Brier Knob and Gallitzin State Forest

The low ridgeline in the center of this photo is the obscure Brier Knob--a peak in the Gallitzin State Forest, east of Johnstown. On maps and on Google Earth it looks kind of remarkable, towering as it does above the countryside all around.

Up close, like so many summits around here, you'd hardly even know you're on high ground. It's more a plateau than a pinnacle. Worse, Brier Knob--while pleasant in places--bears all the ugly scars of having once been coalfields, at least the area pictured here, just north of the summit.

The summit itself?  It stands at 2,530 feet, which is respectable around these parts.  I think this clearing in the woods might be it.  If ever there was a geodetic plate to mark the high point, it's long since gone.  Kind of an anticlimactic climax, but the October woods is always a joy, even if the views are less than dramatic.  I scouted this high ground out on my peak-baggers website.  Naturally it was unclaimed, so I nabbed it.  It's a little embarrassing to be posting "climbs" like this when others on the same site have photos of themselves dangling in harnesses and helmets from rocky cliffs high above the world.  But "comparison is the thief of joy." 

The sign at the entrance to the Gallitzin State Forest says "No ATVs," but someone clearly disobeys that prohibition on a regular basis.  A series of ATV and dirt bike trails circles the summit of Brier Knob.  In places it's a wide, muddy track.  But on the southern and western sides of the circuit, it's a pleasant mountain road through the bright autumnal forest, fragrant and cool.

This is the Gallitzin State Forest, not to be confused with Prince Gallitzin State Park.  This "Prince Gallitzin" character was a Russian or Polish aristocrat and an Roman Catholic missionary to the area.  He is sometimes known as the "Apostle to the Alleghenies."  Apparently he's up for canonization.  Gallitzin died in Cambria County in 1840.  

Along the John P. Saylor Trail, there's a rock formation known as Wolf Rocks, which are worth a climb.

This stack of boulders is just close enough to the roadway that people come out here pretty frequently to deface them with spray paint.  If the boulders were even half a mile further into the woods, they'd be free from all graffiti--because the kind of people who spray paint rocks are not the kind who walk very far from their cars.  

The crevasses down between the rocks are 15 to 20 feet deep in places and plenty treacherous.

Ah, tea berries!  They're edible, if a little flavorless.  The most potent ones have the slightest whiff of mint about them.  During the American Revolution, colonists would use the leaves of the tea berry plant as an ersatz tea because the British blocked all tea trade from the Caribbean.  That's how the plant gets its name.  But tea berry tea is not made like regular tea.  You have to keep the leaves in cold water for a few days before they render any flavor at all, and then you heat and drink the water that the leaves were soaked in.