While I had hoped to walk the full 8-mile out-and-back on the southern-most section of the Indian Creek Valley Rail Trail (ICVRT), Amos and I had two close calls with falling trees and honestly I didn't want to test the old "Three Times The Charm" rule. Had we made it through the trail would have taken us to the terminus at the Youghiogheny River, but the walk above the noisy waters of Indian Creek Gorge was wonderful and six miles O&B seemed all my coonhound wanted to do anyway.
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| The Steyer Bridge |
The Indian Creek Valley Railroad (see Notes) was once a very busy industrial line hauling coal and lumber from mines and mills from the heart of the Laurel Highlands. At only twenty miles in length and with several spur lines, the ICVRR was the connector for many bustling coal patch towns, resorts, and lumber yards. Abandoned in 1969 it began its conversion to a recreational trail in the 1990s and is close to being finished. There are still a few miles left to connect it all up and all but a few traces of its hard-working past remain.
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| Mill Run Reservoir |
My original plan for the day was to hike to Cucumber Falls in Ohiopyle State Park where we'd been camping, but two nights before a wicked bad storm crashed into the great bend of the river and demolished trails as well as damaged the beautiful river path in town. Downed trees were everywhere in the valley. The storm was described later as a microburst and had left the park and town without power, crushed some cars under fallen trees, and destroyed several trails. So, I decided the ICVRT about ten miles out seemed like a safe option. Welp...
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| Mississippian sandstone |
What a beautiful trail! It was great to spend time in the railroad cuts to study the stacked layered beds of sandstone for who and what might be living among the cracks and crevices. A fence lizard! This rock was formed as shallow sea bottom some 340 - 320 million years ago and it is the most common rock type found in the Laurel Highlands of SW Pennsylvania. Associated with Carboniferous sandstone types are veins of coal and knowing their geology, those ICVRR speculators connected the start-up coal towns with their small pit and shaft mines with rails along the most prominent coal veins that followed the creek valley. Although considered a small coalfield by Pennsylvania standards, this field provided lots of coal, jobs, and community for almost seventy years.
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| Tick-trefoil |
Two miles into our walk I was feeling pretty confident that the storm hadn't impacted the area as badly as it did Ohiopyle. But then while admiring a patch of Woodland Sunflowers and Trefoil, there was a familiar and terrifying sound - POP! Crack! ..... Pop pop pop! It seemed the falling tree was not too close so I kept walking albeit a little more slowly while still admiring the flower glades. A bicyclist who'd passed us at the start came cruising by, returning from his ride. Over his shoulder he called "That was a short ride! Be careful - the way is blocked. You might be able to get through but I couldn't - and it's still coming down." Uh-oh.
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| Woodland Sunflower |
As is becoming more and more common in our state, episodes of heavy, heavy rain (even without the wind) in summer and fall cause flashfloods and forest damage. Woodlands on steep slopes are particularly vulnerable. Heavy rain adds tremendous pressure to full canopy forests and these take the brunt of monster downpours. Inundated steep slope soils slip and fail. The weight of water begins to affect the integrity of the tree causing limbs to droop and sag and leaning trunks to dip beyond recovery position. A water weighted tree can fall slowly over hours or days as parts of its structure, unable to rebound after the rain event, begin to release under the pressure.
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| Boulder glade |
Delayed treefall can happen hours or days after such an event. Hikers walking through areas that have experienced heavy, sudden rainfall events like this should be on guard. Watching for slope failures, landslips and slides, and arched, leaning trees over trails is more than precautionary. Knowing when to leave an area by reading the land and forest is a skill much needed in our heavily wooded state.
Before long I came upon two areas where the trail had washed out, one a landslip and the other a weakened culvert drainage that had recently been repaired. We were able to skirt around each safely but as we got closer to the river there was more storm debris to step through and around. I started to have teenie tiny flashbacks of when once a trail gave out under me on a high bluff and I tumbled twenty feet down a slope, breaking my leg. Hmmm...
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| Indian Creek Gorge |
Then I started to hear the popping, groaning, creaking, and crashing. We walked cautiously along with me literally talking to the trees "You all don't get any ideas!" or "Stay where you are!" and Amos looked at me with a worried look on his face - easy to do for a coonhound - floppy ears way back, bushy eyebrows up, jowly head a-tilt. I observed how many oaks and maples were bent heavy over the trail head. A few freshly snapped hemlocks trunks and pitched over pines were evident on the hillside below. Maybe about now would be a good time to ...
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| Mountain Angelica |
...when the popping trees were too close for comfort. I held on to Amos' leash tightly as he was more curious and wanted to go see just what was causing that sound. Instead, I talked him into backing up while keeping my eyes on the stretch ahead of steep sloping woods. I saw bunches of leaves begin to flutter down and some movement in the canopy as a tree slowly leaned into its neighbors. Pop! Pop! Groannnn! Then - CRASH!
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| Glade Fern |
Like dominoes, the neighboring trees caught in the fall, a dozen mostly smaller oaks and a few beech, began to slip and tumble. We backed up with a bit of a jog and with the first blockage now in sight behind us, I decided now was the time to turn the hike around. Stuck between the two blocked sections, I felt a little (actually a lot) uneasy about getting trapped on the trail. With the sound of yet another tree somewhere on the steep downslope beginning to creak, we quickly threaded our way back through the first tree jumble and kept up a quick walking pace until the sounds were far behind.
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| Tree fall |
Not until we were back to the flatter valley of the Mill Run Reservoir did I feel like we were clear of the gorge and its restless trees. We sat along the shore and had our snack. Mallard ducks with nearly full grown young popped in and out of young willow branches that brushed softly on the water. As my mind is apt to do, I thought about all the "hiker killed by fallen tree" stories I'd heard this year - and there were a lot - including three incidents in PA. A flash of cobalt blue shook me out of my thoughts as a Kingfisher swooped my and landed on a limb over the water. Monarchs and Tiger Swallowtails drifted over a tall stand of Joe Pye Weed nearby.
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| Snack stop |
The O&B for six miles was just enough for Amos who seems (like many of us) less and less able to deal with high heat and humidity. How much of our hiking experiences in summer nowadays are affected by changes in our summer weather patterns? Here in PA it has been a summer of intense and frequent storms, tropical deluges, and stupid hot and humid weeks on end. Sound asleep in the shade, I watched his chest rise and fall with rapid breaths. It had gotten hot again. The breezes had disappeared and big storm clouds were building again on the horizon. Know when to go!
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| Our hike section in RED |
Back at the truck where I had parked in the new-ish gravel lot across the road from the large Camp Christian grounds, I helped Amos up into his backseat and put the AC on high. As the truck cooled down I read about the camp having once been the site of Killarney Park, a hugely popular day retreat for residents of Pittsburgh.
The ICVRR built a spur line with a station to accommodate several trains a day filled with visitors out for amusement rides and picnics. By 1910 the park had added overnight lodging (cabins and an inn), two large lakes for boating, and a dance hall. Having grown up on a summer church camp property that had also once served as popular retreat park, it was fun to drive around Camp Christian and felt like I'd come almost home. Plus, it felt safer to be inside as the next round of afternoon storms began to roll through!
Notes:
Mountain Watershed Association Indian Creek Valley Rail Trail
Killarney Park/ Camp Christian From Park to Camp
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