Pike County High Point Trip Report

Date: April 19, 2002
Author: Dan Case

To reach these two relatively close-by areas, get off I-84 at Exit 20 (PA 507) if coming from the east, or Exit 17 (PA 191) if coming out from Scranton. Go south a few miles. Both roads intersect in the Wayne County village of Newfoundland. Midway through it PA 447 branches off to the left and over Wallenpaupack Creek back into Pike County, where it is then signed as Panther Road. It climbs gradually over the next four miles to unpaved Lake Russell Road, as Mike Schwartz indicated. You can do the areas in the order you prefer.

one area 1/2 mile northwest of Lake Jamie (2,100+ ft)

A little bit south of the crest on Misery Road, there's a gated area that makes a good place to park if you're not sure of your vehicle's ability to get up onto the rougher areas on the other side of the road, closer to the crest. The woods here are fairly open, although they are obviously in third growth and show signs of a great deal of past disturbance -- probably logging, but can't say for sure. In any case this has the effect of making the short hike required a little more of an exercise than the forest density alone would lead you to think, due to the combination of blow-downs, deadfall, rocks and the rolling pillow-and-cradle topography in many areas. It's quite passable, but not without annoyance.

You can easily see the ridge through the woods. But getting this HP is not as simple as merely gaining its crest. Once you do get to the top, you'll see the first of the ridge knobs Mike mentions. Climb it so you can see the next, higher one. It's grassy and topped with a lot of loose rock, but that's not the one you want.

From the top of it you'll see the next one a few hundred feet further in the woods. This requires dropping down a dip a bit and then going back up. You may think you've got it. Not so - there's almost no grass cover here, and you can see higher ground to the west.

When you get to that rise, you'll see yet another one two hundred feet away. This seems to be the highest ground as far as I could tell, and I built a crude cairn on top of the large flat rock in the middle of the knob. The highest soil is over near the trees.

one area 1/2 mile east-northeast of Lake Russell (2,115 ft)

You can park in some wide shoulders on the south side of Lake Russell Road. There is a house in the distance from which this area is entirely visible, but although it may well be the residence of the landowners who post this area and the other HP candidate as well as much of the other land around Lake Russell I experienced no problem.

The slope up here is steeper than the other one at first. You will cross an old wood road on the way up. Once on the plateau, you will see higher ground to the northwest. By veering in that direction, you will cross two more old woods roads (probably these two are really the same one). The second time you will see it retains a cleared corridor that you can follow almost all the way to the summit area. This is characterized by a much more open and clearly disturbed forest than the other area. I decided the high ground was near a snag that looks a little fork-like, atop a stump, but you may have other ideas (I also noticed a curious brown privy-like structure off to the northwest, but chose not to investigate). It's possible to see each area from the other one with the leaves down. Both look higher from the other one, so absent a hand-level finding both should still be visited.