W3/PW-015 Mt Tom

Close to the Pine Creek Gorge (“Grand Canyon of PA”) is this unassuming but brutally steep hike in Tioga State Forest. I’ve been interested in summiting a Mount Tom since I learned about the one in Inyo National Forest while on a bouldering trip to Bishop, CA, though that’s a remote and tough hike in the High Sierras. This is the first Mount Tom I’ve climbed, and activating it brought my SOTA completes to a round 50! Jeff Mitchell, a prominent writer/hiker in PA has a nice writeup on his blog that helped me plan this hike.

I parked at the Darling Run access of the Pine Creek Rail Trail, and there was a signpost for the hike towards the northeast end of the parking lot. There are also some toilets at the parking lot, just in case! A few steps into the trail, I crossed PA-362 and started on the bulk of the hike. Yellow blazes mark the trail well, and it seems relatively highly used. Not too overgrown like many lesser-traveled footpaths at this time of year.

About 0.4 mi into the hike is a choice to go the steep and shorter way or the not-so-steep but longer way. I decided to take the steep path up and that resulted in a climb of 750 feet over those 0.6 miles, over a 20% grade on average. That was…pretty tough. I saw some mushrooms and a road on the way. Evidently the mushrooms I caught bioluminescent in darkness.

At the top is a vista point that is just on the edge of the AZ. The hike becomes a pleasant walk east along the ridge, though here the grass had gotten tall. I hiked towards the summit and operated near the terminus of the return trail.

The hike down was less relentlessly steep, but it still would be quite the climb. It follows an old road that isn’t really blazed, so the trail is wider but it’s a bit less scenic.

• Trailhead: 41.73633, -77.42913 : Pine Creek Rail Trail – Darling Run Access
• Maps: [AA3TZ SOTA] [Tioga State Forest Map]
• Route: 2.9 mi loop hike, 1100 feet elevation, along Mt Tom Trail and ridge, then following a dirt road back
• POTA: US-5478, Tioga State Forest