Dave and I had the opportunity to take a day off from work today and get outside and do something. We generally do a better job of planning ahead, but this jaunt came together fairly quickly, and with all the family stuff going on around Halloween, our planning amounted to something along the lines of: I'll load a bunch of caches on my GPS, take a few notes, and pick you up at around 7:45am. We can figure out what to do while we are driving. We knew we were headed to Port Clinton, PA, which is an old standby for us, with ready access to Hawk Mountain, the Appalachian Trail, part of the Schuylkill Trail, and a bunch of geocaches. The day would end up being some combination of hiking and geocaching, with a stronger emphasis on hiking.
We talked as we drove, and decided that we would tackle the east side of the Port Clinton gap on the AT, where there is a geocache about a mile away from parking. As can be seen from the picture below (taken from a few miles away, east is to the right), the ridge that the AT follows has a gap at Port Clinton, and getting back up onto the ridgeline that the AT follows necessitates a fairly steep climb out of the gap, followed by a gradual ascent the rest of the way. From prior experience, Dave knew that the slope on the west side of town was significantly steeper than the one on the east, so we planned to do the east side as a warm up, and then the west side later in the day if we felt like it.
We parked the car right next to an Appalachian Trail sign, and right next to that, Pennsylvania State Game Lands signs with all sorts of warnings. We knew that it was hunting season when we set out, and also knew that much of this whole area is hunting land. So here I am doing my best to impersonate a pumpkin. It's not much of a fashion statement I will admit, but it is very Haloween-ish, and it sure beats acquiring some extra ventilation.
It was a beautiful fall day, but a little colder than I had anticipated. When we parked the car at the foot of the ridge at about 9:30am, it was still only 37 degrees, and a persistent breeze made it feel cooler than that. We set off up the trail, which begins with a long switchback to take some of the steepness out of the slope. Still, it was uphill beginning right from the parking lot, so we didn't get a warm up, and I am glad it wasn't any steeper than it was so that my legs had a chance to get loosened up. What took a little more getting used to than the legs was the lungs. My wind isn't what it should be due to many years of sitting at a desk all day, and the cold air stung quite a bit as I huffed and puffed through the first uphill section. Fortunately, both the legs and the lungs got acclimated pretty quickly and I felt great.
This section of the AT was very typical of this part of Pennsylvania; rocky ground and deciduous forest. Once we had climbed to the top of the ridge, we were on a narrow path that really was the knife edge of the ridge. As can be seen in this picture the ridge drops off fairly steeply to both sides. There were terrific views both north and south, and one advantage of hiking at this time of the year after most of the leaves are down is that you get much better views off into the distance than you would with full foliage.
At the end of a 1.1 mile hike out - success! Dave digs out the ammo can and signs the log of the geocache that gave us a flimsy excuse to come up here in the first place (not that we needed an excuse...).
This little hike was a simple out-and-back on the same trail, so the track of our route looks like a line. This is one of the disadvantages of the AT, if you consider it a disadvantage; there is no such thing as a loop. Either you use two cars and do a shuttle hike, or you retrace your steps. Which isn't a bad thing. I have now hiked this 1.1 mile section of the AT twice, once northbound and once southbound.
Next...Part 2, Port Clinton gap west.
No comments:
Post a Comment