Cook Forest Hike Part 2

 

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!

I was long overdue and learned another life lesson!

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.

Cook Forest History Link 1

Cook Forest History Link 2

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