Hike #1615; Hickory Run and Albrightsville Loop

Hike #1615: 7/21/24 Hickory Run and Albrightsville Loop with Diane Reider, Robin Deitz, Heshy Bucholz, and Everen

This next trip would be a large loop in Hickory Run State Park in Carbon County Pennsylvania.

This trip was planned specifically because I wanted to do something easier that wouldn't require any major car shuttling, but also that I had not done before.

It is kind of amazing that a park as large as Hickory Run State Park has sort of escaped my hikes for so many years. I had only really hiked through the western end of it once, and that was really dismissable because I was the only one to do it. It was on a day hiking the former Lehigh Valley Railroad, where I climbed to the Fireline Trail to walk while the others were still down below.

I wanted to put together a loop hike that would somehow connect with that previous hike, and cover mostly new stuff that I'd never done before.

Of course, I wanted this hike to be something different than the way other groups and individuals would do it, so I came up with a few oddball things that would set my hike apart from the others.

As has been usual for me lately, things didn't go totally as planned, but I was still very happy with how this hike turned out, and quick to schedule another one soon following this one.

My car had been destroyed by an uninsured drive a couple of weeks prior, and I still had not found another vehicle yet. I was looking, and things were not looking good. I was also trying to deal with my uninsured motorist insurance for some kind of a payout, but they were not offering any reasonable amount that I could purchase another car with.

I was borrowing my brother, Tea Biscuit's car to get to work and to the hikes. I don't know what I would have done if I didn't have his help on this one. It would have been quite annoying and costly. Enterprise Rent A Car, who is supposed to have the contract through the insurance companies, never called me back at all about getting me a rental.

Doing these hikes was really the only thing I felt I had to look forward to during this time, because everything was stressful phone calls and frustration. This is what kept me sane.

I chose a spot off of Rt 534 with a couple of mini marts as the meeting point, because I wasn't sure if there would be any available parking at the state park, because my planned starting point would be the trailhead for Hawk Falls, and that gets busy.

Thankfully, when we arrived, the trailhead was not all that busy. We parked a bit farther away as not to bother anyone, and I got the stroller ready.

I didn't know what to think of the trails in this park. The map and guide had terminology such as "easiest trail", "more difficult hiking", and "most difficult hiking", but one could not really judge this for consideration with a stroller.

I was thinking we might not be able to do this first trail at all, but it ended up being fine.

More and more people were pouring into the parking lot as we arrive there. We made our way to the end of the lot, and then, strangely, it is necessary to go out onto Rt 534 with barely a shoulder and no walkway to get to the trail down to Hawk Falls. However, once we were in, it was all pretty good.

The trail is an old road that used to head down to Mud Run, and used to continue on through. Because it was a former road, it was pretty easy to walk.

The previous week, my Graco jogger stroller that I had been using since Ev was 44 days old, was destroyed. It appears to have been damaged in the collision that destroyed my parked car, and the stroller failed me on the previous hike. I took the good wheels and front forks off of that old stroller and switched them to another spare of the same stroller I happened to have at home, and brought it out for the first time on this hike. It was like having the same stroller agian.

The area of the park was once known as the "Shades of Death", because of the unforgiving rocky, and agriculturally useless lands.

Property here and throughout the Poconos was given away after the Revolutionary War, but most grantees didn't bother to try settling here. Robert Morris purchased much of it in 1793.

When the Upper Division of the Lehigh Canal was completed just to the west in 1838, the logging industry at Hickory Run grew. Six sawmills were built through the area on Hickory Run, Mud Run, and Hawk Run (then Dirt Run). Long gone towns of Hickory Run and Sailorsville were successful for a time.

The clear cutting of trees led to major flooding, which contributed to the fall of these towns, and destruction of the Upper Lehigh Canal, which was not rebuilt after 1862.

The scrubby young vegetation was prone to forest fires that stretched across the county, and destroyed mills and homes.

In 1918, Millionaire businessman and philanthropist Harry C Trexler began purchasing properties to piece together as a new state park. He invited public to hunt and fish, and 1000 acres were fenced foe propagation of animals.

In 1935, National Park Service purchased the land, and it became Hickory Run National Recreation Demonstration Area. Works Progress Administration began building trails and camps in 1936, and Camp NP-6 of the Civilian Conservation Corps was established in 1939, and work on trails, roads, and facilities continued.

The National Park Service conveyed the land to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1945, as Hickory Run State Park.

The 15,990 acre Park has over 40 miles of trails, beach, camping, waterfalls, and more.

It was a long ways down along the trail, on the old road route, and most of it was not all that tough walking.

It was particularly easy for me this time because I didn't have to push Ev at all. Right from the start, he just got on the trail and started hiking down. He pretty much went all the way from the top of the trailhead down to the bridge where the trail crosses the Hawk Run.

At this footbridge, I thought we might be forced to go back, because there was a narrow rock spot, but once I got the stroller through there, it got a bit easier again.

We continued on down the trail, and eventually came to the Mud Run. Here, trails went both to the right and the left. To the right, it was a spur that went to Hawk Falls, and to the left was Orchard Trail, which went up some steep steps and into the Rhododendrons and Mountain Laurels.

The creek was very pretty, with large rocky outcroppings on it. I at first decided to leave the stroller because we'd be going back, but then I went back to get it thinking maybe we might go through somewhere. It was probably completely unnecessary.

As we approached the falls area, we could plainly see the new construction of the Pennsylvania Turnpike bridge, which had arch shapes to them, just above us. It's odd to have this feeling of being in the middle of nowhere and then see this enormous structure towering overhead, with even taller and crazier looking cranes situated on either side.

The falls were really beautiful, and there were a lot of people around. It looked like it would be a great place to go for a swim, but they were pretty serious about no one going in the falls.

I understand there are other cascades and such through the area, but there have been a lot of accidents in this area so they've been cracking down on the swimming. We could actually hear some of these other cascades as we were walking downhill.

We continued from the falls back through the tunnels of Rhododendrons and to where we had come down. Ev walked up the steps for the Orchard Trail, but at the top, it became very rocky and would have been really tough to get the stroller through, so we decided against taking that route.

Directly across the Mud Run from where we turned, we could see where the old road would have continued across on the other side. 

Historic maps show that the road turned to the left and continued to a saw mill at a point just a little ways upstream, either belonging to someone by the name of Eckert or Kunkle, as they were the only names to appear on the atlas maps.

We headed back up the Hawk Falls Trail the same way we had come. Several other hikers commented on the difficulty of bringing the stroller through something like this. If only they knew what I typically do with this thing. 

We continued back to the parking area on Rt 534 again, and the choices for going into the park were either to go straight across on the trail directly north to the boulder fields, or to go right and do some weirder stuff, which is of course what I had planned all along.

I could see on the maps that the route of the highway had changed somewhat over the years, and that the original alignment was just to the north from where the bridge was over the Hawk Run.

Stone and crib dam remnants were visible as we walked across the road bridge across Hawk Run. Just before it, the original road alignment was obvious going away from the current road a bit. It was cool to see the stone and wood still situated in the creek for over a century and a half.

The stream is named not for the bird, but for prominent resident J S Hawk who lived here. The dam apparently used to serve a saw mill that stood to the left around 1875. St that time, Hawk Run was known as "Dirt Run".

On the other side of the bridge, there was no path immediately that headed over to the older road route, so we went uphill for a bit on the road heading east. It wasn't too far uphill that there was a bit of a side path going through woods with lots of hay ferns to the left, so I decided we would take it.

This little path led us to the old highway route, which was also completely covered in hay ferns, making it very hard to see where I was pushing the stroller or where the obstacles would be that I had to get through.

This was going to be some of the roughest stuff of the hike I figured, not knowing exactly what was ahead. I was most worried about the potential of hitting a bee or wasp nest. Fortunately, none of that happened.

I did need a little help getting the stroller through some of the messy old road, over logs and branches that had fallen. The old road was now just a power line clearing, and it was rough until we got to the top of the little hill to the east. There, there was a small building and it became an access road in a campground.

I wasn't sure what to expect of this place, because Google Maps showed this as Camptel Poconos, but the street view images showed that the property was a strip club!

This campground was rather odd; some of it had normal buildings and such, but the majority of it was giant shipping containers that had been turned into sort of camping cabins.

Also in this little campground, there was a giant chess board and large chairs that looked pretty cool.

We headed out the entrance to the Camptel place, and then continued parallel with Rt 534 where the old and current routes came back together. There was enough of a grassy swath along the left side to easily walk to the east from here.

Along the way, there was an abandoned motel area on the left side. We soon approached the little community of Albrightsville.

In the middle of the small old settlement, the former J. Christman hotel and post office was on the left. Across the street was a handsome old bank barn. Two rather old homes were at the intersection of 534 and the Old Stage Road.

Old Stage Road was once a prominent through road route that used to continue north all the way to White Haven, but now dead ends at the entrance to Hickory Run State Park, and is now Old Stage Trail. It was bisected by Rt 80 and the PA Turnpike.

I got far ahead of the rest of the group. We turned left on Old Stage Road to the north, and soon approached St Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church, built in 1882.

The area was and is thinly populated, but to travel to White Haven, Mauch Chunk, or areas east would be a serious journey every Sunday, so the construction of this sort of frontier church and cemetery was justified.

All of this walking had been quite out in the open on the roads, but thankfully we headed into the woods just after the old church. 

There were more houses along the way, and one abandoned camper. Some of the properties seemed to be sort of private camps. Not many cars drove back this way.

The road became unpaved and entered the state park property. It was quite lovely to pass through these woods, which at first were still vehicle accessible.

Eventually, we came to a gate where it officially became "Stage Trail", and there was a parking area on the right. I figured this would be a pretty good place to start a future hike.

We continued into the woods on the Old Stage Trail, and crossed over Deer Trail. This was a narrower route which went to the north to the boulder fields Hickory Run State Park is quite famous for, but I didn't want to bother with that just yet. I wanted to try to have a more relaxing trip on the old woods roads as much as possible. 

We just remained on the Old Stage Trail ahead, which was very relaxing and easy. After all of the stuff the past couple of weeks being so brutal, this was exactly the kind of experience I wanted.

The Old Stage Trail led us out to the Boulder Field Road, which utilizes some of the Stage Trail to the west, and has its own route to the right, north. We turned right here to follow the road.

This is a one-way lightly trafficked road for those heading to the boulder fields. We were able to walk it to the north for quite some time before even passing the first vehicle. Because it is unpaved, they don't move along at a crazy speed like they do elsewhere, so it was fine. 

Butterflies were active on the edges of the road, and we saw what appeared to be a Spicebush Swallowtail Butterfly on a thistle flower.

In addition to the stroller breaking the previous week, my red sneakers I had been wearing for so long were just about done for, and I decided to bust out a brand new pair of sneakers for this hike.

It was odd being in shoes that were not broken in, but these must have been some high end running shoes, because they're pretty comfortable. I think Jillane grabbed them for me at a thrift store.

We came to a T intersection in the gravel roads, where to the right led to the boulder fields, to the left was the road in, and straight ahead was the lesser used, dirt surface rather than gravel, Fourth Run Road, which is now the longest trail in the entire park at 4.8 miles.

We continued straight on the dirt road, which was drivable at first, and passed a parking spot. We went past a gate and continued on the Fourth Run Trail to the north for a little bit.

We came to a spot where the road/trail turned ninety degrees to the left, to sort of follow the valley of the Fourth Run. At this bend, there was a tall, rather healthy American Chestnut tree that was good to see.

We continued pleasantly along this trail, and it was exactly the type of thing I was hoping it would be. The surface was just perfect and easy for pushing along.

The trail crosses the Fourth Run by way of fords several times on its length, and the first crossing was basically just a trickle. The many springs in the area that feed into the stream make it grow as it is followed downstream.

We continued west, and I knew the trail was going to pass beneath the PA Turnpike, but wasn't sure how this would be done.

It ended up being a really cool crossing. A tunnel carried both the road/trail and Fourth Run beneath the highway, so getting beneath pretty much required getting west, but I loved it. It was a rather long culvert because it had to go under all lanes of the highway.

We continued to the west for a bit, and eventually came to another spot where the trail crosses over Fourth Run. This was a spot that was just barely deep enough that I could cool off in it a bit.

We sat down to have some lunch here because it was a nice spot. While there two guys came riding down the trail on two wheeled motorcycles. They were Russian or eastern European, and clearly didn't know they couldn't come in that way. I tried telling them they could probably get through, but they were actually afraid to ford this tiny stream with the machines, so they went back!

A side trail I think called Bear Trail broke off to the right and leads off into State Game Lands 40. There are so many side things to explore, maybe one of these days I'll get around to seeing more of it all.

We continued on along the trail from here, and eventually it joined a power line clearing, which was really hot. Fortunately, it didn't go on like that for all that long. It deviated from it to the left, through pleasant woods, and then returned to it again, then deviated and returned again once more.

We came to another vehicle access along the way, which was the old Stage Road again. There was a vehicle accessible parking lot on it on the left of us, but to the right it went off and left the state park and headed into State Game Lands 40. I wonder if there is a way of hiking through on that, with access off at one of the Rt 80 exit underpasses.

We followed Fourth Run Trail all the way to the end, at Scenic Drive. My original plan had been that we might go farther. I had looked at possibly Manor House Trail, which broke off to the right, but when I saw the mileage we had done so far, there was just no way.

I had to look over the maps and make a quick decision. We could not do as much as I wanted to because it would be well over 15 miles. Most everything we had done so far had been easy, and I wasn't into pushing it all that much farther.

I decided that we would turn right and follow Scenic Drive down along Hickory Run itself. This had previously been the location of the community of Hickory Run. 

As we walked, there was a beautiful roadside spring piped out around a masonry frame, so I just had to stop and get myself a drink from it.

We made our way gradually downhill along the road, and passed the park maintenance area. 

On the left, there was a little side road going uphill, and it looked like there was an abandoned house. The others waited below with Ev, and I ran up to investigate further. 

This was the Samuel Gould House, also known as the Manor House, and it is one of the only buildings remaining from the once thriving logging community of Hickory Run. It was sad to see it looking forlorn on the hill there.

I have read there is an old shop of some sort that is still standing, but I didn't see that one.

We continued down the road just a bit more and then came to the other prominent building remaining from Hickory Run, the chapel.

This one was in pretty nice shape, and I was shocked to see so because of its location, right next to the Hickory Run itself. One would think that with all of the flooding and destruction it caused, the church standing right here would have certainly met its end. 

There was a dam on the Hickory Run immediately adjacent to the church, and some very large pine trees.

I walked out onto the dam to check out the views of the church from beyond. This was certainly a quite beautiful site.

There were several tiers of dams on the creek in this area, almost like reflection pools. This must have been some of the work of the CCC when they were active here.

We followed the Scenic Drive down to Rt 534, and a short distance away was the trailhead for the Shades of Death Trail, which follows along the edge of the Sand Spring Run up from its confluence with the Hickory Run.

This trail on the map was noted as "most difficult hiking", and so I didn't want to try to go through on that. I figured I would just walk Rt 534.

We started following that, but the trail came up alongside of it next to a railing. The highway then went rather steeply uphill, and it looked like something I certainly did not want to do. Instead, we decided we would try our best with the trail.

Fortunately, Ev was in the mood to walk. With that, I would be able to get the stroller through easily, and I could fold it up and carry it when necessary.

Ev didn't have any shoes on, but that didn't bother him. He stuck close to Heshy and walked amazingly.

The trail wasn't by any means difficult, it was just something difficult for a stroller. I got along on everything, and we saw an old dam ruin to the right which would have been associated with one of the old mills.

There were wooden steps and such along the trail as we continued on, and passed over some lovely flat rocks along the streamside, which were actually easy to push over.

We eventually came to a point when we reached the Stametz Dam, which was beautiful between the trees in the close distance ahead.

We moved our way over toward the dam, and I was surprised there were not hoards of people there. A few, but not too many.

I climbed up and stood partially under the waters of the dam because it looked so refreshing.

The old stone dam was built over the site of a natural little waterfall in a beautiful way. I think this dam must have predated the CCC occupation of the camp area, to the times of the community of the community. It certainly had some updates over the years however.

When we moved ahead and climbed to the top of the dam, there was a good sort of promenade on the top, clearly done in the years after logging and milling. There was also a set of steps that came down from the left and a good walkway upstream along the body of water the dam impounded. 

We continued along steep shelves, past large pines, and lovely little cascades on the Sand Spring Run ahead. Ev continued to walk on his own or with just a helping hand to hold.

I often had to lift the stroller up to carry it over the rougher stuff, but the worst was when we got to a lemon squeezer rock formation that was incredibly narrow.

I had to take the stroller apart and completely fold it in half, and hold it over my head in order to fit through the steps between an enormous crack in the rocks the trail passed through.

We continued on along the trail, which continued to have a few more rocky spots where I had to carry the stroller, and then ascended to reach a gated, closed off road.

The Shades of Death Trail continued ahead, but we had the option to go to the right, and cross over the Sand Spring Run on the old road bridge and get to some easier stuff. We were not going to pass up this opportunity at this point.

Most of the hike had been really easy until Shades of Death Trail, but it really wasn't all that terrible, and Ev literally walked the entire section of it himself. It was an absolutely beautiful stretch, so I wouldn't change any of it.

The road took us through a sort of meadow area where there was parking. We continued past this into a wooded area and campground. 

We took a break under a tree for a moment to figure out exactly what our trajectory would be. I wanted to try to stay through the campgrounds as much as possible to avoid getting on Rt 534.

We walked to the south just a bit to through an area of campsites, and then reached the paved Family Camping Road where we turned left, to the east.

This road seemed to go on for a long time, and had a good amount of uphill, but I was glad to be on this rather than the main road to the north because there was almost no traffic.

The best thing about this stretch was the existence of the camp store, which was thankfully open. They had ice cream for sale inside, and so we stopped for that. It was definitely a good ice cream day.

We stopped for a good break for a while here before moving on ahead.

When we got moving, we turned to the right from the family campground onto a sort of abandoned road clearing to the right. 

We made our way through this short swath of woods to another one of the camp roads, which to the right, becomes pretty much disused.

We turned to the right to continue following this other camp road, and it led us out to a rather sparsely wooded area of the camp with a large opena rea in the very center.

Several of the sites in this area were closed, but there were definitely people camping around the area. We continued through the woods through here, and passed a cabin at the far end with "Eastern Hemlock" labeled on it.

We made our way out into one of the clearings, and then to the right again through a small section of tree cover. There was only one guy camping out in this area, with a sort of pup tent and no vehicle.

As we headed north, there was an exit to this area, but rather than go out of the way, we cut through the vegetation directly to rach Rt 534, right next to a sign denoting 4 miles to Albrightsville, and 15 miles to Kresgeville.

Kresgeville is one of those middle of nowhere tiny places that no one anywhere would have heard of, but I knew it because my buddy Conrad's mom lived there when I was in high school, and we use to spend a lot of time up there. I had to take a photo of the sign to send to him.

We continued along Rt 534 to the east, which was far too narrow, but we made do with it. 

We passed by a major clearing on the right side of the road after we passed the end of the park on that side, and it looked like possibly a major development might be coming in.

We continued gradually downhill and tried to stay off to the side of the road as much as possible because of all of the fast moving traffic.

To the right, there was something on the maps shown as Greystones Preserve, but that's actually just a community of private homes located on Greystone Jeres Road. This was at one time a public road that went through all the way to the Lehigh River and Lehigh Valley Railroad where Mud Run joins. There was once a Mud Run station on that railroad down there.

I had hoped when going over these maps that there would be some sort of access through the property, but it's not really a preserve.

As we approached our end point, we started passing through some lovely old farm lands complete with barn still standing.

This was the old Heimbach homestead I understand. Initially, I thought it was the Hawk Farmstead. The 1875 Beers Atlas of Carbon County shows the J. S. Hawk farm, the family for whom Hawk Run was named, was near here as well. Previously, the stream was known as Dirt Run

As stated previously, the homes that were part of the Hawk Farm ahead were demolished when the PA Turnpike was built through the area.

We continued downhill, and there were access points next to the bridge. I couldn't help but wonder if this meant an exit would be added along the PA Turnpike at this location. From what I'm told, there won't be, but it is true that the PA Turnpike is seriously lacking in its amount of exits.

On one hand, an exit here would be very convenient for people to get into the park, but on the other hand, it would likely overrun the park with more patrons than it could handle.

We continued under the PA Turnpike bridge, and then onward to the parking area where we'd started. There was hardly anyone left there when we arrived. 

The cranes working on the new turnpike bridges were plainly in view coming down from the farm, which looked almost otherworldly as we approached them.

This had been a really fantastic hike, but there was only one problem that would drive me crazy until the next time we returned: the fact that this hike did not in any way connect with any of the previous ones I'd done.

My plan had been to connect west to the Fireline Trail, which goes along the slopes overlooking the Lehigh River, but when we got to the point between the former side of Sailorsville adn Hickory Run, it was going to be too many miles, so I decided to cut it short before making that important connection. I simply told myself we would come back in maybe a month and do another section. This hike had been so nice, I was definitely keen on coming back to do some more if the trails would be anything like we did this time.

It was a splendid and happy drive home, still with stress of all of the stuff going on, but more in line with what I needed to be doing to feel better.