Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail

In many places, the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail runs through very narrow stretches of public land--passing through state forests, state game lands, and state parks, as well as a few short jogs across private land.  It's a backpacking trail that runs a full 70 miles along the crest of the Laurel Ridge from Ohiopyle to an area near Johnstown.  

I just chose the wrong neck of the woods.  I picked a trailhead that was within an hour and a half of my house, but the woods there really was just "a neck."  It was a narrow little north-south finger of woodlands, encroached upon by an enormous coal operation to the east and to the west.  The noise was overwhelming, the conveyor belts, the indeterminate grinding sounds, the huge trucks bearing rocks, the beeping of heavy machinery running in reverse.  I'm sure the LHHT runs through some much more pleasant areas than the one I picked.  The road to the trailhead was being guarded by a coal miner.  He told me I wasn't permitted to use the road--despite the fact that it's a public thoroughfare leading to public lands!  But he was a nice guy.  He called his supervisor, and they decided to permit me access as far as the trailhead.  Who are they, a private industry, to give or deny permission to a citizen wishing to travel on public lands?

I hope to report on the LHHT at greater length in some future post.  I only hiked a short distance along the trail before all the racket sent me to seek mountain silence elsewhere.  I'm sure I'll be coming back here someday to do a backpacking trip along the ridgeline.  The LHHT is kind of like the Appalachian Trail for backpackers who only want to spend a few days in the woods.  I did come across one of the shelter areas, which was a pleasant little ghost town of really nice Adirondack shelters with fireplaces--pleasant except for all the industrial noise.    

As I was coming up on the LHHT from a connector trail, I saw a band of about fifteen backpackers passing in the forest in front of me--about 100 feet away.  None saw me.  They were silent as a Seneca war party, slipping like phantoms through the dark and noisome forest of withering leaves.  Fall comes early up here in the highlands.  By mid-August, the leaves are already beginning to give up the ghost.

Kooser State Park

There's much to like about the tiny roadside Kooser State Park.  Its "Mighty Oak Pavilion" and its rentable cabins and other buildings all have that way-cool "rustic" old CCC architecture of the 1930s.  The park is only about 250 acres, but it's close to lots of public land and good hiking.  There's tall, dense forest, a beautiful beach area, and a miniature, four-acre lake.  The old log and stone buildings blend into the dark upland woods--hemlock and beech--to create an almost cinematographic effect.  If not for the state highway that runs along one full side of the park, this place would remind me for all the world of a place in the Allegheny National Forest called "Twin Lakes."  At Twin Lakes, there are miles of woodlands stretching off up the hillside behind the beach parking lot.  Here at Kooser, the beach lot opens onto a busy road.

 I came here on a Friday afternoon, and all of the cabins appeared to be reserved for the weekend.  The campground area was less than half full, and I had the entire beach area to myself for reasons explained below.  I wasn't crazy about the campground, though it was nice enough.  Most of the sites were set up for RVs and campers, treeless and out in the open.  There were only three small tenting sites hidden away uphill and into the woods, isolated from the main parts of the campgrounds; # 33 is most secluded and wooded.

Look closely at the top picture, and you'll see that it's a beach.  The dark little lake--or pond--can barely be discerned in the shadow of the forest.  Despite the fact that the beach area is beautifully shaded with those most native highland trees, hemlocks and beeches, and the restroom / bath house facilities are clean and new, swimming is no longer allowed.  The lake is choked with algae and sedimentation.

 The PA DCNR won't admit it, but algae in lakes comes from industrial chemicals and / or fertilizers draining into the watersheds.  Kooser is just downstream from a huge coal operation--though I'm not sure if that's the culprit.  (Mining would explain the sedimentation, but what about the algae?)  Why is the state so passive when nearby industries wreck public property--as in the lakes at both Kooser and Ryerson Station state parks?  Because industry is good for the economy...

It's a shame.  Kooser is a small gem of a park, scenic and serene with a quaintly rustic and historic feel to it.  It would be a lot nicer with a swimming beach.  But there were a handful of other drawbacks, too.  The park's only hiking trail was just one mile long--the Kincora Trail, named after an Irish missionary priest.  And perhaps when the CCC built the park here, PA 31 was less busy.  But nowadays the nearby roadway screams with constant traffic, especially coal trucks.  When I come to the mountains, it's in order to escape traffic noise...but that's not always possible here in the Old Fatherland, where heavy industry encroaches even on lovely ridges that ought to be remote.  

I imagine that Kooser functions mainly as an overflow for the much larger and more truly remote Laurel Hill State Park--which is nearby and has a bigger lake, bigger beach, bigger campground, and many more miles of hiking trails.  On the Kincora Trail, someone carved into a tree the words, "Doctors Kill Us."  Whoever carved that inane message must have really meant it, for the carving must have taken hours to complete.  Medical doctors kill us with bad advice?  Doctors of divinity kill us with boredom?  For a more recent write-up about Kooser, follow this link.

Roaring Run Natural Area, Forbes State Forest

This is the sun rising through the trees in the beautiful and remote Roaring Run Natural Area of the Forbes State Forest.  The state forests are prostituted to frackers and conventional drillers and dickless chainsaw boys trying to prove their phallic potency by cutting down trees.  In fact, Governor Corbett has opened nearly 100% of our public lands to fracking.  The only truly protected regions of our state forests are the tracts that are designated "natural areas" or "wild areas," and even they are islands under siege.

Natural Areas are left to nature with little to no human intervention.  For that reason, don't believe your state-issued forest map if it claims that there's a "scenic overlook" somewhere in a "natural area."  The map is surely at least a decade old, and the branches are never cut back in a "natural area," so the view is almost certainly obstructed by trees.  I found two such disappointments in the otherwise pretty cool Roaring Run Natural Area.

There are lots of trails and old farm roads at Roaring Run. The lane in the top photo ends at an old farmsite that was easily identifiable by a broad glade and the remains of an overgrown orchard.  This land was acquired by the state in 1975, which is a long time for mountain meadows and fields to be reclaimed by the forest.  But perhaps the most curious thing I stumbled across was this old monument to three children killed in a sleigh accident in 1896.  I have not been able to learn any details about the event, but the marker looms eerily in the dark forest.  All three children had different last names, and Google tells me that the day was a Sunday, so I assume they were out for a joy ride or else en route to or from church.

Like I said, the overlooks in Roaring Run Natural Area exist only on paper.  Forget about Painter Rock Trail and its overlook, the trail's not even that nice.  Birch Rock Trail is a long upward hike, and it's more and more poorly established the further you follow it: a pretty good clue that there's nothing to see at the end of it--except birches and rocks, which I guess is all its name promises.  I did climb a tree at the erstwhile Birch Rock Overlook, and I managed to get a photo of what's left of the panorama--bottom picture.  The most scenic trail I found at Roaring Run was the "South Loop."  Very pretty, and a few breaks in the trees provide unexpected-if-narrow overlooks.  Also, I didn't get to hike Roaring Run Trail itself, which follows a rocky stream, but I bet it's a scenic area.  

Laurel Hill State Park

 When you get up into the Laurel Highlands--the hilly-but-not-quite-mountainous-area just southeast of Pittsburgh--everything is named after laurels, which are the state flower.  

 Up there, you've got Laurel Summit State Park, Laurel Ridge State Park, Laurel Mountain State Park, and Laurel Hill State Park, which is the lovely place pictured here.

 The little human-made waterfall in the second photo flows out of an upland pond, picture here, and into a brook that joins the larger lake, where there's a swimming beach with concession stand, boat rentals, and almost no people.

There's a nice trail system here that joins up with the trails in the adjacent Forbes State Forest.  How is it that I don't spend every Saturday of my life up here?

Bear Run Nature Reserve

 Bear Run Nature Reserve belongs to the uber-cool Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which mostly owns and protects wild places in the western half of the Commonwealth.  But they also also maintain Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece, "Fallingwater," which he designed for the Kaufman Family, who used to own a chain of department stores in the Pittsburgh region.

Bear Run Nature Reserve is the forestland adjacent to the Fallingwater.  It's located in the Laurel Highlands, which basically are to Pittsburgh what the Catskills are to New York--or used to be.  There are some 5,000 acres of wild land at Bear Run, traversed by several mountain streams and a network of steep trails.  It's a pretty place, and it's the first place I ever backpacked--with all my new gear!  My friend and I made the mistake of setting up camp at Site #5 without first laying claim to it on the board at the trailhead.  Some guys came down from the city just at dusk, expecting to camp there, and they were none too happy that we'd taken the spot without making note of it at the trailhead.  I would have up and moved to another spot, but my friend stood firm, and they camped in the woods nearby and made noise all night.