Hike #1428; Colonel Denning State Park to Second Narrows

Hike #1428: 7/10/21 Colonel Denning State Park to Second Narrows/Tuscarora State Forest with Kirk Rohn, Dr. Mike Krejsa, Professor John DiFiore, Diane Reider, Shane Blische, and Peter Fleszar

This next hike would be the third I'd done on the Tuscarora Trail, the rugged and little used proposed re-alignment of the Appalachian Trail that never came to pass because of the passing of the National Trails System Act of 1968.

At this point, the completion of the north half of this trail still seemed so far away. Part of me wondered if it would be something I would actually finish, or would I get it done with and move onto the next trail in my gap filling initiatives.

I had to try to plan these hikes ahead of time to work with the others I was doing in the series. I reworked the routes several times. By the time we got to this hike, I pretty much had it figured out that there would be four more hikes in the Tuscarora North Half series, and one more in the Standing Stone series. 

The last Standing Stone Trail hike would include several other trails in the state park and forest lands, and this one would include the trails of Colonel Denning State Park at the start, because the distance didn't otherwise come up to quite 15 miles.
I planned the meeting point at Second Narrows, the end point, where there is only room for a couple of cars, and then we shuttled in as few as possible to our starting point at Colonel Denning State Park, in the same big lot we had finished the previous hike out of Waggoners Gap.

The park is named for a William Denning, who interestingly was never a colonel. He served as a sergeant during the American Revolution from 1778 to 1780, and forged cannons. He lived in the Cumberland Valley just south of Doubling Gap.

The park was created by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, and opened in 1937.

I planned out a route at the start that would skirt the hillside below Doubling Gap Lake, and then weave back around along the Doubling Gap Brook to the lake where we could go for a swim.

The route I chose was to go from the parking lot and out toward the main dam, then turn to the right onto the lower end of the Rattlesnake Trail. It forms a loop with itself, closely parallel but one further up the slope than the other. We just kept to the low part this time.

The yellow blazed trail meandered through the woods, past some interestingly growing trees, and eventually reached the eastern end of its loop. As I recall, we cut off of the trail here and headed down off trail to the old Doubling Gap Road. We then turned left for just a bit, and then to the right. I think we bushwhacked or used informal social trails for these little bits. The next trail we got to was the Doubling Gap Nature Trail.
This trail makes a loop along the Doubling Gap Run in the lands just to the northeast of Doubling Gap Lake. We turned to the left to follow the south side of the trail back toward the lake.

We soon reached the lake and a foot bridge and short trail connecting the two sections of it.
We made our way to the beach area and took a nice break. Even though it was early on, John and I got right in.
This area was just beautiful. There was hardly anyone on the beach, and it's middle of nowhere. Some of the state parks out there are just like that and I've been to several. RB Winter, Poe Valley, they're all like that.
The others waited in the shade while we swam, and when we were ready, we headed downhill parallel with the main dam.

We passed one of those little libraries and passed through the campgrounds area, and crossed the Doubling Gap Run a couple of times within the park.

Those little library things are okay, but they never have any local history or ecology in it. All they ever seem to have are religious things, cook books, or teen smut novels. We really need more history out there. 
We continued toward the south end of th main state park area, and then continued on a trail that paralleled the Doubling Gap Run.
This was a trail we found by accident at the end of our last hike out there. It was an abandoned trail, which is apparently still used by the people of the Doubling Gap Center Camp JoliJwa.

Some of this trail appeared to possibly have been an earlier alignment of the main road through Doubling Gap. I noted what looked like it might have been a stone roadside spring.

The trail was a little wet and somewhat grown in, but we got through to the camp area. No one stopped us and we didn't cause a scene. We just continued out through the camp and past Lake Henrietta. 

We got on the Doubling Gap Road just a bit more to the west of this point until we got to where we left off on the Tuscarora Trail. The trail turned up hill on  unpaved Elk Hill Road for a bit from here.
This next bit was one of those oddball sections of the trail that doesn't go through public land, and you see things you wouldn't normally see on a hiking trail.
We came to a cattle gate with a sign reading "hikers stay on trail" and turned to the left.

Just ahead, we passed by a rough looking trailer home that I believe must serve as a sort of hunting cabin seasonally. 
We passed the trailer, saw a garter snake, and then continued on a woods road starting to ascend gradually.
We then came to this oddball spot where there were tons of old cut up utility poles all laying through the woods road.
This was obviously to keep the ATVs from passing through it, but what was impressive was that it seemed each pole piece was placed very intently.

Each one of these poles was extremely easy to walk between. It was as if there was a study done on it, and a perfect treadway was established where one could walk normally amongst these poles, but no ATV would ever be able to get through without seriously bypassing on a slope.
We weaved between the poles and then passed around another cattle gate on the woods road, and began to gradually ascend again.

The route wasn't too bad of a climb from here. We simply followed woods road for the start of it. We weaved around switchbacks, but the trail turned hard uphill to bypass one of them.

We continued up, hit another segment of woods road, and it got a little easier for a time, and then the trail turned very steeply again toward the top.
On the way up, we came to a splendid overlook over the Cumberland Valley. We paused for a break there for everyone to catch up. It would be one of the best scenes of the day.
From that point, we continued up and there woods road remained part of the trail. It had some very serious retaining walls holding it all together that I found quite impressive. Some of the bits of foot path were incredibly steep. I was happy when we reached the top.

There were even a few stone steps as we approached the top, but it wasn't as well used as Standing Stone Trail was.
One of the shocks of this section was that the trail did not remain on the ridge immediately after ascending. We went down the north side of Blue Mountain, and then continued along the slope on an old woods road lined with hay ferns much of the time. Some of it was a bit overgrown, but the majority of it was really excellent.

We continued along this woods road for a very long time, and the next spot of interest would be utility line cut with some splendid views both north and south.  Most of this section was not nearly as hard as the previous one. Although there were sections of foot path and rocks, they were not the loose mess we hd to contend with on the previous trip.

We ascended more toward the top of the ridge again, and yet another utility crossing provided another view. There were some spots where more vegetation encroached on the trail, but it was not the abrasive type of stuff we had dealt with before, and more than not it was mostly hay ferns.

Eventually, we reached the original intersection with the Bill Miller Trail which crosses over. The trail to the left goes into private land, and is thus no longer part of the Bill Miller Trail, but the location still had a routed wooden sign. Just a little bit further, a newer routed sign with the current Bill Miller Trail graced the side of the trail, and the path cut to the north as a foot path rather than a woods road like the previous one. The trail leads to the left to Rt 997 in 3 miles or to Cowpens Road the other way in like a mile.

Ahead, we came to the crossing with the Phoenix Trail. That also led down to Rt 997, only in 4 miles, and to Cowpens Road in one.

We continued ahead again and reached a trail register where we signed in. It's always important to sign these things to show the use of the trail. The fact that we literally had not passed hardly anyone was pretty shocking, so it helps to justify its existence.
The trail soon came surprisingly close to Cowpens Road.

Cowpens is a really nice, little used dirt road, and I was surprised they didn't just route the trail onto that. It would have been a pleasant enough walk, but instead it stays sometimes no more than one hundred feet into the woods parallel. 

The trail turned slightly away from Cowpens Road, through a wet area, and then eventually cut to the right to cross over Cowpens Road directly. 
There are some pretty new signs all over the trail now, on metal surface giving distances and such between crossings. I had walked far ahead of the others, really powering through it here. 

This was kind of a big deal thing, because in the past year, due to the covid19 pandemic, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy was formally recommending that through hikers use the Tuscarora Trail instead of the Appalachian Trail for through hikes and they will still get credit. This would make it a different route from the Great Smokey Mountains to Blue Mountain near Carlisle PA. The thought was that it would help to deal with overcrowding on the trail. Well, obviously not many people were following that advice. 

We crossed and the trail picks up the Old Ramp Road. I'm not sure any of the history of this, whether it was an old logging tram or what. Dr Mike and I walked ahead of everyone discussing this. It did seem to have too much of a twist and not enough of the right grade for it to be rail of any kind, but still interesting.

It was straight as can be for a good long while. The trail deviated at times from the road and then made its way back to it.
Soon, we crossed Laurel Run on a foot bridge. This was a very clean and clear stream with a sandy base to it. We climbed the other side and made our way up to a very nice camp with a beautiful cabin unlike anything we were expecting to see. It is not noted anywhere as a trail shelter, and I don't recall any signs saying to stay out. We had a look, and it was quite impressive.

We continued uphill toward Sherman's Mountain, and reached Three Square Hollow Road where we turned left. The unpaved road was very pleasant walking and passed by another old hunting camp building on the right before eventually turning to the left to begin the ascent of Sherman's Mountain.

The ascent was very gradual at first, passing pleasantly through ferns and such, but then it reached the base of a really steep section over rocks. It got really steep for just a little bit to the top of Shermans Mountain, and turned left along the top along an old woods roa growing over with hay ferns. This section was known as the Spotts Trail.

We took a break at the top and sat down for a bit. While we were there, we saw a figure coming toward us on the Spotts Road section through the woods.

It was none other than Pete Fleszar coming out to meet us along the way, and he came bearing gifts of beer: Troegs Nimble Giant Double IPA! It was pretty good, and the cold beer was certainly welcome!

We sat together for a bit, and then continued moving on along the Spotts Trail section.

It became clearer as we continued, and soon we reached the former site of the Sherman Mountain Fire Tower, which was in place from 1929 to 1976. There was a clearing where there was probably a care taker's building nearby also.

We started descending Shermans Mountain, and hit a woods road on the way down to Second Narrows.
We soon reached Second Narrows Road where we were parked, and the spot where we would pick up the next time. 

I understand that the long green tunnel, and the deep woods all day is not everyone's cup of tea, and that's why certain people choose to do certain hikes, but for me it is all about changing it up.
Sometimes it can be therapeutic to not be focused on a million and one historic sites on a hike, just let me lungs expand, take in the scenery, and enjoy being away from that stimuli. The leaves and the earth are of different significance, and shifting my mind to that is a welcome feeling.