We hiked this section on February 28, 2009.
Dirigo and I joined the Allentown Hiking Club for this out & back hike. Dirigo had talked with the hike leader John before the hike and he agreed to shuttle our car to Hawk Mountain Road. Once we dropped off our car, we raced back to PA 309 so that we could meet the group and start the hike.
The club met at the parking lot for the Blue Mountain Summit Restaurant. John introduced himself to the group as the hike leader and also introduced us as visitors from West Virginia.
Just before the hike, everyone introduced themselves and told us where they lived. There were 17 people who started the hike with the club.
The hike from PA 309 to the Allentown shelter was pretty easy and the trail was very wide at some points since it was a Game Commission Road.
We got a chance to chat with almost every member of the group during the hike. We met Sherpa who is a member of ALDHA and has hiked the AT and part of the PCT. We also got to meet the hike co-leader who is almost an AT 2,000 miler; I think she had less than 200 miles left.
We took a short break at Fort Franklin road and we were joined by 2 other hikers and their dog named Susanna. Susanna is a 1 year old Australian shepherd who was carrying her own pack. Sherpa had brought a huge bar of chocolate and offered everyone a piece of chocolate – we could not turn down this!
We stopped for lunch at the Allentown Shelter.
Ledge brought his Jetboil and said that it wouldn't be hiking without having hot noodles on the trail (he also brought jerky). Kudos to the Allentown Hiking club for a great job of maintaining the shelter and the privy!
After lunch, some of the members went back to PA 309. John took the rest of the hikers to Tri-County Corner.
A blue-blazed trail led to the top of a rock pile where a marker indicates the intersection of Berks, Lehigh, and Schuylkill counties.
Dirigo and I passed on the blue blaze and said goodbye to the group. The trail definitely got more rocky after Tri-County Corner and this slowed us down quite a bit. Ahhh the dreaded PA rocks!
It was hard to get back into our hiking rhythm because of the rocks. At one point, there was a huge pile of boulders on the trail and we had to be very careful because there was ice on some of the rocks. We are on all 4's at one point as it was a crazy boulder scramble.
We took a short break at Dan's Pulpit and enjoyed the view.
Dan’s Pulpit
View From Dan’s Pulpit
The last fews miles felt like they went on forever. We came to a blue blaze trail that went to Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. We followed an old road that took us off the mountain and then we passed over a nicely built wooden bridge and headed to the car. Eckville shelter is a road walk down from the car but we didn't go as we had been there when we hiked here before.