Hike #1324; Pinchot Trail Loop

Hike #1324; Pinchot Trail Loop

5/10/20 Pinchot/Watres Trail Loop with Jillane Becker, Dr. Michael Krejsa, Justin Gurbisz, Brittany Audrey, Professor John DiFiore, Diane Reider, and Craig Craig

This next hike would be a large loop within Pinchot State Forest, and finally pretty much complete the Pinchot Trail for me, which I’ve been working on for a long while.

Tannery Road

We’ve still been dealing with all of the covid19 virus stuff, which means I was not going to be posting any hikes that are out in the open, nor am I going to post any in New Jersey where any group activities are forbidden.
Further, in New Jersey, visits to parks are supposed to be limited to two hours only. To me, but’s really a rather foolish thing. We harm no one and only benefit from spending full days out.
Still, we have what we have to work with, and I’m fully intent on continuing with all of this as long as possible. I’ve spent a good amount of time preparing hikes to last months.

Old McClintocks Gate Trail section

I had been figuring as more time goes by, the easier things will get, but that doesn’t seem to be the case overall. Although state parks are finally open again in New Jersey, people are probably more on edge than ever.
I can’t even engage in regular discussion without constant critique, sometimes very harshly.
This had been a particularly crappy week for me. Maybe it was because there was no night hike and no long extra day hike for the first time in months. I felt on edge and constantly under the gun. These times, for some, are far easier and actually work out to their benefit.

McClintocks Gate Trail section

For me, I could use it more to my benefit, because I still collect a paycheck and can still go out hiking, but the fact that I care about what is going on makes that impossible.
This is so much worse for me when coming from a place of genuine care leads to so many cruel attacks.
I sent a lot of time during the week going through old stuff laying around the house, which in some was was rewarding. I took a lot of the stuff I’d found and put it into “Happy Bags” for my friends.
The concept of the Happy Bag dates back to my eighteenth birthday in High School.

McClintock's Gate Trail section

My old buddy Eric Schneider showed up to school, to a table in the cafeteria where we all hung out before class and presented me with a present: it was a bag of just odd crap he found laying around his bedroom. He was cleaning up, and all of the random stuff went into the bag, which he presented to me as a “Happy Bag of What the Fuck?”.
Ever since early high school, I always applied positive adjectives to just about every noun I came into contact with, and so the “Happy Bag” was just another fun thing to run with that. We eventually dropped the “what the fuck” part.

Happy Bags received

The bag Eric gave me was just random stuff like a photo of his dog Cerberus, a weird snake straw, a few mix tapes, and plenty of other random stuff.

McClintock's Gate Trail section

The whole idea started even earlier than that during the Summer of 1997 when we went on vacation to Virginia Beach, and Eric and I spent evenings up late filling envelopes with weird trash and sending them via mail to our friends back home. Jason Aquino got a huge college envelope filled with every bit of junk we could find laying around the hotel rooms.
I ran with the idea of the Happy Bag, and I went home to clean my room, then presented Eric with a similar Happy Bag.
Every time I did some kind of cleaning, I ended up handing out a Happy Bag.

McClintock's Gate Trail section

Often, it was just really a bunch of junk. The concept evolved further, where a set of “rules” were created for Happy Bags. The rule was, you go through the bag, take out whatever was in it that you wanted, then you pass it on to someone else, adding to it if you like.

Behler Swamp Trail section

Unfortunately, some Happy Bags over the years were lost, when friends’ parents somehow mistook the Happy Bags for bags of trash (my friend Al once asked “imagine that!!??”).
The concept continued to evolved, and of course friends caught on to this, and would often run away from me when I tried to pass on the bag. As such, this led to the next rule: if you do not re-gift the bag to someone else, you must get rid of its contents in a funny fashion, such as leaving items in friends cars randomly, or in their houses.

McClintock's Gate Trail section

I’d become known for leaving weird stuff all over friends houses, or sending the stuff in the mail to them or something. Many friends refused to let me know their addresses because it got so ridiculous.
The tradition did not die with age, but rather got even funnier.

Tannery Road section

I have fun memories of our friend Guillermo getting a Happy Bag in box form, and then brought it to our other friend Naaron’s truck and just sat it in the back. He threw a hilarious fit over it.
Probably the best was when Susie Duncan got a Happy Bag full of old WWE action figures (which came from DJ Ray) and she left them all over her Princeton office for coworkers to find in the morning. They absolutely loved it, and carried them around in their lab coat pockets, posed them in different positions on the copy machines, and plenty of other hilarious stores. I don’t think anyone ever grasped the concept of the Happy Bag more than than her in this instance.

Painted out former Pinchot Trail

This time, I put together four Happy Bags. One for Justin, one for Brittany, one for Dan, and one for someone depending on who came up that I knew would need their own hiking suit. Neil was the right guy at the right time, because the suit I put in his would fit him well, and he’d not had a hiking suit yet.
When I showed up, and presented them with their Happy Bags, it had been a while since anyone had received one of these from me. Several group members at this point are completely ignorant as to what a Happy Bag even is! Some people from my past might find this unbelievable.

Behler Swamp Trail section

Neil’s was in an Easter basket that came as a gift for Christmas that had chocolate in it from my friend Annika. I put a bunch of random stuff in there and a piece of paper that read “do not inventory” in the top.
Justin had a bag that had a good powder blue blazer, and then a nice rustic brown jacket that I figured would fit him well. I think that one might have come from Red Sean at some point, because it ended up in my car.
Brittany had the most stuff in hers, with a ton of old New Jersey magazines, Long Island Grenbelt newsletters, a ton of VHS casettes, and tons more stuff.

Behler Swamp Trail section

She was actually way happier about the Happy Bag than most anyone ever is with such a thing. The crown jewel here was a shirt she had lent to Red Sean over three years ago, that somehow ended up in my car, and then I switched cars twice, and I still had it.

Behlor Swamp Trail section

That shirt ended up in the Happy Bag and she was both ecstatic and mind blowing astonished that the shirt was in there and that it had migrated from probably my Dodge Stratus to my Toyota to my mini van.
For this hike, I chose a somewhat newer parking area near the intersection of Bear Lake Road and Tannery Road in Pinchot State Forest, which is directly along the route of the Pinchot Trail.
Pinchot State Forest has only been known as such since 2015 when it was renamed for Gifford Pinchot, our nation’s first Forester and twice governor of Pennsylvania. Prior to that, the forest was known as Lackawanna State Forest, after the Lackawanna River Valley that is just a little north of the main location.
The state forest here was first preserved in 1902 when the first large tract of land was purchased from William and Catherine McMurtry. Forestry management at the time was found to be important and the state purchased “unseated lands for forest reservations”.

White Line Trail section

The entire area had been denuded of trees for either timber or as part of the iron industry in the previous century. If something were not done to manage these lands, it was feared that the forests might never regrow in a healthy manner.
The Pinchot Trail was laid out I believe some time in the 1970s as a backpacking loop through the forest land.
The trail is a bit different than others because each section has a separate trail name that make up the twenty five plus mile loop. The route is relatively easy, and I find it quite beautiful and secluded.

White Line section crossing a possible old logging rr

The day we chose for this hike, in terms of weather, made it all that much more interesting. If we had gone any other day, the hike just would not have been that special.
Never do we get such crazy weather this far into May, but the night before, the Thornhurst area of the Poconos got an inch of snow.
I was concerned that this might make for very difficult hiking, but it was actually overall pretty easy. What made it so crazy was that the weather just kept changing during the course of the day.

White Line section on possible old rail bed

The day started sunny with lots of snow still on the vegetation, but that would melt over the course of the day. Still, it would shift from bright and sunny to very cloudy.

White Line Trail section

Sometimes the air was perfectly still, other times it was terribly windy, and we had various heavy snow squalls, or various sizes of sleet coming down on us. It would come in such abundance that it would completely cover the treadway in ice bits.
Some of the group absolutely hated the hike, but most of us were just amazed by it.
I had done several hikes on the Pinchot Trail before. I’d heard of the trail for many years, and the first was when I was ordering by mail all of the state park and forest maps to plan hikes.

White Line Trail section

It may sound kind of crazy, but I had been ordering maps for stuff all the way out toward State College PA as far back as 2002, long before I ever connected to that area.
Pinchot Trail was more within reach, but I never connected a hike to it until I was working on the hike series on the Wilkes Barre and Eastern Railroad back in 2009. I organized two hikes that began on the Pinchot Trail, then ended up on the railroad bed. I then did more of them that connected from the state forest lands in other directions.

North Line Trail section

Jillane and I did a full loop on the southern Pinchot Trail leg a couple of years back, which left only a short section to the north that I had never walked before, as well as the Watres Trail, which makes a loop off of the north end of that.
The intent for this hike was to have a very natural hike, out in the middle of nowhere, that would hit some of the favorite spots from the past hikes, as well as the remaining missing bits.

Frank Gantz Trail

I didn’t notice from the start that the Pinchot Trail had been rerouted. It used to go down Tannery Road from the intersection where wed met, an then cut into the woods to the left on the McClintock’s Gate Trail section. Now, it cuts into a grove of pines directly from the parking lot and skips that corner. Had I known that, we would have taken that way, but we’ll do that as part of another hike in the future again. This time, we walked down Tannery Road to the old trail route. The blazes were painted out here.

Snow squall on Frank Gantz Trail

The snow was heavy on the Mountain Laurels and the low lying blueberries and such. Even though I wore my higher top boots, it was getting inside pretty bad. It didn’t take too long and my feet were completely soaked from walking through the underbrush. My jacket was also covered in snow from the laurels and Rhododendrons covered in snow.
Some of these sections were really rough to go through, and required a lot of ducking and such. We also had some extremely muddy sections because it had also rained before.

Pine Hill Trail

We weaved around through the woods, and then came to a spot in the middle of nowhere, where the trail turned hard right, and a wooden routed sign told us that this was where the McClintock’s Gate section ended and the Stone Lookout Trail section began.
I had done this entire bit twice before on past hikes, but I only added it to the start of this one to cover a tiny bit of trail to the west I’d not done yet. In retrospect, we should have just walked Tannery Road down to that section instead of this, because it added a substantial amount of mileage to the start. Still, it was among the prettiest sections for snow.

The group at the Big Pine Hill Overlook

We went up one particularly steep slope, and then came to a clearing. I thought this was the “Stone Lookout”, which has a big heap of rocks, but not a view.

Old Pittston Rd

We didn’t quite get that far. There was a gravel road that came up to this clearing, which we turned left on at first, but then I realized we were going the wrong way. When my GPS caught up, I realized that we missed the initial turn I wanted to take entirely, and were at the next one. When I realized we went the wrong way on this second road, we turned back and then started heading gradually downhill to Tannery Road. We then turned to the right to follow that to the north. Across the street, there were painted out trail blazes.

Old logging railroad bed visible at Pittston Rd

It turns out, the Pinchot Trail in this section was painted out because it was rerouted. I wasn’t sure of it from the last time I was out there a couple of years back. I don’t think it was done yet at that time. There was a deer management fence along the south side of Tannery Road where it turned, and the trail I recall went into a weird trail door in the enclosure we checked out that time, but it was getting dark so we couldn’t see it well. This time, we just walked Tannery Road for a bit to the west and north.

Big Pine Hill tower

I watched for the painted out blazes along the road. I figured that someone had painted them out during hunting season because they didn’t want anyone walking by their stand.

View on Big Pine Hill

It turned out that wasn’t the case, and all of the painted out blazes were the result of reroutes in this case.
We headed a bit past the deer exclosure, and then around a bend where we found the original turn to the left for the Pinchot Trail, into a stand of evergreens. I followed the painted out blazes, and then came to a spot where there were new paint blazes following very closely to the forest boundary. I probably should have followed the first painted out trail to the reroute. Oh well, next time.

View on Big Pine HIll

The section of the trail we had reached was known as the Behler Swamp Trail section. It certainly was a swamp, and probably the most unpleasant section of the entire hike.

The old logging railroad runs here beside the trail near Pittston Rd

The section was still beautiful, and very straight along the boundary of the public land, but it was often extremely muddy, or the treadway was very deep puddles.
We made our way around them as best we could, but there was really no good way of avoiding getting wet.
We pushed on through the section, which got better as we gained elevation toward Bear Lake Road. The trail crossed the road, which would be the only paved road crossing up until the very end, and continued on the White Line Trail section.

The old logging rail line along Painter Creek

Like before, this section stayed pretty close to the state forest land boundary and sometimes skirted State Game Lands.
We pushed ahead to cross a dirt road, which moved as a snowmobile trail off to the west. The trail cut through more wet woods, and then reached another level grade at what might at one time have been a power line clearing. There was a level grade here that might have at one time been an old logging railroad right of way. I really can’t be sure where all of these rights of way went.

Old logging railroad bed in Painter Creek section

The trail turned to the north parallel with a woods road and continued along the boundary. The amount of snow on the adjacent vegetation was a little less already by this point. It was warming up somewhat, but I think this area got less.
We continued on the trail to the north until we got to the yellow blazed turn off on the Frank Gantz Trail. This is a side trail that leads out toward Pine Hill Trail, which can be used as part of a loop in the northern section of the forest. The trail was built by a retired truck driver for which it is named. He laid out trails through this forest, as well as Tobyhanna and Gouldsboro State Parks. Trails are named after him in both places.

The old logging railroad bed

Frank Gantz laid out the Big Pine Hill Trail in 1975, along with the Youth Conservation Corps, as well as the Sierra Club of Northeast Pennsylvania.

The logging line goes left, trail right.

The trail section here was dedicated in 1982.
My plan from here was to deviate from the Pinchot Trail and follow Frank Gantz Trail east to Pine Hill Trail, visit the observation tower, and then return to the Pinchot Trail on that trail.
Frank Gantz Trail was much less traveled than the main Pinchot Trail. We continued down to the crossing of the gravel road we broke away from a little earlier and regrouped.
To the left, there was an intersection with the Bear Swamp Trail. The road we were on was called the Boundary Line Road, and is considered one of the snowmobile trails.

Old logging railroad bed

I looked over the map and realized that this multi use trail and the Frank Gantz Trail paralleled each other closely, so I gave Jillane the option to go walk the easier way.

The rail grade

She went up to follow the Bear Swamp Trail, and the rest of us pushed through the brushy Frank Gantz Trail, which eventually came back up to reach the Bear Swamp Trail. We took a break and chatted here, and then Frank Gantz Trail crossed to the north of it. It then came back to the Bear Swamp Trail again, and more than half the group opted to take the easier way. Again, Frank Gantz Trail went to the south of the road, and all of us but Jillane went that way. I told her to continue on Bear Swamp to Pine Hill Trail and go left.

The rail grade is only visible as it skirts a wetland here

The rest of us headed through woods, and down slope just a bit to the intersection with the Pine Hill Trail. We turned left on this to continue up across the Bear Swamp Trail again. Jillane was way ahead of us at this point, and we continued gradually up on this trail until we got to Vista Road, another woods road that leads to the Big Pine Hill Observation Tower, an open top overlook with a three hundred sixty degree view of the surrounding area. The vista marks the divide between Delaware and Susquehanna watersheds.

Painter Creek crossing

We went to the top of the tower, and there was a wind and snow squall. It was about the most unpleasant time we could have reached this otherwise awesome little spot. We tried to stand on top of it for a while, where I wanted to get my group shot, but none of us were really enjoying it that much, so we did it on the steps below instead.
Craig decided he was going to cut out early, and took to the Pine Hill Trail back down to the Pinchot Trail and then the bit of road back to the cars to do a shorter loop.

Watres Trail start

The rest of us continued down the Vista Road to the yellow blazed Pine Hill Trail, and took it to the north. It led us over some rocks and out to the old Pittston Road.

What might be another rail grade on Watres Trail

Some of the Pittston Road looks like an old railroad grade, and further on I’m rather sure it was part of one.
This was the question of one of my previous hikes in the area with Pete Wilcox and James Quinn. In the Summer of 2018, we wandered through the gorge of the Painter Creek looking for remnants of rails, but didn’t find much of anything in that area. This was extremely difficult but interesting walking, and we ended up following most of the Bear Creek Branch of the Lehigh Valley Railroad that day.

Watres Trail

Last week, we finished the western entire leg of the Bear Creek Branch, but we only found bits of what would have been the Albert Lewis owned logging railroads now in the state forest lands. The first bit of this I found on one of our first Pinchot Trail hikes, in the Painter Creek Trail section.
I didn’t give it much thought for a while, and assumed that this line broke away from the old Spring Brook Railraod, which was down in the Painter Creek gorge to the north, but our hiked revealed that the elevation change was probably too much for that connecting. It was more likely a Lewis line.

Cascade on Watres Trail

We took the old Pittston Road, which the Pine Hill Trail is blazed along at the north end, out to where the Pinchot Trail hits it, and the Painter Swamp section goes north.

A stream on Watres Trail

At this intersection, what we assumed to be the railroad grade came in to the Pittston Road parallel with the trail. I wanted to have a closer look at this.
Upon closer inspection, it did appear to have the grade of the railroad. Further, it definitely looked to be it, and the trail actually follows it for a short bit.
We were on the grade or right beside it for a little bit, and then it turned off to the right while we continued to follow the countour of the lands to the west. We also passed by a reroute where the trail used to go further uphill, but was moved down to a lower elevation for a bit.

Stump

What we assumed after the hike Pete, James, and I took was that the old logging railraod somewhere turned to the west and south, and then connected to the end of the Lehigh Valley Railroad lands at the Meadow Run Ponds, in an area then known as Beupland. I had read that Albert Lewis had harvested ice off of Bear Lake, near where we started, which would have meant that he might have had a rail line to there, and he worked in timber in the areas around the Meadow Run Ponds, also known as Mountain Lake on some maps.
As such, it was logical to assume he had railroads in place to serve these interests.
One of the Pocono trail guides referred to a section of the Pinchot Trail ahead as having once been a lumber railroad, and I remembered seeing evidence of ties the firest time I was out there, although the last time I was out, it was completely grown over with hay ferns, so we really couldn’t see much of anything.

Another fun stump

This time we saw the rail line much more clearly as we approached it again. the snow was almost completely melted by the time we got to this point, both because it was warming up and because it just didn’t get as much accumulation this much further to the north.
The trail descended and reached the rail bed then followed it for a short distance.
This time, I could obviously see where the railroad ties had been. There was no question to me before that this was a rail line, but I wanted to have a closer look at where it was going.
I saw this time very obviously where it broke away from the trail, which wasn’t as obvious to me before.
The others continued on the Pinchot Trail, which turned hard to the right and reached a crossing spot of the Painter Creek, which would be a good break spot.
While they were doing that, I headed up onto the trail, which went onto a piece of adjacent private land. It was very obvious where it went, and I followed it out to a point that it went over a little wetland, and then appeared possibly to end at a grove of more evergreens. It may have continued on from here.

Watres Trail in timbered area

To look into this further, and thanks to Russ Nelson, I consulted Pennsylvania LIDAR, which uses light to figure out more specific land contours, and gives better detail than what we get through aerial images and topographic maps at times.
In doing so, I was able to find the entire right of way I believe. It looks like it may have continued further into the Painter Creek Gorge, although it is much wrecked by now. We might have to check it again. It also went all the way back to the Meadow Run Ponds.

Seasonal view on Watres Trail

The railroad joined with the Pittston Road, then left it and skirted a swamp for a bit, and then left it again to skirt more wetlands heading to the south toward the ponds. The route is rather hard to find, but I think we could get out there and follow it one of these days.
This time, I was satisfied with what I was seeing, and I’m satisfied with knowing where it is and that using GPS, I can rather accurately trace the route in the near future. I headed back over to the rest of the group at the creek crossing.

Seasonal view on Watres Trail

We had a nice lunch stop there, and two other hikers actually happened upon us there.
We saw only one other hiker the entire day, who showed up at the same parking area as us, and I thought was with us or a friend of Craig, because he showed up at the same time, but it was no one we knew and he didn’t join us.
These people were walking dogs, which I thought was pretty far out there for them to be walking little dogs. We were about ready to head out at this time, and just ahead reached the west end of Watres Trail.

Seasonal view of Watres Reservoir

I had first heard about the Watres Trail from Jason Kumpas on a hike up this way several years back. He had done a halloween costume hike on it with some friends in another group.

Watres Reservoir view

The trail was not on any of the Pinchot Trail maps, and hadn’t been for many years. In fact, the last time I was in the area, there was still not a good map showing the Watres Trail (which takes its name from the Watres Reservoir which is in view along the way).
This time, the trail actually did appear on the map.
I had planned eventually to get back up there and hike this northern leg, in probably the most secluded section of the entire state forest, but just never got around to it until this time.
The yellow blazed trail loops to the north above the valley of the Painter Creek, and then comes back through the valley of the Panther Creek or Hayes Creek, depending on the map.

Seasonal view to Watres Reservoir

Both Painter and Panther come from the same name for the area, and were changed differently somewhat to set them apart from one another.

Messed up trail from logging

The yellow blazed trail is much less traveled than the Pinchot Trail, so there were more trees over it and a lot more brush against the shins and ankles, but I really loved it for the most part.
The very start of it, just above the Painter Creek, had a grade along it that looked to be another old logging railroad. I could not find it going anywhere on LIDAR, and it appeared to abruptly end also. It might have been a little spur piece and that actually was the end. I walked that until it came back to the trail, then became a rough pathway.

Hayes Run

We continued along a nice slope, descended and crossed over a small stream with a little cascade, and I pointed out where James, Pete, and I had come up the last time.
We were then into new territory for me again. The trail was nice enough for a while, but soon came to a timber area. Log cutting was actively going on, which made for some difficult walking and climbing over several dropped trees that had not yet been removed from the trail. Fortunately, several with the blazes were still in place.

Watres Trail

There were some good seasonal views out over the Painter Creek valley to the west, and the recently cut stumps had a lovely yellow and brown color to them.
Eventually, we moved away from some of the active logging area and large bulldozer paths to a more natural escarpment. This afforded us some views to the north out over the valley where the Painter and Panther Creeks come together. I pointed out to everyone where the Panther Creek Viaduct used to cross over the wide gorge before, built by the Wilkes Barre and Eastern Railroad in 1893, and abandoned in 1938 or 39.

1895 historic image of Panther Creek Viaduct

We had hiked to that site a couple of times before, but wouldn’t be getting to it this time, because it was quite a ways out of the way. There’s enough out there to merit more though.

Along Watres Trail

The trail weaved around the mountain, and soon the Watres Reservoir came into view.
The view got better as we circled the northern end of the trail. This was the farthest we would get away from the cars on this hike, although well beyond the half way point because we had the loop at the beginning.
We circled the corner, and then the trail picked up a logging access road that was recently cleared. The blaze were still visible, often just in the trees to the left of the road, and it was kind of a muddy slow going mess.

Seasonal view on the Watres Trail

The trail continued on the hillside for a bit, and then suddenly turnd to the left.
There was a switchback to the trail, left and right, and we could see the blazes, but they had cut a very directly and messy access road for logging right up the middle of the switchback. It was incredibly steep, and hurt the knees to go down it.
We reached the bottom, and there was another access road going to the right. I could see a blaze on one of the trees in the distance for the continuation, and then the group.

Watres Trail

There was another messy section of down trees through this valley along what must have been the Hayes Creek, or the Panther Creek, I’m not sure. We continued to a point where the trail turned hard to the left and then crossed over the creek, where it got a bit smaller.

Watres Trail

There were some nice little camp sites and fire rings along the trail to the north of us. It would have been a great area if we had been backpacking.

Watres Trail

The trail on the other side went up slope very gradually for a couple of miles. We went up and over some rocks, had some seasonal views to the right, and passed some pretty vernal pools.
A major squall hit while we were on this part, when it went from being very bright to cloudy all of a sudden. The balls of ice coming down were the largest we had seen yet, and they were soon completely covering the treadway of the trail. This area had absolutely no snow on the Mountain Laurels, compared to before where there was tons.

Watres Trail

As the hike progressed, I realized that this was not simply because of the rise of the temperature during the course of the day, but the location. The temperature in Wilkes Barre was to be several degrees warmer than at Bear Lake whre we started.

Swamp area

The squall stopped, and it went back to beautiful and sunny. The trail was all very easy to follow, except for one spot where it went over a rock outcrop, and the next markings were not immediately obvious.
We passed one more body of water, and soon reached the eastern terminus of the Watres Trail, at the North Line Trail section of the Pinchot Trail. I had done this section once before in the Summer of 2009, when we did the northern leg of the regular Pinchot Trail, but then cut away at Sassafrass Hill.

Eastern end of Watres Trail

The Pinchot Trail was so much wider than the Watres Trail. It was incredibly easy by comparison because there wasn’t constantly brush against our legs.

Spruce Hill section

Justin, Brittany, and John were the only ones near me here. Mike and Diane had gone much faster and were already done with the hike by this point. The other three continued ahead on the trail, and I waited behind for Jillane to catch up.
When she arrived, we headed along the trail to the south, which was a nice, sparsely covered area in a rather straight line along what I believe was once a fire line. I think it is called the North Fireline Trail on older maps. This took us out to a grassy area near Sassafras Hill Road.

North Line section

I knew the place right away. The group had taken a long break at this point when we hiked it before, and Jason Itell had made a camp fire.
From here, we crossed over Sassafras Hill Road, and then continued straight into the woods on the Sassafras Hill Trail section.
I had never done this bit on down to the parking area on Bear Lake Road, so all of this was new to me from this point. The trail continued perfectly straight going slightly downhill, probably on the same fire line that created the section to the north.

North Line Trail section

The change in the temperature became immediately apparent in these areas. Even though the slopes are more south facing, there was a ton more snow in these areas than the areas we had just seen. It didn’t happen all at once. I noticed as we continued to the south end of the Watres Trail that the Mountain Laurels were holding onto more of the snow.
The trail eventually turned hard to the right, in less a straight line, and headed toward the Pittston Road again. Just before reaching the road, we crossed an interesting brook.

North Line Trail section

It was like an enormous spring, where all of the water from the brook appeared from under rocks at one spot of high volume. The trail crossed right over the upper end of this, and the sound of water beneath was amazing. This is called Spring Run.
We reached the other side, and then stepped up to the Pittston Road where the trail turned left briefly.
As we approached a parking area where the Pinchot Trail turned right into the woods, on the Powder Magazine Trail section, Mike and Diane were parked there looking around.

Snow on Sassafras Hill

Mike was near the car, and Diane was walking out of the woods. There was a have a heart trap sitting on the ground with a stick proppin it open, an an empty food container.

Sassafras Hill Trail section

They explained to me that someone had abandoned a house cat here, and that it was in the cage crying loudly when they came by a while ago. They did the last leg of the hike back to their cars and decided to come back to rescue the cat, but found it was gone when they arrived. Diane said she should have thought to close the stick on the cage before she left, and she was just in the woods looking for it. Mike asked if Jillane wanted a ride back to the van, and I went to give her the keys, but then when she heard that some asshole had abandoned a cat, she chose to stay there and look around for it.

Sassafras Hill Trail section

I hope someone else managed to pick the poor cat up, but it’s not likely. People who do something like that to a cat are horrible. I took my keys and decided to run to the van.

Powder Magazine Trail section

I hurried up slightly on the Powder Magazine Trail section, which was the widest section of any of the Pinchot Trail we had been on. It made it much easier to move along fast.
I eventually came to the intersection with the Pine Hill Trail, and passed one other guy going up that on a jog. The trail then weaved around through the woods a bit, and headed downhill to an enormous new looking trail register box, which is made to look like a big wooden bird house, but far larger than what is really needed for that site. I opened it up really quickly and scrawled a note what we did, and then took off.

Spring Run

The trail turns right on the road, and I followed it looking around to see if there were any reroutes through here. I didn’t notice any. Orange blazes were still on poles.

Spring Run

I noted while hurrying along the road that there was a very level grade that came out from Bear Lake on the left. The road certainly could have been a railroad grade, but that would have depended on what was on the other side of the road.
There was another grade there too, a driveway to a private home, but then parallel with it was a level grade that curved slightly, and ascended to near the level of Bear Lake Road. This certainly looked to be a railroad grade. I’m convinced this might have been the rail access to Bear Lake for ice harvesting, if such a spur ever existed.

Ice railroad grade?

I soon reached my van, jumped in, and hurried down the road. It was then I realized the reroute to the trail was right in front of my van.
A blue car was right ahead of me and turned around in the lot. I figured that was Mike.
I hurried down the road, just about missed the turn on the old Pittston Road, but then backed off to get in to it. Mike motioned to me, I guess just checking to make sure I made it back there okay, and I was fast down the road to find Jillane in the lot by herself. Unfortunately, the cat was nowhere to be found. She left out a bit of zucchini bread for it to eat, and I put some water in it’s little bowl.
We didn’t have any kind of gathering after this one, as it was getting pretty dark at this point, and it was too cold to be hanging out outside.
Aside from the sad lost cat, it was a really great day and an incredible weather experience unlike anything I’ve seen or probably ever will see again.

Ham

HAM