PA Blue Knob State Park: Mountain View, Three Springs, and Pavia Lookout Trails

2022 52-Hike Trail Challenge: #24 Mountain View, Three Springs,  and Pavia Lookout Trails 5.5mi (interlinked loop)

So after Amos spent three long (but sleeping) hours in the truck while I had my meeting in Loretto, PA, I owed it to him to finish our camping trip with a long hike and a summit topper. We got up extra early and parked in the Tower Road parking area on the Ski Access Road and hiked the Mountain View Trail to the Three Springs Trail around the southern summit, then on to the Pavia Lookout Trail with a view.  All the trails were well marked and having intersection posts was helpful since trails interlaced all over the south summit. We made the Pavia Overlook around 8am and all was well with the world. Amos bagged his second peak for 2022, the first being Hawksbill in SNP back in June.

Stunted forest and frost shattered sandstone.

Not far from these trails is the highest point on Blue Knob on a knoll atop the ski resort. This area was used by the USAF during the Cold War as listening post, operated by the 772d Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron with many men who had been transferred here from Alaska. The weather on Blue Knob is so cold and sometimes so severe that those Arctic boys claimed it was worse than their base in Alaska. Not far down the mountain is the small village of Frigid, PA, and that should be a clue as to how bad it gets up here in winter. The natural clues of long, cold winters with high winds were frost shattered blue sandstone and the stunted forest. The way the mountain is positioned at the foot of the Allegheny Front makes it a target for fierce winter weather that comes racing over the wall of the Allegheny, funneled directly down the valley and up and over Blue Knob.

Blue sandstone

I loved checking out the blue sandstone as we hiked along. It ran in horizontal shelves with great blocks stacked one atop another, impressed with ripple marks and other sedimentary features from a long ago shallow sea. This rock type is one of many that represent the Burgoon Sandstone formation that underlies the Allegheny Plateau - which is really not a plateau in this area but a deeply incised erosional landscape of low mountains and deep ravines. 

Weather sign

At times the trail was old road, wide and gently rising. Other times it was a rocky path paved with blocks of blue sandstone. Either way, there was much for a coonhound to sniff and he was particularly interested in coyote and bear scat. I spotted old sections of chain-link fence posts that snaked up the hill towards the old military base and I wondered if some of the woods road we were following on the Three Springs Trail was a remnant of the military perimeter road. 

Pavia Lookout

Amos makes his second summit of the year! 

As we circled around the Pavia Lookout Trail through the forest I heard what I thought was a small motor, maybe a drone? The mystery was solved when a lady attempting to ride an e-bike down the rocky footpath and clearly not in control came bumping and tumbling by. I have no problem with e-bikes on appropriate trails but this trail was certainly not a good choice. We jumped off the trail just as she yelled "WHOA!" and hit a rock and tree root that sent her spilling over into the trail. I helped her right her heavy bike and offered to help her push it back to the woods road. She was a little banged up and I worried she might have really hurt herself. She declined help and said she would rest on the bench at the overlook and promised she wouldn't try to ride it back. Lesson learned? 

Perimeter fencing near the old base boundary

After our hike, I decided to drive the short distance back up to the summit at the ski lifts and take another look around. I tried to imagine the three great radar domes that sat up here, surrounded by barracks, officer housing, workshops, and an array of antennas. There are only a few clues of the mountain summit's former life: a large cement pad, a few 1960s-era buildings repurposed for the ski resort, and a collection of cement cable anchors that held the towers to the mountain. It was a beautiful place to sit and enjoy a rest from our final hike at Blue Knob. 

Summit of Blue Knob for a rest

Notes: 

A nice history of the Claysburg Air Force Station atop Blue Knob. https://www.claysburg.us/blue-knob-air-force-base.html

 

PA Blue Knob State Park: Chappell's Field Hike and Park Wander

 2022 52-Hike Trail Challenge: # 23 Chappell's Field Trail, 3 miles + wander

An Allegheny treasure.

We arrived early to our campsite at Blue Knob State Park, a new park for me in my quest to visit as many PA State Parks this year as I can. I set up camp pretty quick. I think I have dialed in my truck camping system pretty well. The screen tent, shower, battery recharge station, and dog run were done in 20 minutes. The site I'd reserved was right next to the 3 mile Chappell's Field Trail so within three yards of our site we were off for a circuit hike around the shoulder of Blue Knob Mountain. 

Camp is set and we're off 

Hiking right next door!

I've been working with a trainer/physical therapist for almost a year now (monthly) to counter the muscular-spinal damage I've sustained from sitting at a desk in front of a computer for 8+ hours a day for over twenty years. It's been no joke - a lot of hard work to reclaim spinal health and overall flexibility. Besides 30 minutes a day of daily stretches and weights, my trainer decided that it would be good practice to walk/hike/run/bike an hour for every hour behind the wheel or desk per day when possible. With a job closer to home now and a schedule that allows me the time to exercise and train, this has been a good plan. The Chappell's Field hike satisfied half the time I needed to counter the three hour drive and I followed up with a walking wander around other parts of the park later on for another two hours. With Amos in the lead (he was so eager to go!) I got a great workout that included some trail jogging. Gosh, I felt good!

Good for the soul and the body.

Oooooooo!

Building endurance and resilience this year has allowed me to tackle challenges on trail that I would have been so cautious of this time last year.  My cautiousness stemmed from breaking my leg on a trail fall a few years ago and my trainer helped me overcome a bit of fear as well. I didn't want to enter my 60s  afraid of doing what I love to do (hiking, biking, paddling) hesitant to fully embrace what I know will keep me good health as I age.  A fellow trails woman friend said "I've got - at best - twenty summers left to enjoy my outdoor life. I am giving my body and mind what is needed to be in the best shape physically I can be in my sixties and seventies and if I'm lucky, I can continue this wild life into my 80s."  Amen. 

Invasive species removal on the main fields to knock out Autumn Olive

Overlook from Blue Knob to the southwest over Pavia and beyond

Chappell's Field Trail encircles the farm that was here before the CCC arrived to transform degraded land into a demonstration national park. We stopped by the CCC-built overlook and enjoyed watching the stewardship mechanically crew rip out Autumn Olive, a highly invasive non-native shrub/ small tree. Back home, I do this work with volunteer crews on Lancaster Conservancy preserve land, all with hand tools and sweat labor. It was deeply satisfying to watch a forestry mower whack an entire embankment of the stuff down in fifteen minutes thinking it would have taken me and a crew two or three days to do the same work with saws and loppers. A park worker came by to pet Amos and said this restoration work will add to the already forty + acres of native meadow they've already cultivated in native plants. We stayed a bit longer to enjoy the southeastern view from the shoulder of Pennsylvania's second highest mountain. 

The sound coming from this meadow was a-mazing!

Restored meadow parallels the trail

The trail follows old farm roads through the woods, land that used to be pasture and field. I couldn't resist stopping at all the restored meadows to listen to the bees, late summer crickets, humming and whirring songs of winged things, and field birds.  Eastern Shortgrass Meadow is considered a threatened natural habitat here in the east due to development pressure, woodland encroachment, and invasive plants, but to look at the work the park has put into making so much of the mountain a safe haven for native flowers and insects made my heart smile. Of course, I kept an eye out for "my" bumble bee, Bombus terricola, in hopes that this altitude-loving species may somehow have found its way home to the Allegheny range where it was once common, but no such luck today. The only place where recent (2009 - 2017) sightings have been confirmed in PA is the high swamp at the Bear Meadows Natural Area in Rothrock State Forest in center-state. But I hold out hope anyway, so I kept checking.

 

Common Eastern Bumble Bee, Bombus impatiens

We completed Chappell's Field Trail where we started - right at the campsite! We had a nice lunch and then traveled to other parts of the park to check out meadows elsewhere. We walked a good portion of the state park road that  leads to Willow Springs and made sure to pay homage to the CCC crews that transformed the park from degraded farms and deforested slopes in the 1930s. The federal government transferred ownership to Pennsylvania in 1945 but signs of the CCCs work are everywhere preserved and celebrated in the state park.

From the shoulder to the summit view of Blue Knob Mountain.

Willow Springs, aptly named.

CCC-built maintenance and office complex is in great shape! 

Newly built CCC memorial at the site of Camp NP-7 on Monument Road

From the summit, 3,146' to the northeast

We finished off our day with a visit to the summit of the mountain which during the Cold War served as a USAF early warning radar station. Now managed as a ski and snowboarding winter resort,  the slopes here too are managed between the beautiful runs as pollinator meadows. They were just a-buzz with the late summer insect chorus. All told we probably did six miles today, but counting only Chappells Field Trail officially into my 2022 52-Hike Challenge, I was happy that we made up three hours of driving with over three hours of hiking and wander-walking.  Amos and I both slept soundly in the truck bed, modified as a small camper, me in my bunk and he in his dog bed loft. We fell asleep to the sounds of katydids, crickets, and barred owls under the blanket of the Milky Way. 

A beautiful hike! 

Notes:

Blue Knob State Park was just an amazingly beautiful and quiet place for some early week camping and moderately challenging hiking. Lots of CCC recognition here, too!