Scenes along the Upper Allegheny...and the Grievous Death of a Porpentine

PA Route 227 makes its eastern terminus in a wooded area in Forest County.  Near that spot, you'll see a sign pointing toward Trunkeyville.  Another sign will warn you "No Outlet."  I'd always been curious about this Trunkeyville, on the banks of the Allegheny River, and so I finally followed the long, rough dead end road that leads steeply downhill to the village and the river.

Trunkeyville itself is just a small gaggle of cottages, fishing camps, and summer homes with more "No Trespassing" signs than houses.  It's pretty clear that if you don't own property there, you're really not welcome.  But the views of the river are nice.

I don't know if there are any year-round homes in Trunkeyville, but some of the "camps" are quaint. 

Surprisingly, there's a free little lending library, stuffed with popular fiction and paperbacks.  Not much that I'd read, but it helps to make Trunkeyville feel a little less...hostile.

It would be nice if the Tidioute Rec & Trek Trail (a rail trail) went all the way to Trunkeyville, but it does not.  On the map, that trail appears to peter out at 7 miles south of Tidioute, just a little before the inhospitable hamlet of Trunkeyville.  But I wanted to spend a day with the river, so I left Trunkeyville and went to Tidioute, where I followed the rail trail the furthest I'd ever taken it, about 3 miles.  

I'd rarely seen another soul along this trail, though I did meet a fellow hiker here who told me it gets busy with people letting their dogs run off the leash.

Just after the 2.5 mile marker--if I remember correctly--there's a rocky little outcropping of land that juts into the river, pictured here.  I sat there and read for a while.  It would be best to get here at sunrise, bring food and a thermos of coffee, and make a day of it.  Just spend the day with a book and maybe a bag chair, sitting in the shade and watching the great Allegheny passing by--the river of my life.

Look closely.  Porcupine quills.  Some hapless porpentine met its sad fate on this spot along the trail.  I have mixed feelings about that.  On one hand, I love porcupines and never want them to come to harm.  They're gentle, slow-moving creatures with cute faces and an ingenious defense system.  Plus, they're just rare enough to feel almost exotic when you see them in the wild.  But where you find the quills of a porcupine spread like leaf litter on the forest floor, it probably means there are fisher-cats nearby.  Fisher-cats are neither fishers nor cats.  They're even more uncommon than porcupines and just as fascinating.  A fisher-cat is one of the few creatures that has figured out how to get past a porcupine's defenses.  They reach under a sluggish porcupine, grabbing it by its furry stomach, and flipping it on its back to attack its defenseless underbelly. 

I wish it weren't such a hard world for small things, and gentle things, and slow moving things....

The Long, Strange Life of a Military Hospital Hut

This is the weird errand that took me back to the area around Saltsburg, in the previous post.

In 1950, suburban sprawl was rapidly overtaking the farmland south of Pittsburgh.  This photo was taken on Bower Hill Road at Parkview in about 1951.  All the forests and farms in the background are now the neighborhoods of Mt. Lebanon and Scott Township.  The parish I serve was created, and they purchased a military hospital hut from Camp Shelby, Mississippi, to serve as their first church building.  They quickly outgrew it, and five years later they began construction on the sprawling monstrosity of a facility in which they now rattle around like a handful of nickels in an oil drum... (They should have kept this little place to return to, but back in those days, no one knew that people would ever stop going to church.)  The old military hospital ward was disassembled, trucked off, and reassembled in a little coal-mining village named Forbes Road, in the hills about 50 miles east of here.  The congregation that bought the building has no online presence, and I'm not really sure if they're even still in operation.  So, I got the urge to drive out there to see if the building was still standing and still in use.

And lookie here!  I found it!  The sign out front calls it "Forbes Road Christian Fellowship Church."  (Stacking the words "Fellowship" and "Church" seems redundant to me, but what's it matter?)  I can't tell if it's still being used, but it's very definitely the same building.  It went from military hospital to thriving suburban church to...whatever it is now.  The steel cross on top of the steeple in the first picture used to sit in a storage room in our current building, but I haven't seen it in years...

Locust Knob near Saltsburg

This is the view from the upper reaches of a hill called Locust Knob, just above the borough of Saltsburg, Pennsylvania.  I used to visit Saltsburg with my bike to explore the many rail trails in the area.  This is old-time coal country, trying hard to recover from the industrial excesses of the past.  But now it's threatened by fracking and the potential installment of data centers.  It's said that a single AI online search uses as much as 30 gallons of freshwater.  That's why Pennsylvania is in the crosshairs for the construction of so many new data centers: We have lots of water, and our government has a long tradition of allowing just anyone to do just anything...as long as it brings a handful of short-lived blue collar jobs along with it.

But instead of coal, Saltsburg was better known for its salt mines.  I traveled about half a mile on the Westmoreland Heritage Rail Trail in order to make this ascent.  Starting at the little park near the waterworks in Saltsburg, you take the Westmoreland Heritage Trail west out of town for about half a mile to an electric line swath--which is the cleared expanse of land where the electric lines cross the trail.  At that spot, you turn rightward and uphill onto the very steep swath and make a slippery, thorny ascent following deer paths toward the summit.

See how steep this non-trail is?  I owe my conquests of many peaks to "easements" or "swaths," which often cut a brambly path straight to the summits, and which also provide views that would otherwise be nonexistent.  Locust Knob stands at a modest 1,247 feet, but it's got pleasant-enough scenery, great herds of whitetail deer, and an abundance of "flannel leaf" or "mullein."

There were a few pleasant groves of white birches on the mountainsides.  They don't usually thrive this far south, but the higher elevations help.  Fittingly enough, there are also a lot of black locust trees on Locust Knob.  It was misting down in Saltsburg and hailing a bit up here on the heights.

I was in Westmoreland County on a quest.  The church I've served as pastor for almost 16 years has a grand building that was constructed in the mid-20th century--far bigger than what we need today.  But for the first five years of our existence, from 1950 to 1955, we used an old army hospital barracks as our temporary building.  The barracks were transported up from Camp Shelby in Mississippi.  When the parish outgrew the original church (the army hospital), we sold that smaller building to a little congregation in the mountains east of Pittsburgh.  Fast-forward to today: The rural church that bought the old building, if it still existed, had no online presence that I could find.  And so, I came here to see if the building was still standing.  (It is.  Let's talk about that in the next post.)

While I was up here in the hills, I wanted to bag at least one unclaimed peak.  I hadn't been peak-bagging since early November of last year when I climbed the Maryland high point.

You make pleasant crossings of both the Conemaugh River and Loyalhanna Creek on this trek.  The Westmoreland Heritage Trail might be worth a longer visit.  I'm no fan of rail trails because they go where railroads go: through the dirty sections of old towns and along river valleys.  I prefer wilder trails that take me up into the highlands.  But I give to the Rail Trail Conservancy because I love the idea of having a network of footpaths across the whole country, like they have in the UK.  Now let me say, I'm not sure if this electric line easement is on public land or private, but it's not posted, so I took a chance.  Climb at your own risk.  The editorial board at Snow & Jaggers does not encourage or condone trespassing. 

Day Trip to Hickory Creek Wilderness

What was meant to be a two-night backpacking trip in the Hickory Creek Wilderness turned out to be a day trip with lots of fishing--and not a single fish.  Hickory Creek is stocked with trout every spring, but we were hiking upstream from the bridge where they dump those farm-raised fish.  

We entered at the west end of the wilderness area and went as far as the Forks, where Middle Hickory Creek joins East Hickory Creek.  My friend and I debated the exact location of the Forks.  In fact, he insisted that we'd hiked as far as Coon Run, which I knew we had not.  See the footbridge that someone has built on this fallen hemlock?

When we got back to the world of Wi-Fi, I did a swipe on one of the photos that I took at the Forks, and of course I was right.  We were nowhere near Coon Run.  When it comes to the Allegheny National Forest, it's unwise to challenge the Blogger-Formerly-Known-as-the-Snowbelt Parson.

This trip saw its share of disagreements between my backpacking buddy and me...two old men who are set in their ways and cranky when inconvenienced.  We started the day off wrong by trying to tackle the wilderness area from the east end.  But he found the water there too shallow for fishing.  

Here's the mythical Forest Road 119--which forms the southern border of the wilderness.  It was along this road that I first discovered the Rainbow People at their annual gathering in July of 2010.  They're said to be coming back to the ANF again this July, but they might not return to the exact same spot.  Queen Creek doesn't have many deep pools for swimming and bathing.

The woods here has a brooding quality to it... Not quite creepy, but definitely not inviting.  It takes dedication to get anywhere here in the absence of blazed and established trails.

On the way to Hickory Creek from my house, we stopped by the Tidioute overlook, a common sight on this blog.  I'm trying to get my backpacking buddy to take more of an interest in the North Country so that we're not always going down to the crowded Dolly Sods in West Virginia.

While he vainly fished, I spread a waterproof map on the ground and lay down for a nap.  I found two ticks on myself, but I do love sleeping in the woods.  Should have brought my hammock.

Cook Forest State Park & the Clarion River

The Clarion River might not exactly qualify as majestic, but it's definitely one of the prettier rivers in the state.  Wending its lazy course between wooded hills and boulders, the Clarion is a favorite for kayaking, tubing, and canoeing.  In an episode of middle-aged decline, my backpacking buddy and I ended up spending two nights in a cabin at Cook Forest with a sweeping view of the river.  Why do I blame our time at the cabin on middle-aged decline?  Because even just five years ago, we would have braved the rain and camped in tents.  But now?  Renting a cabin is just so much easier...  Sit on the porch with a book and a cup of coffee and watch the river flow.

The tiny hamlet of Cooksburg is really just three grand old Victorian houses, an ice cream shop, and the ranger station for Cook Forest State Park.  There's also a smattering of rustic cabins for rent.  A narrow road runs 7 miles along the river's edge from Cooksburg to Clarington.  It's a beautiful, circuitous drive.

In the immediate vicinity, you've got Clear Creek State Park, Clear Creek State Forest, the Allegheny National Forest, and the ever-popular Cook Forest State Park--with its several acres of virgin woodland.

Cook Forest is more than just "The Forest Cathedral," that ancient stretch of woods that's never gone under the saw.  But the Cathedral is the park's biggest draw.  There are some truly magnificent trees here--so tall and graceful.  But a lot of the Cathedral section of the park is...ragged.  

There are many dead or fallen trees and rotted trunks standing without branches.  This could just be due to their age.  Some trees here are as old as 450 years.  Somehow, even the dead trees have a stark and silent beauty about them.

We hiked here on a rainy Saturday, and there were very few people on the trails.  One of the reasons I rarely go to Cook Forest is because it's just so popular and frequently crowded.  But I was surprised to discover that Cooksburg was only about half an hour from my house up in the North Country.

There was a bald eagle soaring above the Clarion and a couple in the cabin beside us who were cheating on their spouses.  It was here that I saw my first blue-headed vireos--such sweet little beauties.  The first night we had dinner at the nearby "Reigning Cardinals" restaurant.  As a relatively recent convert to birding, I was intrigued by the name, but my interest didn't last very long.  Their paper placemats depicted some favorite North American birds with lots of misspellings and typos--which was fun.  But the restaurant was...underwhelming.  

The second night, we went to the legendary Sawmill Restaurant in nearby Leeper, which was a great improvement.  Leeper is home to an eccentric fellow who wears a tall purple wizard's hat with purple bell-bottom pants.  He stands or sits in front of his house-trailer and waves at passing vehicles.  The North Country is full of eccentric souls.

Return to Buzzard Swamp, Allegheny National Forest

This is an area of the Allegheny National Forest known as Buzzard Swamp--which is a dismal name for a marvelous place.  During the pandemic, I came up here a few times to camp alone just inside the woods, in a spot overlooking the largest pond.

I think there are 12 or 13 ponds here, and there are so many birds.  We saw osprey, red-winged blackbirds, and bald eagles, among others.  Buzzard Swamp also has white birches.  Such beautiful trees, and they're rare as far south as Pittsburgh.

 A friend and I intended to do two nights off trail at the Hickory Creek Wilderness, but the rain caused us to have second thoughts.  Hickory Creek is treacherous at the best of times, but in the rain it's a boggy mess down along the creeks.  So in stead, we got a cabin at Cook Forest and did day trips.  Maybe this is what happens as backpackers slowly grow old: they rent a cabin if it rains...

More white birches, so lovely.  About six years ago, I had a nice little campsite--mentioned above--that we looked for on this trip, but to no avail.  I can't believe it's gone.  Maybe a tree fell on it or something.

And yet, my friend really liked Buzzard swamp and wants to do our next camping trip there.

There are lots of trails at Buzzard Swamp that I've never hiked, loop trails in the woods that meander far from the ponds.  I've always tried to stay closer to the ponds--even before I took an interest in birds.

So, I guess my next backpacking trip is to Buzzard Swamp.  

A Restaurant with a View: Le Mont in Pittsburgh

We had an alumni event at Le Mont restaurant on Mt. Washington last evening. 

I hadn't been there in many years, but part of its charm is that it never changes.