Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail
A month an a half ago when I asked for the Monday after Thanksgiving off, my intention was to attend the closing of the Big Savage Tunnel. I would take some pictures, do some filming and maybe make a YouTube video. Over the weekend, though, I had heard that there was up to half a foot of snow on the trail and I was unable to confirm the time that the guys from Somerset County would be on site to close the doors. Not wanting to arrive too early and then spend hours standing around in the cold waiting for them to arrive, I decided on a different plan; I would do some hiking on the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail.

I have most of the trail tracked out on my GPS and, aside from a few sections in the middle where I lost satellite signal, I am missing the northern and southern ends. My overly ambitious objecting for this outing would be to start at Ohiopyle and hake to Maple Summit Road and back. Clearly overly ambitious as this would be a 22 mile round trip over the toughest terrain of the trail. I've done 20 miles in a day on the trail before so this was possible, if unlikely. My fallback objective was to get to the shelter area, about a 13 mile round trip.

I got up at 5am, stopped by the bank so that I would have cash for the turnpike, picked up a Snickers bar for lunch and made it to Ohiopyle at 7am, half an hour before sunrise. I saw some deer in the yard beside Wilderness Voyageurs as I hit the trail.

It wasn't as cold or as snowy as the predictions. It was supposed to have been in the 20s with scattered snow showers. It was well into the 30s and only occasionally did the wind pick up and a few flurries fall. So, being dressed for the colder temperatures I was overheating climbing the steep hill. This end of the trail has a few of the nicest overlooks along the trail with rocky outcrops overlooking the Youghiogheny River valley. It would of course have been nicer if it wasn't so overcast. I missed one that was off the trail above Victoria. I had completely forgotten to look for the spur trail.

Also, at about mile marker 3, just as the trail dropped down into Rock Spring Run, I lost satellite lock on my GPS. It was a pretty steep sided valley so I wasn't surprised. However, once I climbed up the other side, I didn't get signal back. At mile 4, out on the point above Victoria (where I missed the overlook spur) I had a clear view of the sky but according to the GPS there simply weren't any satellites to get a signal from. It takes signals from four satellites to "triangulate" a location and there were only two satellites above the horizon and I couldn't get signal from even those two because they were down near the horizon. Oh, cruel Newtonian orbital mechanics! Eventually, satellites should come into view and provide signal, hopefully for my hike back so that I would have GPS data for my mapping.

Round about that time I ran into a hunter on the trail. (Are they supposed to be hunting from the trail itself?) He noticed that I wasn't wearing any florescent orange.

"Do you want an orange hat?"

"Not unless you think I look like a six-point whitetail deer."

I was not hunting so I am not required to have florescent orange. I had my bright yellow cop jacket on and was tromping along the trail so visibility shouldn't have been a problem. When I looked on the map later, I saw that I was still two miles away from crossing out of Ohiopyle State Park and into the State Game Lands #111. Not that it's a big deal, hunting is allowed in state parks, but I was going to be running into a lot more hunters as I got closer to the Game Lands and their associated access roads.

Another hour of hiking and there was no sign of my satellite signal picture improving at with point I decided to cut my losses and start back. If I wasn't going to get a GPS track or any waypoints, there was very little point to punishing my legs even further to get to an arbitrary destination. I am fairly goal oriented in that.

When I passed the point where I had run into the first hunter, I noted not only that he had gone but that there were deer tracks on the trail that hadn't been there when I passed the first time. A certain irony in that, I suppose.

I got back to the car (still without GPS signal) with plenty of time available to return home and pick up adelheid-p after work since her car is all crunched up. I stopped by a convenience store and got an A&W Float ("The Ice Cream Float in a Bottle") because it looked interesting. It was absolutely repulsive and sickened me for hours.

Getting out of the car and walking around was pretty awful as well. There was a time that hiking all day would be no big deal. Now, and without any training to work up to it, the dozen miles I put on today have devastated my calves and hips. I should have hiked the northern section up near Seward as that is a long but gradual incline up the mountain, not the steep climbs and switchbacks of Ohiopyle.

I'm getting to old for this shit.