NY-NJ trail conditions in late March/early April

[Trail Dog]

Going to do a river to river from the Hudson to the Delaware around the end of March beginning of April.

Hows the trail maintenance at that time of year? should i expect a lot of blow downs?

as for the weather i guess its always unpredictable in the early spring. shall i expect snow?

Anyone who hikes that section that time of year or who lives there care to fill me in? Going to be going no matter the weather so a different date is not possible.

Thank you

[Feral Bill]

There should be water at even the "dry" shelters. I once hit a major snowstorm in April hiking Harriman. That was decades ago and is not likely. Have fun.

[Grumpy Ol' Pops]

Going to do a river to river from the Hudson to the Delaware around the end of March beginning of April.

Thank you

Blow downs can happen at any time. I'd expect to see quite a few during March and April. I've yet to find one that couldn'tt be circumvented easily on foot.
I'd suggest a good bug spray in April, though. And with the warmer weather we've had this year I'd suspect that tick season may begin earlier this Spring. I usually see a few on opening day of Trout season in Sussex County.

[Foyt20]

Muddy, bring gaiters, some of the puddles on trails can be HUGE!!

[Kerosene]

According to this snow-depth map, it looks like there's still about 6" of snow in the southern NY area. I did two consecutive day hikes covering the northern 30 miles of New York State starting March 31, 2001 and ended up walking through knee-deep snow in several areas, which would have been extremely tiring with a full pack.

[rafe]

Impossible to predict. It's still five weeks away. You could get two feet of fresh snow on March 28. It could be all melted by March 30. It's happened before.

[Hokie]

Nice time of year for views. I have done the NJ portion this time of the year several times as a spring warm up hike. The main thing is how much water is on the trail from the many seasonal kettle ponds from High Point to the DWG. I recall a very wide area of water on the north side of Rt 206 in particular that normally is dry - it was at least 250ft wide and about 4 inches deep for example. Had to pick my way across carefully. While the trail had little snow in general, drifts of 6 ft remained in some shadowed areas for 20 or 30ft along the trail (again from HP to DWG). Made it more interesting.