Saturday, March 5, 2022

Austin T. Blakeslee Natural Area, PA

ABOUT THE PARK: 
Austin T. Blakeslee Natural Area Brochure - Tobyhanna Township

DIRECTIONS: 
GPS Coordinates 41.08315, -75.58443
Lower Parking Lot

TRAIL MAP: 


HIKE DISTANCE: 3 miles

THE HIKE: 
Driving home from hiking Bald Mountain at Lehigh Gorge State Park, I hadn't been on I-80 East very long when I happened to remember that the Austin T Blakeslee Natural Area was somewhere right off of I-80.  I pulled off at the next exit to check on my phone and amazingly, I was at the correct exit and the natural area was only a mile or so away from the exit, only 20 miles from the hike I had just come from.
The trails start to the right of the kiosk.
There are no obvious trail markers at first so we headed left into the pines towards Tobyhanna Creek ...
... where we picked up the red-blazed Creek Trail.  I found that throughout there are either a lot of trail marks in a row, none at all, sometimes sporadic and the format changes from diamonds to circles to faint paint.  And there are lots of unmarked side trails but it's a small area so hard to get lost.
Tobyhanna Creek
Oh no!
But turns out this is totally doable without a bridge so on we went.
Tobyhanna Falls
We stayed with the red Creek Trail all the way to the end and would hit the blue trail on the way back.
The orange Pine Trail would be for the return route also.
At the Falls Overlook ...
... where it is actually kind of hard to get a clear view back at the falls where we had just been.
Just after this rock hop the trail ends at private property ...
... so we headed back.
At this huge pine, left on blue.
After meeting back up with red for a bit, left on orange.
Orange loops around and comes back out on red where we retraced,
Back at the parking lot.

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