Mid-State Trail atop Tussey Mountain

This is an easy 3-4 mile, out-and-back hike along the Mid-State Trail from Jo Hays Vista southward, following the crest of Tussey Mountain the entire way.

We will pass the power line crossing at which volunteer birders and ornithologists conduct the annual Tussey Mountain Spring Hawkwatch, focused especially on migrating Golden Eagles (pictured). Just a couple of weeks ago, these observers documented 80 Golden Eagles in a single day -- a record -- soaring northward to their nesting grounds in remote northern Canada. While peak migration has now passed, we may still get lucky, and spot eagles and hawks soaring high above the ridge.

We will proceed southward along the Mid-State to one of the rock outcrop overlooks (i.e., a "felsenmeer") along the trail that offers a splendid view southeast across the Stone Valley toward Stone Mountain, and return back to Jo Hays from from there.

This is an easy 3-4 mile, ridge-top hike with practically no elevation gain, but along VERY ROCKY TERRAIN. Hiking or trekking poles and good boots are recommended but not essential.

We will meet at the Jo Hays Vista Parking Lot alongside Rte. 26 at 1 p.m. If that lot is full, there is also parking available across the highway, but you have to be very careful of speeding traffic when turning or crossing the road there because of poor visibility at the Tussey crest.

From the Tussey Mountain Spring Hawkwatch website:

"Tussey Mountain is a spring hawkwatch focusing on Golden Eagles. Primarily a bird of the mountains and foothills of western North America, a small population of a few thousand Golden Eagles breeds in remote areas of northeastern Canada and migrates south to spend the winter in the eastern U.S.

"These birds had been counted on fall migration in Pennsylvania for many years, at well-known hawkwatching sites like Hawk Mountain Sanctuary and Waggoner's Gap. However, very few are seen at these sites in spring. Monitoring since the mid-1990s has shown that Tussey Mountain consistently has the highest counts of Golden Eagles in spring in the Appalachian region."

From the Wikipedia entry on Tussey Mountain:

Tussey Mountain is a stratigraphic ridge in central Pennsylvania, United States, trending east of the Bald Eagle, Brush, Dunning and Evitts Mountain ridges. Its southern foot just crosses the Mason–Dixon line near Flintstone, Maryland, running north 130 km (80 mi) to the Seven Mountains of central Pennsylvania, near Tusseyville, making it one of the longest named ridges in this section of the Ridge-and-valley Appalachians.
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Tussey Mountain is...part of the... Paleozoic anticline rock formation consisting of older Ordovician Bald Eagle Formation Sandstone and Juniata Formation Shale, and younger Silurian Tuscarora Formation Quartzite. During the Appalachian orogeny, these layers folded up with the underlying and overlying layers into the Nittany Arch. The arch was a Himalayan scale mountain that towered above what is now Nittany Valley, where the oldest rock layers from deep within the eroded mountain are now exposed.

The Tuscarora Quartzite is more resistant to erosion than Bald Eagle Sandstone, and both are more durable than the Juniata Shale sandwiched in-between. Softer rock layers on either side of these eroded, leaving the double crested Tussey Mountain ridge, with a depression between the higher eastern and lower western ridge lines found on the northern section of the ridge. Since the rock layers on these ridges slope down to the east, the Tuscarora Formation underlies the higher crest, where it protected the east slope from erosion.