Tuscarora Trail: Colonel Denning, Fowler's Hollow
-
Day Two:
Overnight next to
power line cut, just past
Route 34. -
Day Three:
Overnight at top
of ridge, shortly past
Wagner's Gap roadwalk. -
Day Four:
Colonel Denning
State Park public
campground. -
Day Five:
By the stream side
somewhere near Fowler's
Hollow. - Day Six: Fowler's Hollow Shelter.
-
Day Seven:
Along the ridge
beyond Fowler's Hollow.
Today the trail has been resurrected and reblazed, and it makes a much quieter, more solitary footway compared to its more famous cousin. The path is much rockier... I will never complain about AT rocks again!.. and the trail blazers eschewed switchbacks; in all the Pennsylvania section, there is precisely one set of switchbacks. Everywhere else the trail goes straight up, straight down. Watch out for those knees!
The blazing hasn't quite been sorted out: signs inform you that the "Tuscarora Trail is now blazed blue", but in fact quite a few of the orange blazes remain, and there are places with other colours of blazes as well! Twice I had the blue blazes head off in two different directions: one time I went the correct way, the other time I didn't.
Other problems: someone on the west side of Wagner Gap decided that they didn't like the Tuscarora Trail in a big way. For a mile-and-a-half they painted over all the blazes, and on either end they bulldozed over all the nearby trees. Seeing as there wasn't any warning of this, there wasn't any choice really but to carefully pick your way through. How many "don't pass this way on pain of death!" no-trespassing notices does it take to become overkill?
The utter quietness of the footpath was very suddenly interrupted by my arrival at Flat Rock, where there were literally dozens of dayhikers up from Colonel Denning State Park, including a boy scout troop I met later at the campground. Just below Flat Rock is a lovely new shelter called Wagon Wheel Shelter, built as an Eagle Scout project.
Upon leaving Colonel Denning the next morning my solitude returned, and I went 48 hours through the state forest lands without seeing another soul. I called it a short day in Fowler's Hollow State Park so I could stay in the shelter there, a much older affair of the sort Earl Schaffer would have approved: no wooden platform, only a dirt floor covered in straw. Someone had kindly left a chamomile tea bag.
