We refer to the mountain that you are now on as Blue Mountain.  

 

It has numerous other names, including Kittatinny Mountain.  It is part of the overall "Ridge and Valley Appalachian" range.

 

 Locals can cross Blue Mountain at three locations - here where you are now is actually very challenging on the other side - the road is in awful condition with mud ruts and unstable ground.  We rarely take this route.  An easy route is to the east at Wind Gap and to the west past Ski Blue Mountain - where the road is very well-maintained.

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The Appalachian Trail runs 2,200 miles from the State of Georgia to the State of Maine. The trail is very close to the peak of the mountain range with views varying sometimes to the north and sometimes to the south.  Portions of it are used by 2,000,000 hikers a year.  The trail was completed in 1937 passing through 14 states - including Pennsylvania, which has 230 miles of the trail.

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It takes about 165 days to hike the entire trail and you will wear out at least 4 pairs of boots.  Our section here is said to be the roughest and some folks call it "Bootylvania" - where boots go to die.

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Our elevation ranges from 320 feet above sea level to 2,080.  At this location, we are about 1,542 feet above sea level.

The trail was conceived by Benton MacKaye, a forester, shortly after the death of his wife in 1921. MacKaye's idea detailed a grand trail that would connect a series of farms and wilderness work/study camps for city-dwellers along the Appalachian Mountains from the highest point in the North (Mt. Washington in New Hampshire) to the highest in the South (Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina). 

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The first section of the trail opened in 1923 in New York.

A "thru-hiker" is a person who completes the entire trail in one season. In 2017, 715 did it traveling north and 133 traveling south.

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It is said to be the longest hiking trail in the world.

Along the route, there are trail "angels" - local folks who leave supplies on the trail for hikers, or who will drive hikers to and from the nearby town for a break, or even put them up at their homes for a period.

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The Lehigh Tunnel is a pair of road tunnels that carries the Pennsylvania Turnpike Northeast Extension (Interstate 476) under Blue Mountain.   It was originally completed in 1940 with only one two-lane section. An additional section was added in the 1960s carrying two additional lanes.  It runs less than a mile in length at about 4,339 feet.