WE WILL MEET AT 11 A.M. AT THE JO HAYS VISTA ON RTE 26 ON THE CREST OF TUSSEY MOUNTAIN ABOVE PINE GROVE MILLS AND FROM THERE, CARPOOL TO THE STANDING STONE TRAIL HEAD IN GREENWOOD FURNACE STATE PARK ALONG RTE 305.
WE WILL PARK IN A LOT DIRECTLY ACROSS 305 FROM THE STATE PARK VISITOR CENTER/HQ.
We have done this invigorating excursion several times over the years, but it's been quite awhile.
This five-mile loop hike up to Stone Valley Vista on Stone Mountain starts and finishes in historic Greenwood Furnace State Park on State Route 305.
It is moderately difficult, with almost 1,000 vertical feet of ascent in total. One part of the ascent is steep and fairly rocky, but the rest of the trail has good footing and moderate grades both going up and coming down. The first half of the hike follows the Standing Stone Trail, descending and returning to the parking lot via the Turkey, Lorence, and Monsell trails.
The route passes through lovely second-growth, mixed hardwood forests dominated by oak and hickory trees as well as through an extensive stand of eastern hemlock cloaking the bony crest of the Stone Mountain ridge line proper.
Stone Valley Vista offers rewarding views of rustic, rugged Stone Valley to the north and northwest. In the distance, bordering the opposite side of Stoney Valley, resides neighboring Tussey Mountain, as it has for many millions of years. Tussey runs parallel with Stone Mountain and at about the same elevation, 2,000 feet MSL give or take.
In the foreground and middle ground are lesser ridges with quaint names: Thickhead Mountain, Bell Ridge, Greenlee Mountain, Rudy Ridge, and others.
Stone Mountain is a long, geologically ancient ridge of erosion-resistant sandstone, quartzite, and shale; its crest runs nearly horizontal for mile after mile. On the southeast slope of Stone Mountain, just below the crest of the ridge, rests the contact between the strata of the older Juniata Formation (dating back to the Paleozoic Era's Ordovician Period, some 443 to 489 million years ago) and those of the younger, more erosion-resistant Tuscarora Formation (dating back to the Silurian Period, 420 to 443 mya). The Tuscarora forms Stone Mtn's steeper northwest slope as well as its crest.
The Bald Eagle Formation on Stone Mountain crops out on its slopes, facing the Kish Valley to the southeast, and forming a steep topographic bench below the Juniata Formation. Below the Bald Eagle rests the uppermost sandstone layer of the underlying Reedsville Formation; this contains fossils of ancient brachiopods and other marine organisms.
Hundreds of millions of years old, like the other stratigraphic ridges in the Ridge and Valley Physiographic Province of the Central Appalachians, Stone Mtn formed before dinosaurs strode the Earth and even before the Atlantic Ocean was born, as the super-continent known as Pangea broke apart.
Once upon a time this mountain range stood much, much higher than it is today, perhaps as high as the Rockies or even the Himalaya. (This is true of all of the Appalachians.) The sedimentary and metamorphic rocks in these stratigraphic ridges are even more ancient than the mountains themselves, dating as far back as the Ordovician Period (as noted above), when primitive plants first colonized the Earth's land masses. Back then, there were no forests, wildlife, and ecosystems like those we are privileged to enjoy today.
