Allegheny Pilgrimage: Day 3, North Country Trail, Hemlock Run to Red Bridge

Thursday morning, bright and clear--deep, deep inside the forests of the North!  The path was calling, so we set off to see where it might lead.  The goal for the day was Red Bridge, and I actually ended up going a little further.

Just this, nothing more.  Daylight on the greens and grays of the woods.  A light shimmering sound as the breeze touches the leaves high in the canopy--a noise reminiscent of the ocean.  Birdcalls.  A cool and sunny day.  This is all I needed.

The portion of the trail that runs along Hemlock Run is very scenic, and it comes to a glorious climax near the spot where the creek empties into Chappel Bay--right here at this large campsite near the lake.

Distances become hard to estimate after you cross PA Route 321 again.  What seems like it should only take an hour or so ends up taking longer.

So many forest crossings.

And so many idyllic bodies of water to be crossed!  Water levels were low, especially for May, but we did end up getting some rain by the following morning--and then all the next day and most of the one after that.

Again, the water glinting in the sunlight just through the trees.

By this third day, I had songs that I sang as I walked alone--old songs that bring me comfort.  I felt more truly like a pilgrim.

At one point, weary and dragging, I thought I saw a picnic table through the trees at the top of a hill that I was slowly climbing.  Surely it's a mirage, I said to myself, but it was not.  More and more of these backpacking shelters are being erected along the trail, and they make nice places to take a break.

On this day, I did meet another backpacker in the woods, a Ford employee from Cleveland who had been laid off.  I wished him well and encountered him again a little further down the trail--where he had laid claim to the Root Run campsite that I had been aiming for myself.  I left him to it, thinking there would be more camping closer to Red Bridge.  I was wrong.  The terrain from that point to Red Bridge becomes pretty unwelcoming.

A shagbark hickory.  How could you not hug a tree like that?

The rest of the evening became something of a fiasco.  I got to the day's second road crossing at Red Bridge with no trouble--but weary from the long trudge.  Red Bridge is a national forest recreation area with a popular campground, and I told myself that as a last resort I could ask if they had any vacancies, but it seemed unlikely since it was coming up on Memorial Day weekend.  Looking at the map, I decided to cross the long bridge (which is not the slightest bit red) to camp in the forest on the far side, close to the water.  I found a spot and began to set up when some rowdy fishers showed up.  They didn't see me, but I heard them loud and clear, so I moved on and finally ended up pitching a hasty camp in a small patch of woods close to the road.  And yet, it was a glorious night in the forest, and a long rainy morning in my hammock the following day until my wife arrived to meet me at 3:00pm on Friday.

Allegheny Pilgrimage: Day 2, North Country Trail, Handsome Lake to Hemlock Run

Sunrise over Handsome Lake Campground, with mists still on the waters and in the woods.  On Wednesday I set out at 7:30am and told myself that an early start is always best when doing a "through hike" with quantifiable distances to attain each day.  I was convinced that I would start by 7:30 every day of my pilgrimage, and in retrospect I wonder what gave me so much confidence in myself.  

The fresh green of the springtime forest is especially lovely when backlit by the golden morning sun.  It was a beautiful day for walking among ferns and hemlocks.

I did about 10 miles a day on the NCT.  This stretch of the hike was pleasant, but it does feature two road crossings and one roadside trek of about a quarter mile.

Despite these brushes with the motorized world, I encountered not another soul on the trail all day.  Chafing started to become an issue.  I thought regular old boxer shorts would serve better than briefs, and I was wrong.  In the end, it proved best to forego underwear altogether.  Fortunately, I brought some other skin ointment that worked well on the abraded skin.  Later, at the Rite Aid in Kane, I would find a product that was made especially for hiker's chafing. 

It was nearly a perfect day in the woods--though I lost my beautiful Protestant prayer beads, the ones with jasper stones and a copper Celtic cross.

Water is almost never an issue in the Allegheny National Forest.  There's always a brook, or a creek, or a "run," which is something in between the two.

Silence and Solitude were my companions.  Portions of this trail I had hiked before, but most of it was new to me.  I wondered how I lived here without having explored every square foot of this forest.  But that is one of the things I most miss about this place: I discovered something new each time I went out.

There's just SOOO MUCH to discover up there.

And 3.5 years is not nearly enough time to squeeze it all in.  By the time we moved away, I had only just begun to know that marvelous place.  By the way, this is the first time I ever hiked using two trekking poles, and I think it really helped my speed and balance.  It returns your bipedal self to a quadrupedal design, which redistributes weight and effort to four limbs instead of two.  

The Hemlock Run campsite is a little dark and forlorn.  It straddles the trail, with the fire ring on one side and the tent area on the other.  I typically prefer to sleep out of sight of the trail, but it was less easy than I'd expected finding areas suitable for setting up the hammock tent--pictured here.

See how the trail runs right through the site?

In the interest of giving myself easier evenings, I stopped hanging a bear bag on this trip.  Instead, I invested in some odor-proof plastic bags and a bear-proof sack--which I simply dangled from any tree branch.  It's a lot more convenient when you're pitching camp just before dark.

Allegheny Pilgrimage: Day 1, North Country Trail from New York to Handsome Lake

The intention was to take a "pilgrimage" to clear my head and heart, to gain a new sense of clarity. This word "pilgrimage" has made a comeback in recent years.  It used to be a journey to a sacred site, usually in order to entreat some miracle or to give thanks for one.  Nowadays a pilgrimage can be any journey with sacred intention.  I wanted to return to the Allegheny National Forest and cross it from north to south on the North Country Trail--a 98-mile trip that should have take ten days.

Time constraints and practical considerations caused me to set my sights a little lower--which is practically my motto in life: "Never Fail; Aim Low."  The point of a pilgrimage is not to meet a list of goals but to travel with holy intent.  And so, I parked my car at the North Country trailhead near Willow Bay in the Allegheny National Forest, then I hiked 1.1 mile in the wrong direction into New York State.  Here's a lonely border among the trees where New York and Pennsylvania meet.  From there I turned back around and marched south on my 30-mile trek toward the town of Kane--where I spent 3.5 of the best years of my life.

I did indeed carry 40 lbs. on my back--since food for a long trek is heavy, and I unknowingly packed about twice as much food as I needed.  But my newish Alps Mountaineering 90-litre backpack made the load feel like a pile of chicken feathers.  

Oh, the joy of being back in those northern forests in May!  The air was fragrant with the scent of wildflowers, and ferns, and the rich, dark earth.  Although I didn't get started until noon, I wanted to put in eight miles before the end of the day, so that I could camp at the little-known campground called Handsome Lake.

Handsome Lake was a Seneca shaman who revitalized that tribe's traditional religion--sort of a Native American revivalist.  He was also the half-brother to Chief Cornplanter.  And Handsome Lake Campground can only be reached by foot or by boat, so it's usually not very busy.  But it is pretty in its lakeside isolation and silence.

The North Country Trail runs alongside the lake up here in its northern stretches, and it's a warming feeling to see the silvery water as it shimmers through the young leaves.

I met a few other hikers on the trail, which surprised me, since it was only the Tuesday before Memorial Day.  One was a large, middle-aged lady with a Polish-sounding accent who seemed happy to have someone to talk to.  She also ended up staying at Handsome Lake, but women backpacking alone must always be wary of creepy men in the woods, so I mostly just smiled a lot and tried to seem unthreatening.

The other was a cool guy traveling at about 5 MPH.  (I was doing about 2.)  "Coming up behind you!  Excuse me."  Then he was gone.  I hate to say it, but he made me feel a little sad--slow, and old, and weak--which is not the way I wanted to feel at the start of my ANF pilgrimage.

Here's the view from one of the campsites at Handsome Lake.  Isn't it beautiful?  It costs $7 a night, "honor system."  I actually did not end up staying inside the campground.  Instead, I camped out on that little point of land that you see here in the distance.

I fell asleep to the sound of water lapping the shore and all the nocturnal music of the forest.

The View from Chestnut Ridge, Uniontown

It's a nice enough view, sure, and lord knows we spent a long time looking for this spot.  But mostly I just want this article to serve as a vestibule onto the far better views I recently discovered on a very brief trip to Vail, Colorado.  Click HERE and HERE. 

Hammock Camping and the Elusive Pine Knob Overlook, Forbes State Forest

Why do we call the Pine Knob Overlook "elusive"?  Because we set off in search of it three times on our recent trek, and our first two attempts were long and tiring failures.  We tried hiking in from two separate forest roads--one was the wrong road altogether, and the other was the right road, but we didn't go nearly far enough.  I'd been to the Pine Knob Overlook on two previous occasions.  The first time I went there, I hiked the two miles up to it from the lovely Lick Hollow Picnic Area. The trail is clearly marked and pleasant.  The second time, I drove to the summit of Chestnut Ridge and reached the overlook by car--though the road was very bad.  (Actually, the parking area is about 1/8th of a mile from the actual overlook.)  The road is even worse now.  This time?  This time my friend and I got two false starts and were finally reduced to approaching the overlook from the picnic area--which seems to be the only sure way to get there.  But here it is.  Scramble up onto the rocky outcrops to gaze over the rooftops of Uniontown and points west.  You can see all the way to West Virginia if you look off to the left.  "Look away.  Look away.  Look away, Dixieland."  

As usual, I underestimated the cold on this trip.  I was little-prepared for the fact that spring comes late even to a mountain as low and humble as Chestnut Ridge.  Looking at the leaves up on the ridgetop, you'd think it was late March or early April.  But Quebec Run rarely disappoints, and that's where we made camp for just a brief overnight.

As I've said many a time, there's nothing especially great about Quebec Run.  It's quiet, and wooded, and open to back country camping.  The trees there are tall and graceful.  But it has no sweeping vistas or lofty heights or breathtaking views.  Plus, every dog-owner in Pittsburgh seems to think it's a good place to let their annoying animals run off the leash.  But if you come on a weekday, or early on a weekend--Friday to Saturday instead of Saturday to Sunday--you're likely to find what you're looking for.

And what are you looking for, my friend?  That's the question.  Me?  I'm mostly just looking for a feeling akin to freedom, a comfort that only comes in the open air, a sense of escape that is entirely linked to discovery, and beauty, and silence.  For me, being in the woods is a kind of prayer.  I also came looking to answer a few looming questions about my impending trek across the entire breadth of the Allegheny National Forest.  Questions like, does a hammock with a little roofling offer enough shelter against the insects and the Pennsylvania weather?  

The answer is no, at least not this early in the season.  For this particular trip--as it dipped into the high 30s overnight--the hammock did NOT offer enough shelter.  I missed the cocoon-feeling of a real tent, a space where there was no draft or breeze, an enclosure to separate me from the night.  A tent's walls are an illusion of protection, but they are a powerful illusion...and we all live by illusions.  Illusions can keep us happy and calm.  The hammock did little to give me a sense of my own dedicated space inside the forest, "a home within the wilderness."  But it was sooo much lighter to carry than a tent.  And so, when I cross the Allegheny National Forest, it will be with a hammock instead of a tent.  

A Hidden Cave in South Fayette Township

Aside from a good public school system, South Fayette Township, in Allegheny County, has some of the very worst stuff that suburban life has to offer.  It's not the "leafy suburbs" with elegant homes and tasteful shops, brewpubs and creative restaurants.  No, South Fayette is where sprawling new developments of bland McMansions creep further and further outward each year, devouring what few fields and pastures remain in the county.  These grand-looking-but-cheaply-built homes sell for about half a million, and they're gathered into stifling subdivisions with Anglophilic names like Hastings, Canongate, or the Berkshires...  In the valleys between these vast swaths of suburban sprawl, there are old mining villages, railroad tracks, patches of woods.  A few embattled farms remain, but not for long.

The public park bears a name as uninteresting as you'd expect, and every bit as charmless as its character: Fairview Park.  It's mostly a treeless space with ballfields.  As an anomaly, there is an old cemetery in this park where inmates from the now-demolished Mayview Hospital (a once-notorious insane asylum) are buried in unnamed graves.  That might be the subject of a future post.  I never would have believed that a place so banal would be home to a large, hidden cave.    

My daughter found out about the cave from some friends.  Local teenagers seem to know about it.  The way is very steep and slippery, but someone has tied ropes to the trees to use in getting up and down the hillside.  There's also graffiti, beer cans, and even a little furniture to prove that the cave sees its share of visitors.

The cave is in the valley wall on a tall rise overlooking Chartiers Creek.  From the top of the same hill, you can see the public park in Upper St. Clair--which is the next suburb over.  The mouth opens into a large chamber with tunnels going off in four directions.  The two passages to your left open onto smaller rooms but eventually come to a dead end.  The two passages to your right also open to smaller chambers, but they join up and form a loop back to the main chamber.

There are old mineshafts in this area, and when my daughter told me about the cave, I was pretty sure that it was really just the remains of an old coal mine--which alarmed me a little.  I don't want her going to places like that.  But it's not.  This is a real cave.

This is the main chamber, looking toward the entrance.

If you take the second passage from the right, it leads to the cave's most distant room, where someone has set up a little underground hangout.  There's a folding chair, some cushions, some strings of fairy lights, and many, many old beer cans.

I was afraid that on such a beautiful Saturday in the spring, I'd find teenagers in the cave, but I had the place to myself.

The opening is maybe ten feet high.

But this is standard South Fayette, pictured here: miles and miles and MILES of green lawns and newly-planted trees.  It's not the kind of place where you'd expect to go spelunking.  (Then again, South Fayette is home to a few ancient farmhouses, one of which serves as both the bane of my worldly existence as well as a beloved, cantankerous character in the drama of my life.)

To find the cave, go to Fairview Park in South Fayette Township, then walk up to these water towers from the parking lot by the baseball field.  Turn left at the towers and find two mowed, grassy trails.  The leftward trail has a sign announcing that it leads to a leash-free zone for dogs.  There are SO MANY reasons not to take that trail: 1) other people's dogs are annoying, and 2) it's the wrong way.  Take the trail to the right and then take another right where a smaller trail leads into the woods.  

You'll come to a spot where an ersatz bridge crosses a shallow culvert.  It's just two narrow logs laid across a dip in the trail.  Very shortly after this "bridge," you'll see a steep scrambling trail off to the right; this leads to the cave.  There's pink graffiti on a tree at the spot where you begin your downward climb---pictured here.  The way wends between tree roots and rocks.  Be careful!  It's very steep and slippery.  You'll need to use the two ropes that someone has tied to the trees--both descending and ascending.  I believe that if you take the same trail further downhill past the cave, it leads to the banks of Chartiers Creek.