Hike #403; Pinnacle/Eckville Area Loop

3/15/9 Pinnacle/Eckville Area Loop with Jillane Becker, Bill "Guillermo" Fabel, Shelly Janes, Rich Pace, Ron Phelps, Kyle Zalinsky, Jude Shabrach, Ira Rubenstein, "Amish Paul" and Wyatt Hassler, Jim "Mr. Buckett" Mathews, "DJ Ray" Cordts, Eric Pace, Amanda Rosenblatt

This next hike would be another partner trip with my old buddy Rich Pace, who first introduced me to the area of the Pinnacle near Eckville PA.
Unfortunately, the original journal to this one was lost to the fire, and so I have to recount the thing again. Facebook somehow deleted my rewritten post as well.

For this one, we met at the parking area of Windsor Furnace, which is on the Hamburg Watershed and used as a regular access to the Appalachian Trail. I'd not done any of my own hikes through this area just yet, but had finally connected to the area on my previous trip, so this one would connect us to where we had been on that last one on the woods roads up through the area to the north.

There's a lot to see through the area, and honestly a lot more I can still do there to this day. I'll have to make another trip up there.

Windsor Furnace is long gone today, but the area around it is full of charcoal flats where the fuel for the furnace was made. The Appalachian Trail is pretty easy overall through the area, and had a nice ascent up to the first destination: Pulpit Rock.
The overlook is usually quite a good one, but it was a pretty foggy day, so we could barely see anything this time. We took a break, I did inverted sit ups hanging from a tree, and the rest of the group climbed the trees and goofed off a bit.
The AT continued out and around to the north and east in the odd formation of the Blue Mountain, one of the weirder doubling gaps of Pennsylvania.

New Jersey in the Kittatinnies doesn't have so many of those odd ridge formations, save for maybe near the Yards Creek area, but that one is minor. The first odd ridge formation is the Big Offset near Pen Argy. Then, the ridge remains pretty straightforward until it reaches Eckville. Then, it turns to the south and then west again from Port Clinton. The entire area has a wider plateau and a couple of weird outcroppings including a nameless one, another called Owl's Head, and the most famous one, The Pinnacle.
We headed to The Pinnacle next, and a side trail leads blue blazed from the AT at a giant pile of rocks out to the overlook itself.
We took in the scenery, and most of us headed down to the cave below. This natural cave goes deep down into the rocks. It starts out as a wide vertical passage, but then has many rocks that lead down into the hole. It gets pretty tight at times, but we made it down further than I'd ever made it before on this one. It got to a point where there was a big drop down into a lower chamber that if I'd jumped down I would be okay, but there'd be no way I could climb back out without a rope. We called it quits there, when Jillane, Kyle, and I had made it the deepest in.
We made our way back up, and many of us opted to try the tougher way of chimneying up an opening to the top of the Pinnacle. Myself, Shelly, Kyle, DJ Ray, Ira, Wyatt, and Shelly I think all went for that route.

We continued from the Pinnacle on the Appalachian Trail down into the valley toward Eckville where it becomes a simple woods road. A side road leads to the left just before the spot where we had to turn off. This was the spot that Rich first introduced me to, an incredible bushwhack up rocks and such that leads to an excellent off trail overlook.
We made our way to the top of the thing and took in the great view, but I realized on the way up that I had lost my keys in the cave.
These were the keys to my car, and I needed them badly. Through the tight squeezes in the cave, they must have popped off of my belt. I had to run back and look for them. Rich fortunately was there to lead the others through the planned route of the hike. Guillermo accompanied me back to The Pinnacle and down into the cave again.
Amazingly, he spotted me keys sitting on a rock ledge in pretty plain view going down into the cave. I was so much happier having found it. We made great time, got back on the AT, and headed back down into Eckville again. When we got to the first woods road that cut off, we headed up that and tried to cut the others off at the pass. 

Guillermo and I met up with them as they were coming toward us the other way. Some of the group was still behind somehow, I guess checking out the Port Clinton Fire Tower or something, which I'd wanted to see, but I put on my own extra mileage anyway, so I was fine without it this time.

From this area, there are woods road options that cut the corners on the AT and lead us right back to the Hamburg Reservoir and then back to the parking lot. We took that direct route once we were all together again, passed the reservoir to our left, and then got back to the Windsor Furnace lot.

It had been a pretty intense but extremely fun day. We all got together on the way home for dinner I believe at a restaurant that is a big favorite among hikers in Lenhartsville just before getting back on Interstate 78 to close out the day.