Rail Trails: Indian Creek Valley Trail and a Few Treks South of the Border

 

So many of the old rail beds I used to walk as a kid have been turned into rail trails.  It’s a good way to repurpose disused train lines—though I do miss the smell of creosote on a hot summer day, the thrill of an oncoming train, the melancholy cry of the whistle.  Rail trails are nice when they run through rural areas, less so as they pass through towns.  They almost always follow streams and rivers—like the incomplete Indian Creek Valley Trail in the Laurel Highlands, above photo.  They’re groomed for both hiking and biking, but their industrial pasts make them a little too accessible for the hardy hiker.  If you’re looking to escape the crowds, rail trails are not the way to go.  When they run through populated areas, rail trails—like the railroads they replaced—traverse the busiest or grittiest parts of town, the places where trains would have gone in industrial times.  And because trains cannot ascend steep grades, these trails are relatively level, making them a favorite place to walk a dog or push a stroller.  The day may come when that’s the only way I can get my outdoor fix—on a level, bustling, easily accessible trail where joggers and cyclists make sport.  But at this point in my life, I still need a little more wildness than a rail trail can usually offer.  

And for that coveted “wildness,” dear reader, I have to search further and further afield—as you well know.  I’m looking more and more on the far side of the Mason Dixon Line, in places like THIS and THIS and THIS.

Wolf Rocks Overlook, Forbes State Forest

It’s been such a very long time since I’ve been here except in winter.  In fact, it’s possible that I’ve only ever been drawn to Wolf Rocks in the winter.  I don’t seem to have any photos of this place in any other season, nor any memories.  Some places (and people?) are best when they’re dormant and at rest.  The porcupines have ravaged the bark on the upper branches of the trees at Wolf Rocks.  Click on this photo to see.

In 11 years of rare, occasional visits, I've never encountered another human being at this place--until Wednesday of last week.  When I turned onto the short connector trail that leads to the rocks, I saw a fresh pair of small footprints...and realized with a bit of sadness that I would not have the overlook to myself this time.

Worse, I suspected that the person leaving those footprints was a solitude-seeker like myself and almost certainly a woman.  I'm sensitive to the difficulties that a female nature-lover must feel when she's alone on the trail.  I don't think I come across as creepy or dangerous, but all the same, I probably overdo it when I try NOT to seem creepy: smiling, and chattering, and hurrying away...  Anyhow, the young lady didn't seem scared, but we were both a little disappointed to have our solitude interrupted, I think.

I sought a lonely place that I know out on the northern edges of the rock face, where I sat to meditate and read a poem that I'd brought with me, all the while taking in the pleasant view of snow-covered hills beneath the dark vertical pillars of naked trees.  By the time I was finished, she was long gone.  I must say, it was good to have a few hours of winter up there in the highlands.  I miss real winters.

The disappearance of winter has been a nagging sorrow for me.  This is a "first world problem," I know.  The discontents of climate change are serious and life-threatening, and the poorest of the world's people will suffer first and worst.  But I admit that I mostly miss the snow, and the cold, and the whole aesthetic of the winter season.  I miss the whitish glow in a room when the snow on the ground outside refracts the dim, gray light of day back into the room when the sun is hidden.  It's a cool, pale radiance that comes from nowhere and everywhere: snowlight.  I miss the hunkering down, the taking shelter, the feeling of getting cozy inside your den as raging Boreas claims the world outside.  

It's especially fun to hole-up in a tent out on a trail in the winter, when the world is silent and bright.  The late 90s were a 5-year August for me.  I lived in Africa and missed the cold seasons painfully.  I've never stopped missing them even though I've been home for 22 years.  I savor them when they are mine--however briefly--and I long for them when all is sunshine and heat.  This dull gray November limbo that lasts through April is no substitute for the wise solemnity of a genuine winter.  The cold makes us find and face our inner selves.  There's a beauty in the cold that can be found no place else.  

A Sacred Place in the Snow

Pleasant Grove United Presbyterian Church, dating back to 1780.

9 Degrees in the Laurel Highlands

It was bitterly cold up on Laurel Summit.

Not too cold for a book and a thermos of coffee at a picnic table in the effete rays of the winter sun.  Were the sun's rays ever so ineffective?  On those rare occasions when we get brief tastes of a real winter, I like to read books that are about the season, and I like to do it in the cold.  This most excellent novel was The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason: an instant favorite set in the mountainous eastern reaches of a rapidly-waning Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I.  

Beam Rocks and Laurel Mountain in the Winter

This is Beam Rocks, just about half a mile off Laurel Summit Road in the Forbes State Forest.  It's a relatively unremarkable view unless you look past the rooftop of the forest and into the middle distance of the picture.  There you can see the snowy fields of the farmland east of the ridge.  This place was lovely in the wintry silence and the deep solitude that only the snow can lend it.

These rocks are right along the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail, but their proximity to the road makes them a favorite for people who would never expend the energy needed to go even just one mile further into the woods.  And of course they often bring their spray paint along to deface the rocks.  Last time I was here, there was a teenager carrying an actual old fashioned boombox and blaring The Beatles as if he'd discovered them.  Why would anyone go to the woods with a boombox?  And The Beatles, really?

I like kids these days.  I do not typically find them whiny or entitled--though guys my age love to say otherwise.  But it's funny how a 15-year old will look at you with a straight face and ask, "Have you ever heard of a band called Pink Floyd?"  To them, it's all so new--the tired old music that feels so much to me like the day before yesterday.  There were lots of cross-country skiers up on the ridge, and this little warming hut was open.

On a Wednesday morning, of course, the woodstove was cold.  But it's a pleasant space.  I love holing up against the winter in a cabin with a woodburner. 

It was such a joy to have a few days of real winter in January and a few again in February.  It definitely thins out the crowds and casts an all-noise-absorbing muffle out over the hills and fields.  I got a little turned around while hiking from Beam Rocks toward Wolf Rocks.  I never did make it to my destination and instead circled back to Laurel Summit Road.

My own children have so little experience of snow!  They've never dug a snow tunnel--though they have made snowpersons.  They're girls, so when they were little I used to tell them it doesn't have to be a snowman; it can be any kind of snowperson they want it to be.  My brothers and I used to build such elaborate snow castles--based on photos of ruined Scottish castles that I saw in the old Tree of Knowledge Encyclopedias long ago.  I would read through encyclopedias as if they were novels.

It was a real joy to see the Laurel Mountain Ski Resort up and running!  And there were plenty of skiers considering that it was the middle of a weekday.  Last time I came here, it felt like the spooky set of a Scoobie Doo cartoon--abandoned and overrun with tall grass.  That was seven or eight years ago.

To see what I found last time I ventured there, click here.  I love it when things get better... Also, to see another bright, sunny interlude in South Florida, click here.  Not sure how I got to Florida twice in one winter, but these are the days for a little extra self-indulgence.  (It's just that Florida would never be my first choice.)

Sprocket Trail, Hillman State Park

Another unexpectedly happy day at Hillman State Park. It seems that a place will give itself to you anew when you return to it after a long absence. This time around, on a Wednesday afternoon, I found two cars parked at the trailhead for the Figure 8 Trail, which I explored on my day off last week.  Instead, I made for a once-anonymous trail on which I'd gotten lost plenty of times--back before the park service put up blazes and signage: the weirdly named Sprocket Trail.

Nothing that has the word "sprocket" in its name has anything to do with sprockets.  I offer as evidence for that claim the old 90s pop band "Toad the Wet Sprocket" and, well, the only other thing...the Sprocket Trail.  What exactly is a sprocket anyway?  Unless I'm mistaken, it's the raised teeth on the rotor where a bicycle chain connects to the rotor...or anything like said teeth.  Hardly an item worthy of a one-hit-wonder band or a humble trail through the reclaimed strip mines of Hillman.  

Sprocket Trail is more of a trail system than a single track.  And like most of the paths through Hillman, it is circuitous and beset with many, many sidetracks which lead nowhere but which are fun to ride on a mountain bike.  Ah, but if you press on far enough, it does lead through some lovely evergreen forests, blessed spots of silence and serenity, where tall, straight tree trunks rise above the mossy forest floors like the pillars of some woodland temple.  The forest floor here is scattered about with soft pine needles and very little underbrush, creating a warm, hushed feel, as if you were strolling in a carpeted gallery.  The winter sun streams through the high canopy and gives the whole place a golden hue.  

Thankfully, the ground was frozen solid.  If it hadn't been, then parts of these trails would have been pure muck and very hard to hike.  Nothing tears up a trail like horses.  The northernmost reaches of the Sprocket Trail offered these modest vistas again and a sense of deep solitude.

For years now, my wife and I have been buying our own Christmas presents, putting them away until Christmas morning, and then showing each other what they got us for Christmas.  In my case it was a pair of Vasque St. Elias hiking boots--a really good quality boot and pretty expensive.  When I tried it on at the new Public Lands store in Cranberry, the 10.5 felt comfortably snug, whereas the 11 felt like a clown shoe.  I chose snugness...but now, after having worn them out on the trail twice, I wonder if it's not always better to err on the side of the clown shoe?  I love the boots, but they do cramp my feet.  I've probably scuffed them up too badly to take them back.  I refuse to believe that our feet grow bigger as we age; I'm only 15 pounds heavier than I was when I graduated high school.  I think I'd almost rather hike in boots too small for my feet than consent to wearing an 11.

I believe that you can make economies with almost anything in life EXCEPT shoes.  It's certainly true of clothing: buy some cheap brand of socks, underwear, shirts even.  Yeah, sure, you'll always feel the difference between the cheap stuff and the quality stuff, and if you need the sensation and the look of a really good shirt on your back, then you'll have to pay for it.  Good pants are especially nice.  Who cares?  But when it comes to your shoes, you need the good stuff.  Always.  

Colt Trail & Figure 8 Trail, Hillman State Park

Had a beautiful day at Hillman State Park, surprisingly nice, replete with new discoveries and the traditional Hillman-hour-of-being lost—frantically, irritatingly, circling round and round lost!  That part, the thing about being lost, is classic Hillman. Hillman is a place I used to visit when I didn’t have time to go anywhere better. It was a total crapshoot, since the trails were laid out for mountain bikers, not hikers, and they zigzagged over the strange terrain with no real purpose except to create an exciting ride with lots of ups and downs. 

Also, the trails were unmarked, so even though I only went there for a quick trek, I’d always end up getting lost—which takes a lot of fun out of hiking and ends up taking more time than anticipated. 

On top of these frustrations, the place was just not much to my liking: poison ivy, tree-strangling vines, ticks. It’s entirely reclaimed strip mines, so the topography is great for mountain biking, but strangely alien to the hiker. Plus, the thinnish soil makes for a less robust forest. There are lots of big, grassy meadows. But I returned to the southeastern quadrant of the park today and—much to my surprise—I found the trails named and blazed! Look at this signage. 

Not sure why I went back to the southeastern part of the park. It’s always been the area with the most tree-cover. But at Hillman, the more trees you have, the more lost you can get! It was such a joy to see that someone is putting a little effort into making this park usable. Although it’s almost as big as its more-glamorous neighbor, Raccoon Creek State Park, it’s always been administered as a sort of disreputable younger sibling to that park and by the same over-worked rangers. I mean, there’s only so much you can do with reclaimed strip mines… It's mainly the domain of mountain bikers, as I said, and hikers. There's also a model airplane runway. But no restrooms, no benches, no amenities of any kind, which is nice.

Despite my longstanding disdain for the park, it was such a pleasant place to be in the climate-change January mild chill. The Colt Trail especially passes through some nice scenery with a sense of varying elevations. The views out through the bare trees are not striking or dramatic, but they do give you a sense of a larger world beyond. The panoramas, humble as they are, help to renew your sense of the bigness of the world—and that is a renewal that all of us need from time to time.

The Colt Trail and the perfunctorily-named Short ‘n Sweet Trail form some nice loops just north of Knowlton Road. They’re prettyish, they run along steep drops, and largely follow broad old mining roads. The walk here was everything I’m always looking for in a hike: solitary, silent, meditative, full of new discoveries to delight the eye. I’m not sure that they’d be quite as nice in high summer, when greenery obscures the views, but maybe.

After getting back to my car, parked on Knowlton Road, I got ambitious and decided to look into the oddly named Figure 8 Trail, which runs through the forest on the opposite side of the road. Not exactly a mistake, but it was a bigger venture than I’d expected.

There was some lovely country in there: tall pine forests like these, fragrant and serene. There were a few more views out through the naked trees onto the farmlands below. Billowy groves of evergreen saplings run like hedges along the trail in many places, giving the otherwise gray light of day a green and lively hue. Of course, this being Hillman, the trail also passed through ugly blow downs, where you have to climb carefully among fallen limbs, and big swaths of wasteland where the forest had been strangled by ugly vines. 

Here’s a map of just the southeastern segment of the park—which is the smallest portion. (Click to enlarge this and any photo.) In the extreme southeastern corner you can see the so-called Figure 8 Trail. I should have known by the name that this trail would have some potential for misdirection, but without a map I was unprepared for just how senseless and convoluted this “figure 8” would be. I assumed a central axis someplace where the trail would cross itself, joining two loops. That would have made sense, right? But alas. Who draws an 8 like this? Who knew that this figure 8 would have an inner loop and an outer loop on its western side and a variety of smaller trails crossing the larger one, creating unexpected junctures to imitate the one you’re looking for? Now that there are maps of Hillman online, it would be wise always to have one with you when you venture to that place. I ended up repeating the eastern loop twice and frantically searching for a connector trail to lead back to the road. All in all, a good day in the woods though. It’ll be nice to have some real winter in the near future. Let’s hope.