I decided today to head over to Cook Forest in the great
state of Pennsylvania.
My first stop was Fire tower Number 9 to catch the sunrise.
This did not disappoint and I will post the video below. The road to the tower
was closed and I believe it was a seasonal closure.
To the fire tower and back was 3.3 miles and extremely
doable in the dark and of course I had my headlamp on.
The wind was howling and I needed to make my set up as low
as possible. The fire tower is shaking a bit, but it was totally safe. The fire
tower would not be safe, I don’t think for small children because of safety
concerns.
After I was done, I drove to the trail head where I had
planned my route to start. After getting
all my gear out and ready I realized I forgot to bring my micro spikes.
There was ice everywhere and you could tell the melting ice
had just refrozen overnight!
For this route I combined a few different hiking trails from
the Cook Forest area. I initially got the data from Alltrails and import it
into Garmin Basecamp for editing.
I combined parts of Seneca Trail, Forest Cathedral Trail,
Mohawk Trail, River Run Trail, and The North Country Trail. This initially was
to be a 15.5-mile hike with an elevation deviation of about 7000 feet. I fell
way short of that as I will explain later.
The trails are very well marked throughout the hike for the
most part. The only true navigating issue I had is the amount of wildlife
trails that in some areas can be very confusing. So, just remember to look at
the painting markings ahead of where you are going so you can identify more
quickly where you need to be going to stay on the trail.
The Cathedral Area was amazing and will make you feel
humbled by the shear size of the trees. There was a storm that wiped out many
of these magnificent trees in 1956. Here are some links to share more
information about the area.
The reason I came here was to experience a lot of ascent and
descent in a hike. In the first nearly three miles I experienced just that.
As an example at mile 0.37 my ascent was 211 feet, mile 0.29 ascended 157 feet, mile 1.85 ascended 423 feet, and the last large ascent was 479 feet at mile 6.82.
Because of the time I got to the trailhead and due to
weather conditions I chose not to do the entire loop that I had laid out. I will be back later this spring or early
summer to hike in this area again.
The descent into the river valley would be 704 feet in 0.68
miles according to my Garmin 64sx. The descent into the river valley is nearly
a straight shot down so be ready for that.
While in the Clarion River valley I noticed a few things
about the river. This time of year, the river was low. I don’t know if it’s
normally a shallow running river in this section, but I could see rocks almost
out to the middle of the river. The river was at least in this section an easy
and slow flowing section.
I turned northeasterly to begin my trek out of the river
valley. The ascent would be 487 feet in 1.04 miles again according to my
Garming 64sx. The ascent thanks goodness had some switch backs on it to break
up the monotony.
I saw a few people working their way down into the river
valley. I was still really surprised at the lack of people overall throughout
the hike.
There are plenty of places to rest along the trail if a
person needs to take a break.
There are lots of mossy rocks and wood throughout the duration
of the hike. In the spring the flowering
would most likely be nice.
I like early spring the leaves have not begun to pop and you
do get better views in my humble opinion.
The places where you could get water from were far and few
between on the southwesterly side of the Fire Tower Road.
I still have some more content to edit, but I hope you have
enjoyed the read.
Be well,
Sonder