Hike #1257; St. Anthony's Wilderness Loop

Hike #1257; St. Anthony’s Wilderness Loop

9/21/19 Saint Anthony's wilderness Ellendale Loop with Dan Lurie and John John DiFiore

This next hike would be a long loop within State Game Lands. It would also be the next one in the 911 National Memorial Trail series.

Old road routes

The area is just full of questions and lots of back woods stuff that I’ll never get around to doing. There’s just too much, and you could spend years covering just what’s out there.
This was by no means my first time out in this wildnerness. My first one out there was back in September of 2009 backacking in with Jillane. We had done a bit of the Appalachian Trail as well as Stony Valley Rail Trail, Yellow Springs Trail, and out to Cold Spring. I headed back out again a couple of times with connecting hikes, and one backpacking trip.

Rattling Run Trail

The last time we had been out, we connected the Gold Mine Station site on Stony Valley Rail Trail to the Horse-Shoe Trail, and then up onto Sharp Mountain, and down Henry Knauber Trail to the Appalachian Trail lot in Clark’s Valley. This time, I arranged for a loop that would take us from the Ellendale Forge area up the Old Ellendale Road, which is also known as Rattling Run Trail, to the Stony Mountain Fire Tower, and then continue on other trails and Rattling Run Trail to the Horse-Shoe Trail.

Horse-Shoe Trail map

This was kind of a big hike for me for two of the long trails, both the Horse-Shoe Trail and the Stony Valley Rail Trail. I would be completing each of them this time.

Rattling Run Trail

The Horse-Shoe Trail is the most significant of these. The trail is 142 miles, connecting Valley Forge to the Appalachian Trail in Saint Anthony’s Wilderness Pa.
It’s one of my favorite long trails because it’s so weird. It passes through so much diverse land, which makes it exactly the kind of thing I like.
The trail finds it’s origins with Henry Woolman, who in 1935 rode the Great Smoky Mountains section of the Appalachian Trail horseback. After his trip, he said that his home of southeastern Pennsylvania was at least as beautiful, and deserved it’s own trail.

Rattling Run Trail

Woolman gathered a group of landowners and interested parties to propose a trail that would be for both hikers and equestrians. Among them was Charles Hazlehurst, the seventh man to ever hike the entire Appalachian Trail. They created the name and the logo, with the Horse-Shoe hyphenated for both uses.
The trail was proposed to connect Philadelphia with the Appalachian Trail, which at the time was on Blue Mountain, and the terminus would be Manada Gap. Woolman ran the club from 1935 until his death in 1951. The trail was laid out using much private land, and it passed through a lot of iron mining properties through the ore rich hills of Chester, Berks, Lebanon, and Lancaster Counties.

Rattling Run Trail

Later on, Fort Indiantown Gap Military Reservation took over the lands occupied by the Appalachian Trail, and the trail was forced to move further north into Saint Anthony’s Wilderness, a land named for the patron saint of finding that which has been lost.
The area was known very early on by this name, and is even seen on maps indicating this as early as 1749, describing the lands betwen Blue Mountain and the Stony Valley. The Horse-Shoe Trail was extended from it’s original terminus at Manada Gap up through St. Anthony’s Wilderness after this time to connect with the AT at Stony Mountain.

1749 Lewis Evans map showing St. Anthony's Wilderness

I had started working on the Horse-Shoe Trail in October of 2008 when I was introduced to it’s start by Jason Itell. I then worked slowly to do sections of it.

Rattling Run Trail

Jillane and I did one very long backpacking trip on part of it back in June of 2011, which covered most of it between Stony Valley and central Lancaster County.

Rattling Run trail

I then started filling in the blanks during group hike to finish the remainder of it that I was missing between these sites. Every one of the trips was something quite special because it was always changing, always included some sort of historic site as well as nature.
I’d done all of the sections, and then I’d done all of the reroutes that were substantial over the past few years, but then never got around to doing that last little bit of it. One piece is superimposed on the Stony Valley Rail Trail that I was missing, and the other piece was from Rattling Run Trail up to the Appalachian Trail.

Rattling Run Trail

In addition to this, I would finish the entire trail section of the Stony Valley Railroad, later the Schuykill and Susquehanna Branch of the Reading Railroad.

An obscured view

That line had it’s first section built between 1852 and 53 out to the Gold Mine area, but was extended upon later on to the east. This hike would follow some of the oldest portions of it from back when it was just a spur line.
I wouldn’t finish the entire line on this trip, because there’s more to the east, and there’s also more to the west, but the official trail parts would be done.
I prepare for this hike, I watched two excellent little videos by The Wandering Woodsman, a popular video youtuber I’ve been following for years. He had good guides to some of the sites we’d visit.

Rattling Run Trail

I chose the Ellendale Forge area site as the meeting point for this hike. Dan carpooled with me out to the start of this one, which was thankful because it would keep me from falling asleep on the drive back, and we could also indulge in our shared love of burritos at Sheetz. I should have contacted John before going up, but I only thought of it after we were already heading out there that we would have to pass his area anyway. We could have saved him a drive. Oh well, next time I’ll have to consider that one better.

A view on Rattling Run Trail

Ellendale was a historic forge site, and there was some sort of lake that impounded the Stony Creek in the area, but I honestly don’t know a lot about the history yet.

Rattling Run Trail

There was apparently an ice house associated with the body of water there, and probably some sort of hotel or something.

Industry on the pond at Ellendale

Obviously, there would have been a forge of some sort operating along the creek in this area, but I’m not sure that much about it.

Corn? On TOP of the ridge???

I intend to read further into it before the next hike in this series where we get closer to the settlement.

A view on Rattling Run Trail

I was surprised that there wasn’t more interest for this one as well. There was no need to shuttle cars since it was just a loop. I figured we would get more, but I guess this was just too far out for people. My old friend Lowell Perkins had just moved to the area, but he was not available to hike on this date either. It seems that all of the friends we’d had in this area were busy with other things for this one.
Even Pete F. was busy with the Mid State Trail celebration going on furthe rout.

Rattling Run Trail

When we got to the parking area, we were all met by Bill Stephens, who wanted to do the hike with us, but I knew he wasn’t quite ready to do the steep climb we were heading for.

Flowaz, yo

He’d had some health problems in recent years, and it would just be really killer to take the long way up we were doing.
I wanted to encourage him to keep moving, because it would help him with his health, and recommended that he go to the parking area further up, and follow the Stony Valley Rail Trail to the Water Tank Trail, which then ascends the Blue Mountain more directly. He’d get a head start on us being over a mile further in, and then ascend the mountain directly rather than going up over a period of over four miles, and we could meet him for the fire tower.

Bit of a view

He took off ahead of us, and we began making our climb up the Rattling Run Trail.
I was looking around for things that might have been old logging railroads. I knew there was one somewhere in the area, but I later had it confirmed that this line was further to the west, and it made it’s way into the Clarks Valley to the north, to terminate at about the site of DeHart Reservoir. It turned out that I had already hiked some of that line, and didn’t realize it, when Jillane and I hiked through in 2011.

View on Rattling Run Trail

The climb seemed to go on forever. There were very limited views through the trees to the right from the old roadway, but nothing much to see.
One woods road connected from the left after a bit, and we climbed forever again. The road would sometimes become level with steep drop offs to the right, and then climb again. When we finally hit the last ascent, there was another road to the left that went over to a cell tower. We checked that out briefly just in case there would be another view.

View on Rattling Run Trail

There was nothing, so we headed back to Rattling Run Trail and continued along the crest of the mountain. It’s called Stony Mountain in terms of the tower, but “Sharp Mountain” on many of the maps I’ve seen. Sometimes it’s also called “Third Mountain”.

Rattling Run Trail

The top was very clear. We had been in pretty good forest most of the way up, but the very top was very sparse. In some cases, I was rather shocked to see a couple of corn fields planted on the very top of the ridge. It was the last thing I’d have expected to see at an elevation of around 1,700 feet. They were shown on the maps as “Food Plot”, probably for feeding the deer.
We continued along the ridge top, and passed some rather splendid views through the trees to the south, toward Harrisburg.

View on top of the mountain

After a bit more open area, it became a bit more wooded, and we passed where the Water Tank Trail crosses over the Rattling Run Trail. It’s a small foot path, easy to miss if you’re not looking for it.
I had poor cell service for a while here, but it was getting better around the top. I was expecting to see Bill when we got to the Water Tank Trail, but he wasn’t there. I tried texting and calling him. When I finally got hold of him, he said he was getting near to the top, and to wait for him.

Rattling Run Trail

We couldn’t wait too long for him because we had a very long way to go. I figured he was pretty close to the top, and we were pretty close to the fire tower, so we could meet there.

Split trail to the fire tower

We started heading just a bit down Rattling Run Trail, and came to the intersection where Rattling Run Trail went right, and the fire tower road went left. I instructed Bill by text what to do to get to the tower, and we started heading down the narrower road in denser woods.
We headed pretty straight, and before too long the fire tower came into view.
This fire tower was built on this location in the 1970s to replace an earlier Tower then had been on the Appalachian Trail, managed by the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron company.

Stony Mountain Fire Tower

There was a chain link fence around it, but the door in the gate was open. Of course, we had to climb it to see the view.
We made our way up the many stairs to the very top, where the box was all opened up, and had some odd graffiti in it.
The outside of it was also different than other fire towers I’d been to, in that it was a walkway on the outside of the box. On most fire towers I’d gone up, you get to the box and you can either go inside it, or you can stay just below it and get the view from there. This one had quite the platform.
Only John and I went up this one, but we spent a good a mount of time since it was so beautiful.
We could see clearly down the Clarks Valley toward the Susquehanna, and all the way along the ridge, as well as up the valley with an amazing view of the DeHart Reservoir. To the south, we could see toward Harrisburg and the other ridges, and then to the north we could barely see beyond the Peters Mountain to cultivated farms of the valley.

DeHart Reservoir

We must have spent nearly an hour at the site, and when I checked in with Bill, he had still not made it to the top of the Water Tank Trail. I told him where the trails go either way from the top, and told him he’d be best off returning the same way if it was harder.

Clarks Valley

I was glad at least I didn’t have him try to follow us to the top. We couldn’t wait any longer, and he knew which way to go at this point. If we didn’t move on, we’d not have been able to finish the hike.
We headed from the tower onto a blue blazed trail that continues on the ridge, but is not on the Keystone Trails Association or State Game Lands maps. I found out about it from the Wandering Woodsman. This trail was sometimes hard to follow because it went up and down from the ridge top a bit, but overall it was okay.

Stony Mountain Fire Tower

We lost the trail at some point, and John and I were bushwhacking trying to find it. Dan somehow found it easier and ended up on it parallel with the cusp of the ridge to the south.
We tried following this for a bit, but John and I had found some sort of more prominent trail that joined it. From this point, there was an odd orange trail that continued to the south. I could see that one was shown on the All Trails site going that way, and it would get us to the Rattling Run Trail more quickly.
The Wandering Woodsman recommended continuing on the blue trail, which leads to the I think red blazed Henry Knauber Trail. We had hiked that previously, and it goes through a valley with the stream known as The Devil’s Race Course, and was quite wet. I didn’t really need to cover those same steps again. Doing more new stuff is always more attractive.

Weird pit on the orange trail

The orange trailw as not easy to follow, but it was more obvious than random woods. We continued to try to follow it, which at times was kind of tough. We also intersected with a yellow trail, which I thought we turned on, but we must not have because I only ever saw the one blaze.
The orange trail took us past some sort of deep water filled borrow pit along the way. I found later that there was apparently a sand removal industry operating in the area at one time. I’m not really sure what it was, but it was something. Maybe even some sort of coal mining remnant from years ago.

Giant Tank on Rattling Run Trail

Whatever the case, we left this and continued until the trail brought us out into a clearing with a giant mud puddle. It looked kind of orange, which could mean acid mine runoff, but can’t be sure. From here, the path was very obvious all the way back out to Rattling Run Trail.

At Devil's Racecourse

From here, we turned to the left and started heading from the crest of the mountain to gradually down hill.
On the way, we passed an enormous metal tank on the right side. My best guess is that this was some sort of a fuel tank for earth movers. It could be something similar to a giant earth mover stalled out in the middle of the wilderness some miles to the east of here, known as “The General”.
We had a look at the tank, as well as some sort of a clearing in the woods just behind it, where all rocks had been removed from a section. There were also legs for something looking like they were meant to hold the giant tank, or a similar tank. I walked up slope beyond it to see if there might be a view, but really nothing.
We continued down hill on Rattling Run Trail from here. We passed the intersection with Henry Knauber Trail where we had turned previously, and I watched the woods to the left closely, because I wanted to try to get over to see The Devil’s Racecourse.

The Devil's Racecource

I soon saw it through the trees, but only just barely. I then noticed just a couple of rocks piled up. It was barely enough to be considered a cairn, but there was a trail there.

Devil's Racecourse

I was well ahead by this point, and when I saw the trail was good enough to follow, I figured that we had better do the side trip I was hoping to do.
We headed out through the woods and made our way out onto the giant literal river of rocks. The tributary that flows beneath them is known as The Devil’s Racecourse for this very long rock formation that starts in it’s headwaters swamp, and travels all the way to it’s confluence with the Rattling Run. I proposed that we try to follow this all the way back, which would have been time consuming, but we didn’t try to do it.
We continued back to the Rattling Run Trail, and followed it down hill to the intersection with the Horse-Shoe Trail, where we saw the only other two people out on the trail the entire day.
I stopped and chatted with them. The guy and girl had followed the AT from Clarks Valley to the Horse-Shoe Trail, and were heading up Rattling Run Trail to Henry Knauber trail, the route known as the Henry Knauber Loop. The guy complained that the Horse-Shoe Trail was “really grass” and considered it not to be in good shape. I tried to warn him ahead of time, that the Appalachian Trail is over-used, and that the Horse-Shoe Trail is actually one of the best maintained trails he would see out here. I could attest that Henry Knauber Trail was not nearly in the shape that the AT or even HST were in.

Ruins at Rattling Run

We turned left on the Horse-Shoe Trail, crossed Devil’s Racecourse, and then began climbing steadily up Stony Mountain on the other side of a little gap, at what was the site of Rattling Run.
Rattling Run was apparently once a community at the western end of this coal mining area. The coal was never a very profitable enterprise in this area, as it was lower quality from what was found further out in the anthracite fields. The time of prosperity for coal mining in St. Anthony’s Wilderness was about 1850 to 1899.
I only noted one small foundation at this intersection, but apparently the woods around here is full of where there used to be buildings. I just didn’t see much. The Horse-Shoe Trail follows a former road route from Rattling Run up to the AT.

The western terminus trail register on Horse Shoe Trail

I realized shortly that this was a tough climb. I let Dan know that if he’d wanted, he could sit this one out.
We were, after all, only climbing up to the end of the Horse-Shoe Trail, and then doubling back the way we came so that I could finish this entire trail. I would have like to extend it into another loop, but it just takes too long to get out there, and it is too much effort to get to this location in the middle of nowhere. I could do an out and back to finish such a significant trail.
Even though the HST followed a woods road, it was still quite steep. It was a challenge to push to get to the top, but I felt a lot better when I reached and signed the trail register.

End of the Horse-Shoe Trail

John caught up, and together we walked to the end of the Horse-Shoe Trail at the Appalachian Trail. I had been here before, to the Cyrus Sturgis memorial plaque erected in 1974. I had just never followed that bit of the trail before.
Even though at this point I still had to walk the section of the HST that is superimposed on the Stony Valley Rail Trail to complete it, it really felt like I’d accomplished what I wanted to do. From here, it was all down hill or flat to the end. I had gotten that final climb out of the way and we could relax a bit more on to the end.
We turned around and continued back down the Horse-Shoe Trail to where we left Dan, and we all continued back to the Rattling Run intersection. From there, we followed combined Rattling Run and Horse-Shoe Trails back down to the Stony Valley Rail Trail, a section I had already done on the previous hike out here.
This time, we turned right, west, on the Stony Valley Rail Trail back toward our start.

Spare rail holder along the rail bed

It was still a long way back, but at least it was flat and easy. Even if it got dark, it wouldn’t be hard to walk because it was all straight and clear. The great news on this was, we would finish well before dark.
I don’t think we saw even a single cyclist or walking the entire time heading back on the railroad bed. It was incredibly quiet.

I had finished the Horse-Shoe Trail here

Not long after starting, I spotted one of the old spare rail holders along the right side of the rail bed. Those were periodically put out for when a rail would break, and another could be there and ready to replace it with. I actually noted several of these on this stretch.
I had forgotten about my Horse-Shoe Trail initiative for a while, and then came to where the Horse-Shoe Trail turned off to the left to cross the Stony Creek. I realized then that I had finished the entire trail, and had a very happy moment to myself.

Stony Creek swim spot

A little further down, there was a little side trail to the left, with a number on it that I forget. I thought that might have been the spot that I’d camped with Jillane when we backpacked through the area in 2011, but I am not sure. It could also have been over closer to the Water Tank Trail intersection.
Either way, it was a nice deep spot, and John and I took the opportunity to go for a swim.
The water was insanely cold. I had a hard time getting into it because of the shock of it all, but it was refreshing to feel cleaned off after sweating our way up the mountain earlier.

Historic image of the railroad

We made our way back to the railroad bed and continued walking to the west. We reached the intersection with the Water Tank Trail, but there was no sign of Bill there. I dind’t have phone service most the entire way through here, so I couldn’t get in touch with him.

Along the rail bed

Water Tank Trail is so named because there used to be a water tank there for the locomotives in the railroad days. There also used to be a sort of incline up the mountain.

Where Water Tank Trail is today, from Stonyvalley.com

We continued walking, and it did seem to go on forever through here. There wasn’t a lot of points of interest otherwise. There were a few other spare rail holders.

Bill is safe

We did take one side trip down the Water Tank Trail to the Stony Creek, and I considered jumping in for another swim, but it was pretty cold.
When we finally got to the first parking area near Ellendale, it was a relief to see that Bill had made it back and was sitting in his van. He walked beside us on the rail bed and chatted for the remainder of the distance.
Where I had parked was at a very limited parking spot right where Rattling Run Trail breaks off, but it’s possible to get much further up, by maybe 1.3 mile or so.
The cool thing for Bill is that he ended up hiking about eight miles in a loop, from Water Tank Trail up to Rattling Run Trail, down to the rail trail, and back. That set a recent personal record for him since having health troubles, and is hopefully a good start for improvement.
It was nice to finish so early, because there was enough daylight that we could go down into Harrisburg and I could set up a couple of my then and now photo comps.

Historic rail bed image near Ellendale from Stonyvalle.com

Some of the hike was a bit underwhelming for what it was, but the main points of interest were fantastic. Places like the fire tower and Devil’s Racecourse are amazing.

SHEETZ!

We made our way back to the Sheetz on Rt 501 for a celebratory burrito dinner, which was quite splendid.
It was nice to get this section done, but the next one is where this series changes character entirely again. We leave St. Anthony’s Wildernss and make our way into suburbia again, and then to the Susquehanna River.
When we do this next hike, the theme of it will shift from this railroad bed to following the former Pennsylvania Canal, and it will remain that until we connect with where we left off in early 2019 in Huntingdon, well up the Juniata River.
I’ve been concerned with having fewer people for these hikes, so hopefully I’ll have commitments from people who want to do them well in advance. Once we finish this Juniata section, we make our way out to Johnstown, and head south. It’s getting into more complicated but seriously interesting stuff.

HAM