Tussey Mountain, Rothrock State Forest

This is Tussey Mountain as seen from afar. It sure looks smaller from this distance than it feels from up-close. Wikipedia has a much more convincing photo.

My interest in climbing Tussey Mountain was due to the fact that I'd been hearing the name for many years, and I wanted to add it to the list of "peaks" I'd documented on a certain peak-baggers' website--with photos. While I was up there, I also wanted to take a photo of Stone Mountain.  I had already claimed Stone Mountain on the peak baggers' site and wanted to add a photo of the peak from afar.  I'm the first person on the site to claim Stone Mountain, making me "King of the Mountain" for that low ridge of 2,190 feet--with 560 feet prominence.  Apparently a mountain's "prominence" is the distance that it rises above the surrounding countryside.

See here, even the trees of Central Pennsylvania are praying for Ukraine.  Honestly, I've done much higher and more taxing climbs on mountainsides in Colorado and arrived at far more stunning views.  But because those climbs did not take me to any "peaks," these lesser ascents are claimable and the higher ones out west are not.  You can even claim having "ascended" the high point for the state of Delaware--a mere hill of 447 feet--and that counts.  However, climbing 3,000 feet to a waterfall overlooking Vail does not because it's not at the top of the mountain.  Real mountain climbers must resent us Easterners claiming 2,100 foot hills as "mountains" that we've "summitted." 

I was mistaken if I expected a clear view of Stone Mountain from the summit of Tussey Mountain.  There's a freestanding mountain called Round Top that obscures the view.  See them here: Round Top in the foreground and Stone Mountain at the horizon.

About halfway up Tussey Mountain on the Yellow Trail, you come across a place known as "Indian Overlook."  It looks out across farmland to the north and west.

I thought these views were spectacular and assumed that I must be almost at the crest of the rocky mountain.  

But no.  The westward view from Indian Overlook is actually not that high and not that great....  After the overlook, you pass through a wooded plateau before beginning the last climb toward the actual crest.  There's a slippery rock scramble toward the actual summit of Tussey Mountain--steep and slippery with rocks the size of large gravel.

But then you reach the crest of the mountain, and here you are.  If you come anytime between November and April, you'll find the branches bare, which makes the view so much better.  I imagine it's a "green tunnel" in high summer, with the occasional opening among the green boughs.  See in this photo how the countryside falls away to either side of the peak.  

This is the Mid State Trail, where ridge-walking is a way of life...at least for a few weeks.   There's little water up here on the heights, and the wind blows hard.

But the views are lovely.  This is a shot from the summit of Tussey Mountain near Colerain Road, looking northwest into farmland.

This is looking east from the same trail.  There are so many more mountains off this direction.  The ridge in the middle distance, right on the horizon where the land meets the sky, is Stone Mountain, which a friend and I explored in a snowstorm last week, and of which (did I mention?) I'm king.

Here again is Stone Mountain--my regal domain.  But how can you look away from its ephemeral beauty, its delicate charms--distant, unapproachable, veiled in blue mists, older than all knowing?  These peaks were once as high as the Rockies, but they've eroded over vast eons of time.  These are said to be some of the most ancient mountains on earth.

Here's a view looking the opposite direction--west and south.

This interestingly shaped feature is called Brush Mountain. It looms, doesn't it?  I gotta say, I don't love the utilitarian, unimaginative names of these hills.

Instead of taking the steep and rock-strewn trail back to the bottom, I followed a forest road--just because long, rocky downhill treks are hard on an old guy's knees.

There's a camping area with two picnic tables a little more than halfway down the mountain, and approachable by car.  Here's the view from there. It was a beautiful day on Tussey Mountain.  I was looking forward to claiming the ascent on the peak-baggers' site, but found that although many peaks on Tussey Mountain are named and mapped, this one is not.  Round Top is on there--and no one has claimed it yet, meaning that I could be "king" of that mountain, too.  But even though the ridge I reached on foot was a little taller than Round Top, I hesitate to place a misleading claim.  There is a path to the top of Round Top, so I could come back and claim it aright.  But the three-hour drive each direction was wearisome, as was the chore of crossing Pittsburgh in evening rush hour traffic.  All in all, a nice day on the chilly heights of Tussey Mountain.

Kayaking from Bridgeville to Carnegie on Chartiers Creek

Well...not starting out in Bridgeville proper.  There's a waterfall right beside the old Woodville House (1775), and it's just a little to high to go over in a kayak.  I did see a video online long ago of people going over it in canoes, but I wasn't feeling that adventurous.  I've been told that the creek divides and there's an alternate route which bypasses the waterfall on the east side of Washington Pike, but I haven't scoped it out.  So I put in behind the giant office park across the road from Woodville House.  The water levels were perfect--relatively deep in many places.  I only bottomed out two or three times and only had to get out of the boat to pull it off the rocks once--and that was because I chose the wrong course.  It would have been possible to paddle the whole distance without ever getting out to pull your boat off the rocks, which is unusual for a trip down Chartiers Creek.

It was beautiful to be on the water today!  There were fish jumping and wild ducks and hordes of Canada geese.  Birds were singing and redbuds and magnolias were blooming.  Since the creation of Uber, now I can just leave my kayak under the Mansfield Avenue Bridge in Carnegie, Uber back to my car and then drive in and pick up the kayak.  It totally revolutionizes kayaking for me.  When my Uber came, I left my kayak in the care of two teenage kids who were under the bridge *smoking.*  I told them they could paddle around in it till I got back in my car.  Nice kids, though in hindsight I might have put them at risk by allowing them to play around in my kayak for half an hour.  Neither of them had ever kayaked before, I didn't have a lifejacket on board, and they were pretty spaced out...

“We Think We’re Goin’ 8…Maybe 7”

A short video shot at the Stone Mountain Hawk Watch just before the April snowstorm rolled over us.  (We ended up going 7: three and a half triumphant miles northward and the same shame-filled distance back….)

An April Blizzard in the Rothrock State Forest

The weather report for Belleville, Pennsylvania--the village at the foot of Stone Mountain--called for snow flurries mixed with rain and chilly (but not unbearable) temps on Easter Monday and Tuesday.  I'd had this trek on the Standing Stone Trail planned for weeks.  I needed it, and I wasn't about to let a late, lingering winter keep me from it.  When my friend and I got to the trailhead at Allensville Mountain Road, this was how things looked.

Although a Democrat, my friend is a Texan through and through.  He lives in Pittsburgh proper and can barely bring himself to say a single positive word about any place that is not the Lone Star State.  He even thinks that the big decorative stars that people put on the outside walls of their houses mean that they wish they lived in Texas.  He and I have backpacked Big Bend together as well as Dolly Sods and a few places in Northern Pennsylvania.  He might grudgingly enjoy the treks, but he'll never admit to liking any destination outside of Texas--with the sole exception of the Sods.  "It's too wet here."  "There are too many trees."  "Where are the armadillos?"  

But when it comes to choosing a hiking destination, he's utterly passive.  He lets me do all the planning.  And so I decided to take him to an undeniably beautiful part of the state that he so despises.  The forecast was concerning, but even after an hour on the trail, the wintry weather showed no signs of materializing.  We were going to hike 9 miles or so north from the trailhead on Allensville Mountain Road to a campsite I had reserved in the campground at Greenwood Furnace State Park.  There are at least seven really gorgeous overlooks along that mountaintop hike.  I'd scheduled a rural taxi service to shuttle us back to the car in the morning, and then we were going to drive half an hour south to Jacks Mountain, where we intended to hike up to those parts of the Standing Stone Trail known as the Throne Room and the Hall of the Mountain King.  

We broke for lunch at the overlook known as the "Little Vista."  It's one of the few views off to the western side of the mountain--which is admittedly less dramatic than the eastward views.  It's still pretty.  As we sat there, we saw mists soaring rapidly up the valley from the south.  Tiny snow flurries appeared all around us, and we observed, "Huh, maybe we'll get a little snow after all."  Here are the mists rolling in from the south and west at the Little Vista.  They looked so harmless at first...

We thought little of it and continued our northward trek toward Greenwood Furnace.  Temps began to drop fast.  The wind picked up, blowing hard from the east--which is odd--and the flurries turned into a blinding whiteout.  We reached a sign telling us that Greenwood Furnace was still another six miles away, and at that point we turned around and headed back to the car.  The pleasant hike on the ridge of the humble Stone Mountain had begun to feel like one of those documentaries about climbers who perish in the snows while attempting to climb Mt. Everest.  When we had crossed Saussers Stone Pile on the northerly march, it was entirely dry.  On the southward return trudge through the snow, it looked like this.

The actual height of Stone Mountain is 2,190 feet; the so-called "prominence" is 560 feet.  The wind blew the snow hard and fast up on the stony heights.  The spectacular views disappeared entirely.  The mountaintop was socked in by endless flying snow.  My beard iced over!  The rocks became treacherous and slippery.  When we finally made it back to the car, it was covered in snow.  We had walked 7 miles in three and a half hours on rugged terrain and in bad weather conditions--3.5 miles each way.  Not bad, really.  The narrow, winding road up the mountain has steep drops and no guardrails--spooky enough in clear weather and borderline harrowing under these conditions.  I thought we'd get down off the mountain to find that springtime still held some command of the world below.  Maybe we could even drive to the state park and claim our campsite.  I was wrong.  Winter had returned with a wicked vengeance.  Amish buggies trotted along the slushy roads.  An Amish boy pulled his little brother in a sled, enjoying the return of the snow--both of them still wearing the straw hats that Amish men exchange for their wool hats in April.  Driving was tricky and slow most of the way back to Pittsburgh.  I won't lie; it was a big disappointment.  I really needed a night in the woods.  April snow always reminds me of that depressing line in the old Barbara Streisand song that was popular when I was little: "...like a rose under the April snow..."  I like winter.  I like snow.  But after Easter?  And yet...my friend did admit that he liked the views from up there on the Standing Stone Trail.  

Seven Ponds Road, Hillman State Park

No one calls it "Seven Ponds Road" but me.  When they started naming the trails out at Hillman, they decided to call this old dirt road the "Wetlands Trail."  I like my name better, and I've been using it longer.

Hillman is an unremarkable place--reclaimed strip mines.  It's got a lot of open, grassy meadows and rolling hills.  It'll do in a pinch if you're a Pittsburgher who just needs a quick outdoor fix and who has neither the time to drive anyplace better nor the patience to deal with all the dogs and crowds in the county and city parks.

Mullein or "flannel leaf" is luxuriously soft to the touch and said to relieve backaches, earaches, dry coughs, and various lung ailments.  It also grows in disturbed soil where nothing else wants to put down roots.

Which means that mullein is a common find at Hillman.  If you stray off the Seven Ponds Road and onto one of the many tributary paths that open onto it, you can find this rolling landscaped reminiscent of some old BBC remake of Wuthering Heights or The Hound of the Baskervilles.

It's nice to have these broad grassy hills all to yourself.  You don't even need a trail where there are so few trees to impair visibility.  I've never met many other people out here except when I've been dumb enough to come in November or December--which is deer hunting season.  The hilltop on which I'm standing in this photo is approached by the faint track that runs straight through the hollow below.  This summit felt defensible.  

I partly came out here to test the theory that this is an awful year for deer ticks.  A lot of hikers on social media are moaning about all the legions of ticks, which--they say--have become impervious to repellent.  I know of no place worse for poison ivy and deer ticks than Hillman State Park, so I thought I'd check since I've got a very long trek planned for the summer.

Like a lot of social media hype, I did not find it to be true.  Not a single tick in three hours of moseying over the grass.  So depending on how you count them, the Seven Ponds Trail could have anywhere between four and seven ponds--each of them delightfully unique.

There are three ponds immediately to the right of the road at various short intervals.  This is the third one, which has been amended by beavers so that the water level is higher than the road.  It's an odd feeling to walk along the roadway and see that the water just beside you is actually up to your waist or higher.

Then, each roadside pond has a smaller pond downhill from it and hidden in the trees to the left of the road.  At this time of year, these runoff ponds are visible through the bare branches, but in high summer they're totally hidden.  That makes three visible ponds and three oft-invisible ones.  Here is the seventh and final pond.  It also happens to be my favorite.

This little pond is the last one in the series, and it sits by itself off to the left at a short distance from the road.  Its seclusion is nice, but I mostly like it for its clear water--which I tried to photograph, but the glare from the sky obscures it.  My brothers and I would have swum in these ponds when we were kids.  In fact Pond # 7 would be perfect for a swim....

For more out-of-state ramblings go HERE for West Virginia and HERE for a short 2016 visit to Hawaii that I forgot to post.

Early Spring at Raccoon Creek

It wasn't my intention to go to Raccoon Creek, but I missed my exit for Hillman and just kept driving.  I was distracted.  It's been hard to stay focused lately.

But I really needed to get out among the trees.  I've been using my days off to scout out potential "camps" to buy.  That's to say, little plots of land with a cabin or where I could have one built.  And so, instead of hiking, my days off have been spent mostly in the car--which is not good for my mental and spiritual health.

But I'm planning a 200-mile trek this summer across the Monongahela National Forest of West Virginia.  I'll need to cover about 16 miles a day, so I downloaded an app onto my phone that gauges my speed and the distance covered each day.

I had to get out into the woods to test it out.  It'll be great if it doesn't drain my cell battery.  I know it's an ambitious plan--this idea of backpacking for 200 miles.  But there are so many reasons it needs to happen.

Hallton in the Allegheny National Forest

This old trailer is right on Spring Creek in the little hamlet of Hallton.  It's nothing fancy.  Two bedrooms, an add-on porch, no running water.

It sits right on the water, maybe half a mile from the spot where Spring Creek joins the Clarion River.

This is the view from the yard!

This, too, is from the yard--looking upstream.

Can you believe that this lovely place is for sale?  The asking price was only $35,000, but now the seller is going to accept the highest bid.  (And so I no longer believe I've got a ghost of a chance.)  She could easily get $100,000 for a place right on the water.  The old trailer isn't worth more than a few thousand dollars, but the lot is magnificent. 

Here's the view from the yard looking downstream toward the Clarion National Scenic River.

Other houses on the water in Hallton tend to be really quite nice.

Well kept and frequently visited.

Some few looked as if they might be lived-in year round.

A lot of them have silly names.  This is the Dad-Son-Club.

This is probably the kind of thing that will go up where that old trailer now sits.

Once you get away from the water, the camps are less well maintained.  In fact, a lot of them appear to be abandoned.  I wish the owners would put them on the market.  I'd love to own a little place like this!  It's one of my life's few remaining dreams.

Or even this....

There's a lot of old garbage and debris sitting in the yards of these bandos.  This old school bus probably used to serve as a bunkroom.  

The roof is pretty far gone on this place, but you'd probably just tear it down and build something new.  

You could keep kayaks at your camp up here and paddle from Spring Creek and out onto the river.  This is the Clarion River as seen from the center of Hallton, near the William Tell Bridge.  I wonder how the bridge got such a name.  An old house in this village is home to a bar that was once known as the Hallton Hilton.