2022 52-Hike Challenge #19 - Canoe Creek State Park, Blair County, PA (4 miles)
At just under a thousand acres with almost 200 of those as lake, Canoe Creek State Park has many miles of excellent trails with some just for horseback riding and others for mountain biking and more for hiking. On our latest expedition across Pennsylvania to visit state parks we've not visited before, my trusty coonhound Amos and I made this little gem our afternoon stop on the way to the Laurel Highlands in the western part of the state. We spent several hours exploring marshes, side-hilling a small mountain, and visiting water as much as possible. It was hot, humid, and (for Amos) a hike that needed more than a few water stops. We walked a solid four miles, most of it on a series of trails that forms a loop around a former industrial complex where ruins and lumps and bumps on the land are pretty numerous.
 |
| Blair Limestone Company lime kiln ruins |
The Blair Limestone Company ruins dominate the first part of this loop that begins in the parking lot of the environmental center on the hill. We walked down a macadam road, enjoyed the view over the lake, then walked up an old railroad grade to the remains of six limekilns. The hillside was stepped up and around for various now-gone buildings and sheds. A mill race runs close to the road into the kiln area. The more I looked the more I saw and the more questions I had.
 |
| Inside a limestone kiln |
Limestone was an important raw resource quarried and mined in this region beginning in the mid-1800s. There are quarries and mines pits everywhere but the thick summer foliage makes it hard to see entrances and vertical walls. (I made a note to come back in winter!) The Blair Limestone Company operated here in the early part of the 20th century and while it was making every meter count for continued limestone extraction and processing, it unknowingly created a warren of places that now harbor thousands of bats throughout the park. Old mine openings (not visible from the trail we took) are modified to exclude human intruders with the installation of modern grates. Bat biologists monitor roosting sites, hibernation chambers, and bat nurseries. The bats have captured the public's attention, so bat watching is popular and encouraged, especially in the presence of park educators and conservation biologists who can explain the challenges that our state's bat populations face. These challenges include loss of roosting habitat and White-Nose Syndrome.
 |
| Side-hill hiking below the mines |
The Frank Felbaum Bat Sanctuary is located here in an old church and at last count is a communal roosting home to over 30,000 Little Brown Bats. The park is home to all six species of PA bats including the endangered and old mine-loving Indiana Bat and is designated an Important Mammal Area (IMA) by the state. As we walked around the hill, noticing how nature and time have reclaimed this industrial area, I wonder if company bosses ever imagined this site becoming a world-renowned bat conservation site?
 |
On our climb up the mountain, passing quarry pits and mine entrances, the trail sometimes joined with the small gauge railroad grade where chunky little steam engines pulled railcars loaded with limestone down to the kilns. We climbed even further and the path became rocky and mucky in the rain. We rounded the crest of the hill and discovered the ruins of the Hartman kiln almost hidden in the dense summer undergrowth. Two lost hikers ambled by and asked me for a look at my soggy map. They had been circling the hilltop for an hour continuously missing the trail blaze that would lead to the bridge below. We all walked down together and they said their goodbye as they cross the bridge to take the Beaver Pond Trail back.
 |
| Canoe Creek |
Our end of the trail joined yet another railroad grade where hundreds of old ties still laid in their beds of gravel. I wondered how many little engines worked along and around this small mountain? We walked along Canoe Creek on its way to the lake and counted green four herons hunting along its banks. A wood duck hen and a line of quick little ducklings zoomed ahead, popping in and out of root caves and log banks to stay well ahead of us.
 |
| Old railroad grade with embedded ties along the creek |
I connected the Boardwalk Trail to our loop so that we could walk out to enjoy the marshy edge of the lake and maybe catch a cool breeze. Thunder echoed off the distant hill and rain fell lightly. Poor Amos was really feeling the humidity and had slowed way down from his usual hiking trot. We stopped a lot to feel the breeze and the cool sprinkles. I didn't want to ruin his day so we continued back to the truck without extending our walk to the old church-turned-bat-sanctuary. When he saw the truck at the end of the old macadam road, he picked up speed and soon enjoyed a long drink from his water bowl and laid out on his rear bench seat as I turned the A/C on high.
 |
| Poor Amos had reached his limit |
 |
| AllTrails map with the Boardwalk Loop added (dotted red) |
Notes:
Listing for Important Mammal Areas compiled by the Pennsylvania Biological Survey. Canoe Creek State Park is #16.
Indiana Bat is a species in serious decline, its national population dropping by half since 2019. https://www.fws.gov/species/indiana-bat-myotis-sodalis
DCNR website for Canoe Creek State Park
No comments:
Post a Comment