April Fool's Snow Foils Spruce-a-thon!
By Peter Shoenfeld
The planned Sunday, April 1, Mountain Odyssey event was a hike on Spruce Mountain’s Huckleberry Trail with the extra purpose of scouting this trail for the forthcoming trail maintenance volunteer project. Heading toward the Highlands Saturday, I noticed that spring had apparently un-sprung -- the mountains had fresh white spots on them! Intending to reconnoiter the hike route, I drove up FS112 [Forest Service Road] in my gas-guzzling, snow-qualified Trooper. High up on Spruce Mountain, the snow was about eight inches deep in the road and 24 inches deep at the sides of the road-- apparently it had been plowed, but not since the last snow. At the top of the mountain, where the road to Spruce Knob Tower comes in, a car had been abandoned in the middle of the road. Seeing this, I gave up, turned around, and decided to reschedule the event. You can't scout the trail unless you can see the trail, and you can’t do that through a foot of snow, I concluded. Besides, there was no way a non-snow-qualified vehicle could get within three miles of the trailhead. What’s more, the weather forecast was for rain!
I went on up to my North Fork Mountain cabin a few miles away and was pleased and surprised to discover less snow there. Pleased because I’d had to hike up through deep snow on the last trip, and surprised because the last storm had come from the east, causing me to expect more snow there. I called Tom Rodd to tell him the trip was off. He seemed so disappointed that I switched to Plan B -- we would meet at Judy Gap and hike on North Fork Mountain instead! I called the other hikers with the new plan. One was already in route, but the message was successfully relayed.
A group of seven met Sunday Morning and drove up the old Circleville Pike to the Nature Conservancy's beautiful Pike Knob Preserve. This is the southern-most bastion for native Red Pine trees, and home to a number of other rare species as well. We walked up to the knob and checked out the foundation of the old fire tower; the tower itself moved on a few years ago. There is some interesting signage explaining what’s here, erected by a Dave Saville-directed volunteer crew after TNC bought the land and the fire tower left. We continued downslope to the north toward Nelson Sods, from where on a clear day (not this one), you can see Cabin Mountain to the northwest. At this point we were in deep, fresh snow and made our way by using each other’s footprints. It rained some, we rested, got cold, and started back up to the knob and back down the old road. The other hikers headed home, I went back to the cabin, and the rain changed back to more April Fool's Day snow!
The North Fork Mountain is east of Allegheny Front in the Potomac drainage, between the North Fork and South Branch Rivers. It is about 40 miles long, higher than most in the Mon [Monongahela National Forest], but much dryer. Long ago, the entire ridge was pushed over and folded from the east, producing steep cliffs all along the west face, with spectacular views. Seneca Rocks is the most famous of these. The portion of the mountain north of US Route 33 includes one of the Mon Forest’s best known long distance hiking trails. Most of the mountain south of Route 33 is on private lands, including several tracts owned by The Nature Conservancy. Their Pike Knob Preserve is open to the public for hiking. On May 6, we will hike another portion of southern North Fork Mountain.