Switchback Trail

Well, today's hike was adventurous but not as exciting as the last two I reported.  I did the Switchback Trail out of upper Jim Thorpe.  I joined the trail at West Broadway and Flagstaff.  The trail is a delight.  It has easy uphill grade that is barely noticeable.  Mauch Chunk Creek runs along much of the trail and  the lane itself is mostly shaded by dense forests.  At about the 2 mile mark, Mauch Chunk Lake suddenly makes its appearance.  It is a man-made lake and serves as the local watershed.  But it also serves as a terrific recreational waterway with a nice beach, boat launches and lots of places to fish.  And the lake is stocked with trout.

Where the lake begins or ends is where the old switchback railway used to start.  A rickety old cab is on display.  This railway was a "gravity railway" and the cars just raced down the mountain to Mauch Chunk, now Jim Thorpe, and I imagine this was a hair-raising ride.

I continued on into Mauch Chunk Lake Park and passed the beach and large picnic groves.  Then thru the vast campground to try to find the next trail, the Shoreline Trail.  Compared to the Switchback, this trail is very primitive and seems to be almost unused.  There are no blazes and at many points the trail just disappears in the thick vegetation.  There are also many fallen trees that obstruct easy passage.  But the nice thing about the primordial atmosphere is that it keeps away the madding throng.  In fact, the only person I encountered on the entire track was, well, me.

Beyond Shoreline there is a network of other even more indistinct trails.  I tried to discover the "Northwest Passage" at the west end of the lake to reach the trails on the south side to head back but there are acres of swamp with foliage so thick I would have needed a machete to hack my way thru.  So, I was forced to turn back.  At the 2nd boat launch (pictured above) I stopped to wash the mud, sand and goo out of my shoes and socks that I had picked up in my failed swamp crossing.  It was 88 degrees so I stripped to m'skivvies and took a quick dip.

This hike was shorter in distance than last week's 15+ miles but longer in time.  Today I went about 12.40 miles.

Xxxxxxx

Snarling Adventure.

Yesterday I decided to take off for the D&L Trail out of Lehigh Tannery.  So I did a mega hike, 15.23 miles -- that's one of my longest.  I went to mile marker 120 and just beyond where there was a lovely waterfall.

Then I turned back.  At about 6pm I was 2 miles into my return walk when a cyclist was coming towards me, really barreling along.  The new gravel path is just great and crunchy and allows one to hear a bike coming from a great distance away.  The bike approached and flew past me and seconds later a large animal snarled and growled at me from the shrubbery at the side of the road, no more than 10-15 feet from me.  Then it moved, running thru the thicket of rhododendrons at roadside.  I couldn't see it well but I could tell it was not black.  But it was large and ran to a point where it seemed to disappear.  From the snarl I reasoned it had to be a feline of some sort.  But at bobcat or even a linx are too small to have been my creature.  It was as big as a bear, probably feline, not happy.  I realized that it had been hiding in the bushes, probably watching the approaching cyclist whose tires made a loud crunching noise while I came the other direction walking next to the path on the grassy verge, making no noise.  As the cyclist passes,the "cat" must have suddenly seen me almost behind it and freaked, snarled and ran.  The road, an old rail line, is carved out of the cliff side in what was a deep defile with the Lehigh River at the base.  So the right side of the road, heading north, is a very steep drop-off to the river and the left side is sheer rock face of varying heights from 20 feet to 60 feet.  The section where this animal had run had deep concavities which were almost cavelike.  Since the trail is on the west side of the river and due to the high ridge on that side, many of these declivities in the rock face are all but impenetrable to the eye due to deep shadows especially at this late hour.  And at this particular juncture, the trail and the rock face come very close together creating a blockade and enclosure of sorts.  The animal ran only a short distance before disappearing.  It did not cross the path.  It either was lying in wait in the darkness or it had scaled the cliff face.

I gingerly crept past the pinch point in the road with my hiking poles held in a jousting stance.  If the beast was still there it did not stir.  But at each moment I fully expected a mountain lion to pounce on me.  Now, there are constant rumors of big cats in PA but this is really just a myth.  So, what I encountered was indeed mysterious and utterly unknown.  I went down the path what I considered to be a "safe distance" and turned to observe.  It was all silence.  Creepy.  I then realized that whatever it was, it was big, it was snarling at me and it was not happy.  My safe distance needed to be increased ten-fold at least.  Adrenaline was pumping and I took off at a healthy pace with many looks back over my shoulder to make sure I wasn't being stalked.  About a quarter mile further down the road I saw an actual cat, a house cat in the woods.  I was calling to it when I realized it was a skunk!!  Here kitty kitty...

The next 5 miles were long.  My feet began to hurt around mile 13.  Saw two lovely young bucks with just the early nubs of horns growing.  On my drive back thru Hickory Run I nearly hit two deer.  I got home by 8:15 or so.

I googled cougars in PA and according to what I found, officially, cougars do not exist in PA, in the wild.  Ok, then what kind of large cat snarled at me?