Rock and Roll. Rolling Rock. Rock Bass. Rock of Ages. Rock candy. Rocky Balboa.
After scrambling, slipping, scraping, stumbling, spraining and stubbing my way through jagged grey-green quartzite shards ranging in size from pork chops to pumpkins to Plymouths, I thought maybe if I named them, gave them some individual recognition, they'd be nicer to me.
Rocky Raccoon. Rocket man. Rock Lobster. Crocodile Rock. Rock and Rye. Roxanne. Ouch! Damn rocks!
The rocks on the Appalachian Trail in the Keystone State have my attention and the attention of everyone setting foot on the trail north from Duncannon. Thru-hikers know the state as "Rocksylvania," and the stretch through the northeast as "90 miles of hell."
For most of the 66 miles I hiked this week with photographer Bill Wade it felt as though I was walking in a stream bed full of live, hungry piranhas, biting at my feet each step of the way. Between the Eckville Hostel, at the base of Hawk Mountain, and Bake Oven Knob Shelter, south of Lehigh Gap, we hiked 19 miles one day and I do not remember a step that I did not feel a rock of some size and sharpness underneath my boots.
As a result, my dogs are bloody and barkin' big time. And they have company.
"I hate the rocks," said Patrick Morrissey, 27, a thru-hiker from Virginia Beach, Va., whose trail name is High Plains Drifter and whose arch is sore. "I've been dreading them since Georgia."
"Those rocks knocked me out," said William E. Kendall, 53, (a.k.a. Mr. Ed) of Houston. His knee, hip and calf were all hurting. "I made a promise to my feet not to get on them again for 14 hours," he said at the Eagle's Nest Shelter just south of Port Clinton.
The rocks cut down the daily mileage hikers can do and also the mileage they want to do because each step is painful. They torque ankles and knees in ways usually seen only in slow-motion replays of football injuries as the announcer intones, "Well, I haven't seen anyone come back from an injury like that."
Twenty-year-old Randy Evarts of Newport, Maine, gets around on the rocks better than most mountain goats, but even he has limitations. "I don't mind the big rocks because I enjoy hopping, but the small, sharp stones I hate. I wish I had a nickel or even a penny for every time I stubbed my toe in a day; I'd be a rich man. They're not very friendly."
This rocky walk along the Blue Mountain Ridge can claim a hiker's soul or soles. Clay Crowder's new pair of $250 Merrills are on their way back to the manufacturer after he ripped them up in a boulder field south of Port Clinton. In a hiker register near the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, a couple of hiking days north, Crowder, 24, of Marietta, Ga., joked, "I hope there are more rocks ahead to push me to the edge of sanity."
Not to worry. There are plenty and they've been around for a while.
The quartzite was created more than 400 million years ago from glacial deposits of sand, and turned on edge maybe 150 million years later when Africa played a little continental bump and run with North America. Just 2 million years ago, a series of freeze and thaw cycles began cracking the folded quartzite into the big angular blocks, slabs and wedges hikers see along the Blue Mountain ridge and in rivers of rocks down the mountain's sides.
The process continues, and the big rock jumbles present hikers with a combination maze and trapezoidal fun house steps as they try to follow the trail's white blazes, which are often painted on the rocks because there are no trees available. Complicating matters for hikers is the discovery that many of the rocks, even the big ones, are "movers and shakers."
And they talk, according to Woodrow Murphy, the self-proclaimed "biggest guy on the trail" when he weighed in at 350 pounds on Springer Mountain in Georgia. He's dropped 53 pounds since, but picked up a conspiracy theory worthy of Oliver Stone.
"The rocks are in conversation and the slippery ones team up to stop hikers," said the 41-year-old Perrerell, Mass., native, whose trail name is Beorn. "Then there are the vampire rocks. They want your blood. There are the 'hip' rocks, that just want a little skin. And some rocks can jump. They grab your boot just when you think you've got it clear."
Because of the treacherous footing, attention to the ground in front of you is mandatory and hikers often complain that they see Pennsylvania three feet at a time because they have to focus on their next footfall. Once, after hiking without lifting my head for about 15 minutes near the Pocahontas Campsite north of Port Clinton, I stopped and looked around — the prudent sequence rather than the other way around. I found myself under a pretty maple, hickory and oak canopy on a forest floor carpeted wall to wall with lush ferns.
The week's hike offered a host of marvelous sights to those who took the time to look up. We had fine views of rolling Pennsylvania farmland and blue-hazed ridges from Pulpit Rock and The Pinnacle, northeast of Port Clinton. A little farther north we caught views and saw hawks riding updrafts from Knife Edge — scary because of its narrow traverse across a steeply canted outcrop — and Bear Rocks, which offers a 360-degree panorama after just a 10-minute scramble off the AT and up boulders ranging in size from refrigerators to tractor trailers.
Our only town stop of the week was in Port Clinton, which bears the un-Chamber of Commerce-like designation "Buzzard Capital of the Northeast." We stopped at the Port Clinton Hotel, where Helen Carbaugh has held forth for 30 years and there are hiker registers dating to 1969 chock full of rock talk. Helen limits hikers to two, or if she's feeling kindly, three, of her seven-ounce, 55-cent Yuengling drafts. "You're here to hike, not to become a drunk," she said as she passed around salt and slices of raw parsnip from her garden.
Down the block at the storefront that is the Port Clinton Post office, postmaster Carolyn Hafer does her best to sort and keep from tripping over the 400 to 500 "mail drops" and care packages from home addressed to hikers passing through town. "We also get a lot of calls from parents looking for their sons or daughters," she said.
We skirted the side of Hawk Mountain, where in 1934 the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary was founded to study the more than 14 species of hawks, falcons and eagles that use the mountain's strong updrafts to carry them south for the winter. Hunters once flocked here to shoot the birds. Peak viewing months are September and October.
Near the end of our hiking week, from The North Trail, a scenic side trail on the ridge above Palmerton, just south of Lehigh Gap, we had a clear view of the Lehigh River Valley and the denuded mountainsides caused by pollution from a century of zinc mining and smelting operations. The area, now an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund cleanup site, is slowly being revegetated. Pines, tall grasses and blueberry bushes are taking hold.
It was a pleasure to look down and see, for at least a short while, handfuls of ripe, tasty berries instead of rocks.
Answering questions about the trail
Are horses permitted on the Appalachian Trail?
Except for very brief stretches where the AT and another trail share the same route, horseback riding and horses are not allowed.
Where can I get information on hiking the AT?
All the books, maps and guides you could ever want are available through the Appalachian Trail Conference. Write the conference at P.O. Box 807, Washington & Jackson Streets, Harpers Ferry, W.Va., 25425-9988.
After the series ends, will there be a book or compilation of the articles?
The five newspapers involved in the Appalachian Adventure project plan to produce a book based on the articles and color photographs. The hardcover coffee-table book will be marketed in bookstores and also sold by the individual newspapers.
First Published: July 1, 2015, 11:06 p.m.
