Hiking the Turkey Path Trail at Leonard Harrison: An 800-Foot Detour on the Way to North Carolina

The Detour Was the Point

The Detour Was the Point

Rochester to North Carolina is an interstate problem with an interstate answer. We had a week, a Sprinter van, and my mother-in-law's house projects waiting at the other end. We took Route 44 north through the PA Wilds instead and gave up an entire day to hike the Turkey Path Trail at Leonard Harrison State Park.

The overlook is the easy part, and it is good. Leonard Harrison sits on the east rim of Pine Creek Gorge, ten miles west of Wellsboro at the western end of PA Route 660. The gorge runs about 800 feet deep where the platform stands. Most people take the photograph from the railing and drive on. That is a defensible choice. It is also a fraction of what is down there.

© OpenStreetMap

Hiking the Turkey Path Trail at Leonard Harrison

Hiking the Turkey Path Trail at Leonard Harrison

One mile down, and 800 vertical feet of it. The Pennsylvania DCNR rates the Turkey Path most difficult, blazes it yellow, and states the situation without decoration:

There are no rides out from the bottom.

Eight words, and they are the entire trail. Everything you descend, you re-climb on tired legs.

The route follows Little Fourmile Run down the cliff face, switchbacking through hemlock. Wooden staircases carry you over the steepest pitches, and there are benches built in where somebody correctly guessed people would need them. The waterfalls come in a sequence on the lower half. Renée and I stopped at one of them for a photograph, both of us pretending the stop was about the scenery.

Two Miles Out on the Pine Creek Rail Trail

Two Miles Out on the Pine Creek Rail Trail

The Turkey Path ends at the Pine Creek Rail Trail, 62 miles of flat grade running the length of the canyon floor. Hikers can reach it from above. Cyclists cannot. The nearest bike access is Darling Run, nine miles north.

The ranger who oriented me at the visitor center said both directions are equally scenic, and that if you turn right there is a restroom marked on the park map. We turned left and never tested his claim about the facilities.

Two miles out, two miles back, the creek beside us the whole way. Flat, shaded, quiet, and after the descent it felt close to effortless. We found a spot where the bank opened onto the water, sat down on rocks and roots, and ate lunch out of a bag.

Our daughter is home from graduate school at Northeastern for a few weeks. She is an adult with her own city and her own schedule, and she came down 800 feet into a gorge to eat potato chips on a rock with her parents. six miles round trip, and that twenty minutes was the best part of it.

Roxy, the Van, and Route 44

Roxy, the Van, and Route 44

Roxy came with us and handled the stairs better than any of us. If you are camping rather than day-hiking, note that the park permits pets only on designated sites. That is a reservation decision, not a day-of decision.

The van earns its keep on a trip like this one, and not in the way van content usually claims. Our gear stayed packed. We stopped where we wanted, changed the plan twice, and never negotiated with a check-in time. What the Sprinter bought us was the freedom to spend a Saturday in a canyon that was nowhere near the route.

We did not sleep in it that night. We took a room at the Black Forest Inn on Route 44 outside Lock Haven, ate dinner downstairs, and slept in beds. Owning a van does not obligate you to use it every night, and after six miles and 1,600 feet of vertical, nobody argued.

The campground runs mid-April through mid-October, and DCNR notes the trails close seasonally for snow and ice, usually December through April. Reserve a pet site early if Roxy has a counterpart, take PA 660 west out of Wellsboro, and start down the Turkey Path before ten so the climb out lands before the heat.