Saturday, February 17th 2001

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Saturday February 17th, 2001
Mount Nittany - GPS Mapping Expedition II

I thought I had mapped pretty much all of Mount Nittany in January, but there was a trail that I hadn't reached the end, so I wanted to follow it. Public land ends near where I thought the end of the trail was, so I figured it wouldn't be much farther than what I had already hiked.

Wrong :-)

I planned this hike a few early in the week, and the weather forecast was for 40 degrees--not too shabby. When the weekend came around, though, it was 25 degrees at 2:00 in the afternoon.

I went to the local Target to get some cold winter clothing, and bought a hat, a pullover and some gloves. These turned out to be very good investments.

Starting the hike, I had two layers of fleece over a tee shirt, and a nylon windbreaker over the top. I was cozy warm, despite the cold air. I was impressed by the ability of the fleece to stay dry--I was sweating about as much as in the spring. I took my time going to the top, and made it in just under a half hour. I didn't want to breathe too heavily and risk a sore throat or a chest cold, so I stopped whenever I couldn't breathe through my nose.

At the top, the wind had really picked up, and I was glad to have the gloves and hat. I proceeded to the left (east, more or less) on the white blazed trail.

Passing the vista and the high point of the mountain (2070') I soon came to a six foot pile of rocks and another trail, blue blazed. I didn't have time to check out both the white blazed trail I intended to follow *and* the new one, so I took a few steps either way on the blue trail to get the GPS readings, and I took off on the white trail.

The wind was about 20-30mph by my figuring, and any exposed flesh was frozen within a few seconds. Luckily, I had brought plenty of stuff to improvise cover for my chin, cheeks and forehead. As is was, I got a minor dose of frostbite under my nose, but I was pretty comfortable in general. I can't imagine the cold being any worse than that in Pennsylvania, so I was actually pretty happy--I was still quite warm, and if I had a ski mask or balaclava on my next hike, I could stand just about anything Mother Nature threw at me.

After hiking Mount Nittany a dozen times, I was now in new territory, and I soon found the best part of any hike I've taken there. The white trail proceeds south, eventually leading to the blue trail on the other side, but at the turn on the north face, there is a 30 foot cliff and an excellent view of route 26, the Nittany Mall and Bald Eagle Ridge. If you ever hike Mount Nittany, this is the best view.

As I said, the trail takes a turn south and completes the route to the other side of the mountain (see map) and together makes for a 3 mile circuit hike.

I was a bit concerned about time, though, but I managed to get back to my starting point at just about dusk, new GPS readings firmly in hand.

Next time, I have two new trails to explore and map . . .

Click for GPS map of trails