Hike #646; Beltzville to Weissport

 Hike #646; Beltzville to Weissport

8/19/12 Beltzville State Park to Weissport with Jason Itell, Meghan Ried, Jim Delotto, and Eric Pace

The group in Beltzville SP

My next hike was another point to point, a trip I had scaled off and had ready to go for a couple of years and never got around to it.

I had just gotten finished with my backpacking trip in the Catskills with Jillane, and felt pretty lucky to be out there hiking again with only one work day between the end of the trip and this hike. I was late posting the trip because of the backpack, but still had a few people show which was great.

We met in the  morning at Weissport PA, on Forge Street where the Lehigh Canal crosses, and there's a good parking lot. We then shuttled along Pohopoco Drive east to Penn Forest Drive. South of Pohopoco Drive the road becomes abandoned, because it goes into where the reservoir is now. There is a parking area down there that marked out starting point.

 

We walked down the abandoned roadway heading toward the reservoir. When we arrived there, someone spotted an ugly green Jellyfish looking thing floating near the shore. Jason spent some time trying to fish it out of there, and in doing so cut it in half. It was harder and spongy on the outside, but had like a softer guts material on the inside. He stuck it on a stick and followed me with it. It was rather disgusting.Upon further research, there are freshwater jellyfish in PA, and they have been spotted in Beltzville Lake, in the cove we were in!

http://www.freshwaterjellyfish.org/PA.html

I e mailed a photo of the thing to an expert to find out.

 

UPDATE::: I received an e mail from freshwater jellyfish expert Terry Peard, who identified this specimen as a Colonial Bryozoan. It is a filter feeder invertibrate not as common to fresh waters, though there are a few species that live in fresh water. We saw two of these on this trip at different locations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryozoa

 

We cut into the woods from the road, off trail, until we reached the Cove Ridge Trail, which I believe was yellow blazed or something. We followed it to the left, which led us along the tops of hills through big Hemlocks. We paralleled Wild Creek Cove for quite some time, and passed so many places that would be great to camp.

The trail eventually led down to a power line, and then to the left. We turned right off of this onto Waterfall Trail, which took us through more woods and then down hill to Wild Creek Falls. The falls were really nice. They weren't big, but they were cool. We all jumped in the water, and found out after leaving that there was a sign saying no swimming. None of them existed from where we went in. There was a big pool at the base of the falls, and I waded the stream, then climbed up the falls.

Eric turned back at this point to meet up with us a bit later.

We crossed a good foot bridge over Wild Creek, and watched Kayakers at the beginning of the slack water below us. The trail took us up  hill into farm fields. We were now on the Christman Trail. We continued along this, then turned left onto a green blazed trail in a small gully. There was a good spring flowing through it which we paralleled for a while. It was a great area with almost no undergrowth. We then cut off trail to the left into State Game Lands 414.

It was so easy to walk under the hemlocks that we just kept walking, following the north shore of Beltzville Lake.

We eventually came to an open field, and cut directly across it. Once in the middle, we could see a farmer on his tractor. I think he saw us, because he was working in one field and started heading into the one we were in. It was only a wheat type of field, but we were walking across the middle and shouldn't have been. We hurried across to the woods directly and cut in. We then bushwhacked for a little bit to another farm lane entrance from the north. From there, we kept to the edges of fields and through more woods off trail, which was a little tougher than earlier but not bad, until we came to another old farm road. We followed it north to where there was a bridge over another inlet. The farm lane then continued to the left along the other side of the inlet back toward the reservoir.

We made our way along field edges all the way down to a dramatic point where the inlet ended in the open reservoir. A guy on a boat went and jumped in, and I said that he had the right idea, and followed him in. We chatted with him a bit, and all took a dip in the lake, which felt great. There were so many boaters though, that I got worried that one would be a ranger so I got out. We moved along the shore through some weeds to the west, then along fields to Pohopoco Drive. I crawled through a pipe under the highway for fun.

There was a farm lane that left the road and returned, but it looked like it was being used so we walked Pohopoco Drive a short distance. We found that we didn't need to when we saw State Game Lands signs on the other side of it. We walked the road to an abandoned concrete highway leading down to the edge of the Reservoir. It must have been the other end of Evergreen Drive, which was on the other side.

The road was really cool to walk, and we saw some new yorkers (their car was parked at the top) down there on a stony beach when we arrived. We had to turn back though, because walking the shore wouldn't work. I figured the water would be low, because it was so low at Spruce Run where I worked, but it was very normal level. We continued along fields to the next inlet, which had a stone causeway for the road across it. We used Pohopoco Drive to the other side and then followed the side of the reservoir again.

We followed along the edge of fields on to the next inlet, and I began bushwhacking down to get across it. About half way down I started getting through terrible briars, and so I told everyone else to go around out to the road. I fought through anyway, and it was a mess. I cut my legs all up.

I met the others near Pohopoco Drive, then we headed along the edge of a field. It was horse corn. I tasted it. It was like starch. We then cut through rough tree line, and out through fields to the next tree line to the west. This was a bit of a wider one, but we managed to bushwhack through the short section to emerge in part of the more developed park, near the boat launch on a mowed trail. Delotto decided to walk the road from our previous point and meet us on the boat launch road. Once there, we took a short break, then wandered along the east side shore. There was a mowed path there for a bit, but then we had to make our way through high grass back out to Pohopoco Drive again. The bridge over the next inlet was huge. It looked very deep, it probably would be safe to jump off of the bridge if we so chose, but I wasn't going to take any crazy chances like that. They were probably watching people like crazy at this time anyway, because some guy had drowned during the past week.

The guy who died was found in his boat with his head submerged, so it wasn't some crazy swimmer or anything. There were a couple other drowning deaths in the area as well, so swimming was something to watch carefully.

Once across the bridge we turned left onto the main park drive. The others spotted a bear running through the woods but I missed him. I don't remember ever even seeing a bear in PA, with all the years I've spent hiking there. Maybe I did, but I can't remember at the moment.

We soon reached one of the trails and Eric came walking out of the woods to join us. We wandered from there to their beach complex and had a look around. We opted not to go down to the water at this point; we'd already been spoiled with the private swimming areas we had visited. We continued from there along the shore and out to the Harrity/Buck Covered Bridge, an historic structure built in 1841. It was moved to this dry location in 1970 by the Army Corps of Engineers because it would have been destroyed by the creation of Beltzville Lake. It once spanned Pohopoco Creek now under the reservoir.

We crossed the bridge and continued along the shore. Delotto turned back to meet his girlfriend near the beach complex, and Eric continued with us for a bit as we followed the yellow blazed trail out of the active use area and onto woods roads to the north. Eric continued on when we followed a side trail to a bird blind, a wall with holes in it basically. Another woods road went toward the dam but had "no trespassing" signs. The road beyond the bird blind was not a trail officially, but was not posted. Eric went back and Jason, Megan, and I continued on the woods road out to a little visitor's center with a view of the main dam. We turned from here through grass out to Pohopoco Drive once more and headed down to Mill Creek. Here, there was an access to Saw Mill Trail, which formed a figure eight double loop along either side of Mill Creek. It seemed like the west branch of it followed the lower flood plain to the creek while the other side took a higher route.

The trail had a nice foot bridge where we got on it. The north and south loops were blazed different colors. The edge we followed kept a higher elevation from the creek for a while, and then surprisingly went right across the spillway to the reservoir, then back along the creek once more.

It then descended a bit, and there were old dam ruins. One of them was an extant dam with water spilling over the west side. It probably wouldn't last many more floods before it purges itself out, but it was a cool site to see. The next old dam site was much higher, but was completely opened up on one side. Maybe the creek found it's way around it over time.

The trail remained closer to the creek for the remainder of the way. We followed the trail out to Old Mill Road, a nice old concrete highway severed just to the east of us for the creation of the dam. We turned right to follow the old road west.

Along the way, we passed a lovely old church.

We continued along the road for a bit more until it reached Pohopoco Drive. We then walked that road for a bit more to the intersection with Harrity Road, by the PA Turnpike underpass. There was a bar and grill there called PJ Whelihan's, in an old stage coach stop building on the corner. It looked pretty cool, and I asked Jason and Megan if they wanted to stop to eat. They did, and so in we went.

The bar was one of those nice old ones with the beautiful wooden bar and old signs hanging everywhere. I like the ambiance of those places. I had a mushroom and swiss burger, and I think Jason had the same, which was really good. The three of us make really good time, so this stop was easily justifiable.

After the good food, and some equally good beer we continued on. We turned right on Rt 209 briefly, and there was a hotel on the left. We cut into their lot, then made our way down to Pohopoco Creek at the bridge underpass to follow it down stream. There was actually a reasonable path along the way there. We followed it pretty well for some time, directly below Rt 476. When the path started to disappear, we followed deer trails up and down above the creek a bit, then entered a bit of a flood plane with lovely hay ferns. It was getting darker, but we were still okay. The area along the creek soon opened up to a wide spot, mowed all off with two abandoned buildings that looked like root cellars at the slope. For a bit there was a wide trail, but then it disappeared at a ford site and driveway across the creek. We continued on once again on old deer trails, and then headed up hill over a little ridge to avoid a long, out of the way bend in Pohopoco Creek.We got close to 476 again, and then descended along side it, and passed under it's high bridge over the Pohopoco. We had to scramble our way down heavy rock slope to an access road that broke off of Lower Main Street in Parryville. Once we reached the street, it was mostly easy going to the end.

We wandered into town, one of those quiet hole in the wall hicksville towns that no one ever really visits. It was an enclave of limited road access. We headed out toward the Lehigh River, then crossed a foot bridge over to the Lehigh Canal towpath and followed it north bound. It was a bit weedy at first, but good enough to walk. I hadn't walked this section since I think September of 2008. We soon passed back under the PA Turnpike, this time where it crossed the Lehigh. A large earth mover was parked on the towpath under the bridge, so I climbed in when I noticed the door was unlocked. Amazingly, the keys were left in it as well, so I started it up and pumped the air conditioning for a little bit. I hit the traction lock button and started moving the bucket when I realized this was a visible area and it probably was not smart for me to be operating a large piece of machinery the size of a small home under a major interstate highway. I turned it off and casually walked away, but left the door open as a reminder for workers to be more careful than to leave a dangerous machine unlocked and unsecured on a major hiking trail.

The canal route took us right through some industrial area and we lost the towpath for a bit. It crossed the railroad tracks, formerly the Central Railroad of NJ, and we missed it, so we had to climb up and get across to reach the towpath once more.

From there it was easy walking on back to Weissport where we were parked. Eric was there waiting for us, wondering why it took us so long. I suppose the bar stop may have attributed to our after dark arrival, but it was well worth it in my opinion.

Overall, it was very much a relaxing hike that went well. It was what I needed after having a long week plus of backpacking. Maybe it just seemed easier to me because of the difficulty of backpacking. Whatever the case, I went home very happy for having a successful day.