A short hike on Jackson Trail (Tussey Mountain)

Join us this Sunday at 2 p.m. for a relatively short (3+ mile?) and easy to moderate, but quite rocky, ridgetop, out-and-back day hike on the Jackson Trail atop Tussey Mountain. We will hike to David’s Vista and somewhat further, to enjoy the view into Stone Valley afforded by rocky outcrops known as felsenmeers (or block fields), as well as hardy, dense stands of eastern hemlock along this ridgeline crest trail.

There is little total elevation gain, but as noted, the trail is rather rocky in many places. Good boots and/or hiking poles are recommended.

We will gather at the parking lot ACROSS SR 26 FROM Jo Hayes Vista. Jo Hayes Vista is located adjacent to State Route 26 as it crosses up and over the crest of Tussey Mountain, just above the village of Pine Grove Mills. Be careful crossing or turning at the highway here, as vertical line-of-sight (visibility) is limited, and too many drivers come barrellng up and over the crest.

Tussey Mountain – as distinct from the ski area which bears its name – is one of the longest-running, parallel ridges in what geologists call the Ridge and Valley Physiographic Province of the Central Appalachian Mountains. During fall and spring bird migratory seasons, it is followed by soaring migratory hawks and eagles, including the iconic golden eagle, migrating south to Georgia in the fall, and back north again to the shores of Hudson Bay and the far reaches of northern Canada in the spring.

The ridge itself – an upward fold in the Earth’s crust – was one of many formed, deformed, and uplifted during the Appalachian Orogeny, or colossal mountain-building event, some 325 million to 260 million years ago, in the Carboniferous and Permian periods of the Paleozoic Era. This was when the North American and African tectonic plates were colliding and titanic forces fractured, folded, and faulted the brittle rocks of the "lithosphere," i.e., the Earth's crust. All before the Atlantic Ocean even came into being and before the Age of Dinosaurs (Mesozoic Era). The land looked much different way back then; among other things, it lacked trees and forests.

These unfathomably long spans of time are outdone by the age of Tussey's erosion-resistant, outcropping rocks themselves, the sedimentary Bald Eagle Sandstone and metamorphic Tuscarora Quartzite formations. These date back even earlier to the Ordovician and Silurian Periods of the Paleozoic, some 400-500 million (half a billion) years ago; they formed south of the equator at the shallow margin of an ocean called the Iapetus, which disappeared long ago (although it is considered a precursor to the Atlantic Ocean).

Poetically, the Iapetus Ocean is named for the Titan in ancient Greek mythology who fathered Atlas, after whom the Atlantic Ocean is named. Atlas had been condemned by Zeus to uphold the heavens for eternity.

All suitably ancient. Yet little more than one-tenth of the age of the Earth itself!

And less than 4% of the estimated 13.7-billion-year age of our Universe.