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Sunday March 11th, 2001 Shingletown Gap is probably the most obnoxiously overused 'natural' area in the middle of Pennsylvania. I have yet to go there and see less than 4 or 5 cars in the parking lot. I wanted to map out the area, since I knew from a few books, maps, and a previous hike that there was more to the area than the well-beaten trail along the water. There was a lot of snow on the ground, but I was fairly comfortable with that, having hiked Mount Nittany in the dead of winter, and I took off to the right of the run as soon as I cleared the reservoir. There are several other blazed trails to the right of the run, and a few waterfalls were trickling down the ice . . . is was very pretty :-) I started up some kind of well dug out path, and was beginning to wonder if this path was as popular as the others. I did, in fact, bump into at least two people--one jogging--on the way. When I saw a blue and white blaze going straight up a small cliff, I decided to take the road not taken . . . at least there were no footprints, and I soon saw why. The path was about 75% vertical, and it reminded me of climbing a waterfall in the Pine Creek Gorge a few years ago. Coupled with the snow and ice, and the fact that I was looking over a 100 foot drop, I began to wonder what kind of maniac would hike this thing! Me . . . The footing wasn't all that bad, but I did decide to buy some crampons at some point if I were to continue this sort of thing. Click here for my review at HikePA. After getting to the top, I thought that it wasn't so bad after all, and it was only a few hundred feet to the top. This trail would make an excellent climb in the summer, but it was a bit imprudent to attempt it when I did with no crampons. I wasn't sure where I was going to come out, until I got to the top. I'm not sure what the name is, but this is the hill just to the south/west of Bald Knob. The views were very nice, and the trail was virginal. The only other tracks I saw were from a small deer and a few little critters. I decided to push forward, rather than to attempt going back down the way I came. This turned out to be the right decision. The trail hangs an abrupt left after about a kilometer or so, and you follow the blue and white blazed path down a rather gentle grade until you come back to the blue-blazed trail you started on. There is a big intersection with a red and white blazed trail, which I believe makes up part of the 1-2 link trail, but I haven't fully explored it yet. This is only the second winter hike I've made this year without running into other people's footprints. |
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