, the trail map for brendan byrne sf is here:
http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandf..._trail_map.pdf
and the map for the atsion-batsto area of wharton sf can be found here:
http://www.njhiking.com/nj-hiking-ma...-trail-map.pdf
anyway, i hope this is useful to some of you, and enjoy!