Early Spring Passage of Thrills

There were two other tracks besides the ones I was making, so I knew I wasn't the first person bicycling this stretch of the Great Allegheny Passage since the snow melted. Most of it, that is.

One of those riders was brave enough to pedal through the occasional island of what I would describe as snowcone base. He had made it easier for me. But mostly, the trail was firm, fun, and easy.

Or it was until I turned around after nine miles to head back to the Subaru and realized I had been riding with a tailwind. Nothing like the wind on your chest to make a little softness and the slightest grade feel like you're pushing through modeling clay.

But once I crossed Pinkerton High Bridge and hit the bypass around the horn, the going was sweet.The shoofly was resurfaced last year with crushed Loyalhanna limestone, ideal for a trail surface as it packs hard and drains well. You notice the difference immediately when you roll onto the bypass at either end. It's called the by-pass, by the way, because it goes

around the slowly-collapsing, dangerous, $5-million-to-fix-and-therefore-closed Pinkerton Tunnel, an 800 foot shortcut through the mountain. In this setting, who wants a shortcut, anyway? The 1.45-mile round-about seems just right to me.

I am the adoptive uncle of this stretch of the GAP, from Markleton to Fort Hill, site of two increasingly famous New Age vortexes, a mysterious blending of natural and some like to think supernatural forces creating positive energy and good will for all who visit. Tea Baggers should do a bus trip, but nevermind.

I am here to report my section of trail is fair to good, and eminently passable if you're willing to duck under a huge fallen poplar with steep banks on both sides, one up and one down toward the green-and-white torrent that is the Casselman River in March. I'll call the county in the morning, and I'm sure they'll bring a lumberjack chain saw and clear the way very soon. Only once in nine miles did I have to walk my bike through a few yards of deep snow, and that should be gone by Wednesday.

I also wish to report I saw a black squirrel,
a big deer with a chest like Bruno Sammartino that ran straight at me for a startling instant, and I saw an osprey.

First I found what is surely the osprey's favorite perch on the hand railing of High Bridge over the river where it's not hard to tell she rests often and looks upstream with her tail over the deck.

Then I saw the fish hawk herself, first as a shadow across me, then as a white-breasted, eye-lined, long-winged, glider complete with the necklace that distinguishes the female -- another thrilling encounter, before she disappeared behind the wooded hill, following the water.

And finally I saw what I would identify as three new-agers with great puffs of humidified hair, loose blanket-like clothing, and tall walking sticks, making a pilgrimage to the nearest vortex in varying states of bliss.

Back at the gravel parking lot, a Toyota with Delaware plates sat reassuringly close to the Soob.

Didn't I tell you we're becoming famous?

Just wait until May. We'll need a translator.

Is this Allegheny Passage Great, or what?

copyright 2010 by J. O'Brien, all rights reserved