Hike #608; St. Anthony's Wilderness

 Hike #608; St. Anthony's Wilderness and More

1/15/12 St. Anthony's Wilderness and More; State Game Lands 210 to Clarks Valley with Jim "Mr. Buckett" Mathews, Matthew Davis, Carol Creamer, Rob Creamer, Brad Ladutko, Chip Denis, Eric Pace, and Major Tom Conroy.

Group shot at Stone Tower, Yellow Springs Village site

My next hike would be a very important one in connecting the last remaining to connect my long backpack from Clarks Valley to Lancaster with all of the other hikes I had done, but by the end of the day I would not be able to enjoy what should have been a very celebratory moment due to the events of the previous night.

This would be the farthest I'd ever travelled one way for a day hike without spending the night out there, and so in order to arrive by 8:30, I had to leave home no later than 5:30 am. I headed out to Bethlehem PA to meet up with Mr. Buckett, Eric, and Major Tom, stopping for snacks in Easton along the way. From there, the four of us headed to Clarks Valley and still ran fifteen minutes behind.

We were soon greeted by Carol, Rob, Matt, and Chip, and we piled into two cars to shuttle to our beginning point, a State Game Lands 210 parking lot where the Powell Creek and Hole Creek come together.

Woods road in State Game Lands 210

There were two parking lots at a ninety degree angle bend in the road from Carsonville, where a game lands road known as Greenland Road continued straight. We stepped beyond the gate on Greenland Road and then immediately turned right onto another unmarked woods road.

Somewhere right here at the beginning I made my first wrong turn, by turning right onto a more obscure road that I thought was the one I wanted.

Tributary to Powell Creek, State Game Lands 210

We made our way down hill along the edge of a field. It was brutally cold when we started, but moving warmed things up quite a lot. We soon reached a small creek, which I believed was the South Fork of the Powell Creek shown on my map, but it was not. We crossed it with relative ease and then I realized things did not look right. I soon found my mistake when we bushwhacked out to an open field.

Hanover Trail, State Game Lands 210

We ended up out on Hanover Trail, another woods road that turned to the west. I still thought the creek we crossed was Powell, and so here I made my second mistake by bringing everyone to the left, then right on another road trail through a field. I should have gone to the right, because the trail I initially wanted was out across the real Powell Creek.

Trail near Spechty Kopf, State Game Lands 210

Instead, we followed this other woods road which continued to gain some elevation gradually above the real Powell Creek. I realized when I saw it below us that I must have made a mistake, but opted instead to stay on this trail and follow it through.

We skirted the edge of the hill for a bit with nice views up the valley of the Powell Creek. Then, the trail/road turned off to the left. There was a man walking from straight ahead of us, wearing one of those five gallon hats. He told us it got difficult or something ahead, and that we should just take the woods road up the hill back to Greenland Road, then follow that to Greenland Trail. We climbed it up rather steeply and entered some woods.

View into the valley of the South Fork of Powell Creek

Once to the top, there was a fork in the road. I figured we must have to go right, but that led us to another dead end. It looiked too far and down hill to continue ahead back to Greenland Road, so all of us except for Mr. Buckett, Major Tom, and Eric headed back down, bushwhacking through awful weeds.

Bushwhacking Spechty Kopf

The other three would follow the woods road back to Greenland Road and turn right. We continued on down the hill fighting through weeds, and we were afforded some pretty good views straight ahead of Peter's Mountain across from the Powell Creek valley.

View of Peter's Mountain from Spechty Kopf

The hill we were climbing around on, according to my map, was called Spechty Kopf. I'm not sure what this means, but it's on geology websites as a sort of geological formation that has occurred elsewhere as well. We continued down hill to the bottom of Spechty Kopf and got some more views of the valley and Peters Mountain.

View of Peters Mountain from Spechty Kopf

We had returned to the fields below, which seemed to be well cut off. There were better views down the valley of the Powell Creek. We made our way directly down hill from here, across the field and into the woods to the shore of the South Fork of Powell Creek. Fortunately, it wasn't all that wide and so finding a safe place to cross wasn't that difficult.

Peters Mountain and Powell Creek Valley from Spechty Kopf

Once on the other side of the creek, we continued to bushwhack up hill a bit more. It didn't take us long before we found the trail i was originally intending to follow, which was actually a woods road that skirted the south side of Powell Creek. It was quite easy to follow, and so we continued on it to the east.

South fork of Powell Creek

The creek became smaller, and the valley we were walking through soon turned into pretty much nothing. It seemed like we should have reached the Greenland Trail by now, which my map showed was yellow blazed. When we did find the trail, it was lucky because it was quite obscure. There was a small cairn along the woods road which marked where Greenland Trail, a foot path that was not always well marked with yellow paint, crossed over. We took a break here, but I decided to walk back to the north for a bit to see if I could find the others.

They were not very far from us, and I was impressed that Mr. Buckett was able to guide them so well onto the correct trail.

View of Stony Mountain from Peters Mountain

We began following Greenland Trail south of the woods road we had been following. Eric and Major Tom didn't like it because the trail was pretty overgrown. The markings weren't as bad the further down hill we went, but from the crest of the Peters Mountain ridge for a while was pretty thick.

The crest of Peters Mountain seemed quite wide. We crossed over a woods road, like a logging road, at one time, and nearly turned right when the trail actually goes straight.

Resting along Greenland Trail

From here, we began to lose elevation. There was a fine seasonal view across from Peter's Mountain to Stony Mountain. While we were descending rather fast, Eric and Major Tom decided to take a sit down break or something.

View into Clarks Valley and Stony Mountain from Greenland Trail, State Game Lands 210

Stony Mountain from Greenland Trail

Mr. Buckett was hanging back with them, trying to get them to move, but apparently they were on an Olive Garden binge and wouldn't stop talking about food all morning, so they were going to cut out as soon as possible. We made our way down hill to a nice rock to sit on and wait for them, and once they were on their way again, so were we.

The trail led down hill and into a wide open area of thinned out forest, only a few trees remaining. It was rather tough to see where the trail was supposed to go. Still, we figured it out and continued down hill to reach Clarks Valley Road, Rt 325.

Along Greenland Trail, Peters Mountain

Crossing Clarks Creek on Sand Spring Trail, St. Anthony's Wilderness

Crossing Clark's Creek

Once on the road, Mr. Buckett offered to stay back and wait for the other two to show up and let them know the options they had to get back to the cars. They opted to just walk the road rather than go up Stony Mountain with the rest of us.

We walked to the right on Clarks Valley Road for a little ways until we came to the northern terminus of the Sand Spring Trail and followed it to the left, south. I had followed this trail once before to the top of Stony Mountain by myself, when Jillane and I backpacked St. Anthony's Wilderness a couple years before, but never came this far.

Crossing Clark's Creek

Crossing Clark's Creek

Crossing Clark's Creek

Crossing Clark's Creek

Along Clarks Creek

Crossing Clark's Creek

Crossing Clark's Creek

The trail led down hill a little bit and to the Clarks Creek. There were stones intended for hopping across on, but the water level was just too high to get across without getting wet. It was fortunate that there was a good log down over the creek just upstream from this spot, so we headed there.

I crossed first. I was able to stand up to walk across for a bit, but then decided to sit down in case I lost my balance. I continued across the log on my hands and knees. Matt, Carol, Rob, and Brad followed next while Chip video taped the scene. Matt got across quick, and so did Carol. Rob, being the tallest among us, accidently let his leg lower into the water. Brad was doing so well that I suppose he decided to show off, and when he jumped off of the log on the destination side, he romped through ice, breaking it and getting his feet wet.

Chip crossed next, and just before we were deciding to move on, Mr. Buckett showed up. Of course we had to wait for him to gt across before moving on, but he had very little problem with it.

Boulder field at the base of Stony Mountain

We followed Sand Spring Trail only a short distance to a right turn on a pink blazed trail. We followed this trail east for a bit along the slope of Stony Mountain. We passed a really cool little boulder field along the way, and stopped for a bit so people could go climb around on it.

From there, we continued along the pink blazes out to the red blazed Stone Tower Trail.

Boulder field along Pink Trail below Stony Mountain

The only time we passed other hikers was on the stretch of the Pink Trail before Stone Tower Trail. They had come off of the road and were doing a hike to the Hawk Watch and back. I assumed they meant the one that was at the south side, over Stony Mountain and Sharp Mountain, up to the top of Second Mountain. Quite a workout! Jillane and I ended a trip there one time.

The Stone Tower Trail was at times not much like a trail at all. It was blazed correctly and had some stone work done for tread way, but not much at all. We began climbing very steeply toward the top of Stony Mountain.

Along Stone Tower Trail, Stony Mountain

Stone Tower Trail, Stony Mountain

View of Peters Mountain and Clarks Valley with DeHart Reservoir from Stone Tower Trail

It was a good thing that Major Tom and Eric didn't try to follow us on this, because they would have had a terrible time.

We continued to climb very slowly, and eventually the trail became an old loggers road or something. It seemed to just appear out of nowhere. Maybe at one time it continued down the hill more, but all remnants of it had been completely washed out by this time. We continued to ascend a bit, and we reached a somewhat level area before making the final brief climb to the very top. There were more good seasonal views out toward Peters Mountain and into Clarks Valley with DeHart Reservoir.

Stone Tower, former coal mine ventilation shaft

We soon crested the top of the mountain and came to a double intersection. I had already been to this point with Jillane on our St. Anthony's Wilderness backpack a couple years earlier. We had followed the AT to Stone Tower Trail and did the loop near Yellow Springs Village site. We turned left at the junction and descended slightly to the Stone Tower.

Stone tower, former coal mine ventilation shaft

The Stone Tower was actually the remains of a ventilation shaft to an old coal mine that dated back to the 1850s. I remembered seeing a slight opening to the former coal mine my last time out here, but didn't see a sign of it this time. There was a bit of snow up on the mountain, maybe an inch or so. The entire trip there was a dusting of snow below out feet, but it never got deeper than an inch, and was easy to walk through.

The tower was in bad shape. The middle of it, when looking from the south side, had a terrible split in it. It looked like it wasn't likely to even last the rest of the winter. It was already splitting when Jillane and I were last there, but this time it seemed far worse to me. It's sad to think that such an interesting piece of  history in an area that has been forgotten by civilization in many ways will soon  be gone.

My phone had no service most of this day, but atop Stony Mountain I got some, so I turned it on. I was distraught to hear that I had several messages from a park ranger, from Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. They started out nice enough, telling me to pick my friend Chris "Cupcake" Kroschinski up from their station, then to see if myself and "my lady friend" (Jillane of course) were not in hypothermia, then that they were going to send a search party and bill me, and finally that I had twelve hours to turn myself in.

I of course had been at Camp Ken Etiwa Pec the night before, and was closing up doors and windows left open by vandals, just trying to make it look less of a mess. Cupcake and a couple other friends had gone earlier to secure windows and such, and Jillane and I went for a hike and decided to meet up with them. The three of them were caught by Rangers at the camp, and charged with several offenses, but Jillane and I had left. The Rangers knew we had been up there.

The entire rest of the hike had me stressed out. I called the Ranger back up, and he was less than polite with me. I told him I'd call him back from better service areas when I was done with the hike. It's stressful and painful both to know that we could be punished for trying to help at a place we care about.

We regrouped at the former Yellow Springs Village site, where only piles of rubble remained of foundations and chimneys of homes. We turned right to follow the Appalachian Trail southbound from here. We then passed the northern terminus of the Yellow Springs Trail, the route Jillane and I had followed previously. We then continued on through nice woods and across a stream.

The northern terminus of the Horseshoe Trail

As we ascended more of Stony Mountain, we reached the northern terminus of the Horseshoe Trail. I should have been more excited at this point, having hiked most of that trail already, save for the last few miles to this point and a section in the middle, but I was far too distraught by the phone calls I'd recieved.

We continued on, and the trail descended as a woods road. It skirted much of the north side of Stony Mountain and was much prettier than I'd expected. There were good seasonal views once again of the DeHart Reservoir in Clarks Valley, with the main dam clearly in view. The sun setting to the west shone light on it, making it much more illuminated.

Along this section, we passed the former opening of another coal mine. I could see one board from the top of the mine still in place, but it had been mostly filled in. A sulfer spring flowed out of the mouth of the mine through rocks.

We continued to descend via the woods road section. The AT eventually turned off on a rather newer looking graded foot path. We passed by the north end of the Henry Knauber Trail, and then descended a bit more through some woods. It wasn't long before we reached the end of the Water Tank Trail, where Jillane and I had turned off on our last backpack. Mr. Buckett and I were ahead of the rest of the group as we crossed over the Clarks Creek on a wooden bridge to the parking lot. Eric and Major Tom were waiting in Eric's car.

The rest of the group soon followed. It had gotten a bit dark, and most were using their flash lights for maybe the last mile or so, but we got done about when I thought we would. The AT is of course very easy to follow in most all places close to roads.

I had just connected nearly another 100 miles to every hike I've ever led, and I should have been much happier and able to enjoy it, but it bothered me too much that I was considered an enemy to a park system I love so much.

I would have to head over three hours home, and then go to the park rangers' office to defend myself, and I would leave that meeting feeling threatened and even harassed by my accusers.

I once heard a judge say to a defendant that the law does not recognize good intentions. Those words are reverberating in my mind with no end in sight, and I can't help but think that We The People have created a monster.