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Sep. 29th, 2004 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSince I'm in horse mode of late, I went out this morning and scouted places that I wanted to go on my horse (the red one) come better weather, either this fall or next spring. Sometimes, as in the case of extremely-local riding on the mountain back of my house, I can do this on foot. Sometimes, as was the case today, it's easier to scout by car... er... at least you'd think that, looking at the maps. The target area for today was Sideling Hill (more of a mountain, really), near Crystal Spring, PA. Fortunately, due to the power of the internet, you can look at this scenery with me. Hope you liked geography... This is contour-map city, here.
The route I was investigating this morning is shown in BLUE on the map, and I was contemplating traversing it in a counter-clockwise direction starting from the Crystal Spring Campground. The reason I'd like to traverse this on horseback is that it's relatively low-traffic and relatively rich in delta of the elevation sort. Tired ponies are well-behaved ponies. Also, it's got scenery. Them thar gaps look interesting.
So, full of good intentions, I took my car to the Crystal Spring Campground (established some obscenely historical amount of time ago) and headed up Boorman Road. According to my USGS map of the quadrant, this road is vehicle-passable. Now, my Chevy Cavalier and I got to the top of Sideling Hill (more of a mountain, really) without getting stuck, so I guess it is vehicle-passable. I even still have an exhaust system. However, I do not EVER want to do that again. Ever.
Fortunately, when I got to the top of thehill mountain, there was a different "improved" (much better) road (shown in pink) that ran out the ridge to Route 30, which is nicely paved and does not eat exhaust systems. I gave up and drove out that road because, while Boorman Road goes down Sideliing Hill (mountain) through Daves Gap into the Sipes Mill area, that's the *steep* side of the mountain. I didn't think it looked suitable for Cavaliers, even brave, trustworthy ones.
On my way out the nice pink (in reality, blue-grey modified stone) road, I looked briefly at Betsey Road (the upper blue part, that I would be 'coming back' on) and figured that probably driving down it wasn't the smartest move on the planet. While Boorman Road was "improved", Betsey Road was shown on the map as an "unimproved" road. I'm not sure what that meant, but the nice State Forest people had big signs on both sides of the intersection telling potential drivers of Betsey Road that 4WD was strongly suggested. (If there'd been a sign like that for Boorman, I would not have attempted to take my Cavalier up it. I'm not entirely stupid. Really. By the time I got far enough up Boorman that I was having second thoughts, there was nowhere to turn around.)
When I got to Route 30 (not shown -- it's a ways to the north), I went down the steeper side of Sideling Hill (more of a mountain, really) and found the first paved road off to the right. In a sane world, that paved road would have the dirt roads Boorman and Betsey going off of it to the right. And hell, maybe it did. I couldn't tell because it had an ASSLOAD of tiny, ill-maintained dirt roads going off to the right. Lots and lots of them. None of them had signs. The creeks didn't have signs, either. Nothing had signs. (I thought the 911-related naming we all endured about seven years back was supposed to result in signs.) *hrmph* Now, aside from the rather questionable driveability of the roads, I didn't want to drive down the roads at random until I found one that worked because one does not blithely venture down ill-maintained dirt roads in Belfast Township because one might well get shot at for so doing. *sigh* I am going to have to do on-foot scouting as follows: Two people. One people drives the other to the top of the damn mountain and lets her off to walk down the mountain. Then the driver cruises along the valley road, looking for the walker in the general vicinity of Sipes Mill. The walker will mark the proper ill-maintained dirt road with survey tape so that the trail riders, riding out a week or two later, can follow the jocularly-relocated survey tape and wander around cluelessly on the steep side of Sideling Hill until they die.
Yep. Sounds like a plan to me. It'll be fun.
The route I was investigating this morning is shown in BLUE on the map, and I was contemplating traversing it in a counter-clockwise direction starting from the Crystal Spring Campground. The reason I'd like to traverse this on horseback is that it's relatively low-traffic and relatively rich in delta of the elevation sort. Tired ponies are well-behaved ponies. Also, it's got scenery. Them thar gaps look interesting.
So, full of good intentions, I took my car to the Crystal Spring Campground (established some obscenely historical amount of time ago) and headed up Boorman Road. According to my USGS map of the quadrant, this road is vehicle-passable. Now, my Chevy Cavalier and I got to the top of Sideling Hill (more of a mountain, really) without getting stuck, so I guess it is vehicle-passable. I even still have an exhaust system. However, I do not EVER want to do that again. Ever.
Fortunately, when I got to the top of the
On my way out the nice pink (in reality, blue-grey modified stone) road, I looked briefly at Betsey Road (the upper blue part, that I would be 'coming back' on) and figured that probably driving down it wasn't the smartest move on the planet. While Boorman Road was "improved", Betsey Road was shown on the map as an "unimproved" road. I'm not sure what that meant, but the nice State Forest people had big signs on both sides of the intersection telling potential drivers of Betsey Road that 4WD was strongly suggested. (If there'd been a sign like that for Boorman, I would not have attempted to take my Cavalier up it. I'm not entirely stupid. Really. By the time I got far enough up Boorman that I was having second thoughts, there was nowhere to turn around.)
When I got to Route 30 (not shown -- it's a ways to the north), I went down the steeper side of Sideling Hill (more of a mountain, really) and found the first paved road off to the right. In a sane world, that paved road would have the dirt roads Boorman and Betsey going off of it to the right. And hell, maybe it did. I couldn't tell because it had an ASSLOAD of tiny, ill-maintained dirt roads going off to the right. Lots and lots of them. None of them had signs. The creeks didn't have signs, either. Nothing had signs. (I thought the 911-related naming we all endured about seven years back was supposed to result in signs.) *hrmph* Now, aside from the rather questionable driveability of the roads, I didn't want to drive down the roads at random until I found one that worked because one does not blithely venture down ill-maintained dirt roads in Belfast Township because one might well get shot at for so doing. *sigh* I am going to have to do on-foot scouting as follows: Two people. One people drives the other to the top of the damn mountain and lets her off to walk down the mountain. Then the driver cruises along the valley road, looking for the walker in the general vicinity of Sipes Mill. The walker will mark the proper ill-maintained dirt road with survey tape so that the trail riders, riding out a week or two later, can follow the jocularly-relocated survey tape and wander around cluelessly on the steep side of Sideling Hill until they die.
Yep. Sounds like a plan to me. It'll be fun.
