Waking up every morning I see this mountain range outside my window, I see it as I bike to work as well knowing that the Appalachian Trails runs along that range as well as it being home of various other trails which I mentioned and hiked before. While staring you wonder just how long is a stretch of trail of that and what is it like?

On Saturday August 11th we loaded our small packs with the essentials and parked a car at the end of the hike and the other car at our starting point which was on top of the blue mountain on right off PA 309. The weather was very nice and there was a cool breeze.

Like all of the Appalachian trail it’s marked with a white trail marker. The trail is fluctuates between easy trail and rocky. The first landmark is Knives Edge ,which involves taking your time and if you have trekking poles consider using them!

Continuing on you reach Bear Rocks which is a very beautiful vista. There are signs pointing out the location of Bear Rocks. Continuing on you’ll make it to the Bake Oven Knob parking area and there is water at the trail head for thru-hikers, that’s provided by Trail Angels. After stopping for a few minutes we continued on through the Knob which gets pretty rocky and the trail is essentially on top of rocks, making it a bit more challenging after the rocky section of the Knob it become a covered trail and becomes mainly dirt.

You will then find the Bake Oven Knob shelter which is a small lean-to in a nice area with a bench and campfire. However if that area becomes full there are plenty of campsites to use around that area and along the trail. There’s a log book for visitors of the lean-to to log their visit and where they are from. There are also tips for people going north bound (nobo) or Southbound (sobo).

After taking sometime to refuel we went back onto the trail. The trails remains covered until you reach an open area where you will find power lines and you will have to navigate the rocks to and parking area off Ashfield Road. This trail narrows, but is well groomed.

While continuing on the trail I stopped to let Kelly catch up to me and heard a sound coming from up above, it was a vulture. For a while we stared at each other. Suddenly it put its head down and vomited on the side of the trail looked at me and then flew away, pretty cool, nevertheless. Eventually you end up crossing over the section which is above the Lehigh Tunnel, However you cannot see it due to the pine trees. The trail runs on top of the mountain for a few miles and then begins to come to a decline, this leads to the next lean-to and the Lehigh Gap at the parking area where we parked the other car.

We finally make the descent after talking with a few other hikers and it is just about dark, the entire trail took us about eight hours and thirty minutes and was a 14.3 miles hike. Although it took a while, we definitely felt accomplished and it left us wanting to hike more, I can honestly say if you have the time to put in a day hike on this section of the AT, do it.

So at the end of the day we worked it out that we had only did about 0.6% of the trail, just goes to show you how vast the trail actually is!

Thanks and safe travels,

Mike