Laurel Summit and Global Warming

When I was a kid and a teenager, the area around Laurel Summit was known for winter sports. Even though my dad owned a lot below the summit and took us up there in the summer for picnics, for rides, to get spring water, etc., most people viewed the area as a place to ski. I had relatives who owned cabins up there so they could go away on weekends in the winter. I have relatives my age who were still going up there cross-country skiing after I left the area and lived in other places.

I moved back to this area in 1992. At that time, people were still skiing, going to their cabins, and snowmobiling up there. When I first moved back here, rails-to-trails were taking off big time. This was far below the elevations of the summit. The trails were hailed as places to hike, jog, and bike, even camp, in the spring, summer, and fall, but excellent places to cross-country ski in the winter. That lasted a few years. Cross-country skiing on the rails-to-trails was the first thing to go. There was a horrendous winter here in 1994. The next couple winters were pretty bad too. After that, there was never enough snow to even think of cross-country skiing on the rails-to-trails.

It was about that time I started frequenting the Laurel Highlands again. I would stop at park offices for pamphlets. Lots of pamphlets dealt with the winter sports. They showed which trails could be used both for hiking and cross-country skiing, which ones could also be used for snowmobiles. When I would go hiking, I'd see trails marked for snowmobiling. Some of the trails weren't even appropriate for hiking. They were not maintained for summer, since they were primarily used for cross-country skiing and snowmobiling. There were maps for cross-country skiing in the winter and directions to ski slopes and warming huts.

A couple times I did go up to Linn Run State Park in the winter. There is an area of rustic cabins. Their primary purpose was for people to stay in the winter and snowmobile up the roads to the summit. The roads were purposely not maintained so the people in the cabins could ride their snowmobiles. On the couple occasions I went up in the winter, the roads were indeed covered with a layer of snow. I had snow tires put on my car so I could get up and down the roads. But there were ominous signs of what was to come. I never saw a snow mobile. However, in the middle of the winter, I saw people on bicycles climbing the summit.

I remember a time in the late 1990's, early 2000's, when I got into a conversation with my veterinarian. She owns horses and takes her horses up to the summit to do the trails. She warned me, don't go up there in the middle of the winter. There are several feet of snow. You can't hike those trails in the middle of the winter.

For several years, I was busy with other things and didn't go up to the summit very much. Then I gained too much weight, and the spring, summer, and fall of 2007, I started going to the summit weekly to hike to lose the weight. I was in for a shock and a rude awakening. The summit was in bad shape and had deteriorated markedly. The warming hut was closed. The ski area was closed. The bathrooms weren't maintained. The road was in very bad condition. However, as the spring and summer went on, I realized the summit was attracting more and more people. Hikers and mountain bikers flocked more and more to the summit.

During the winter of 2007, I had naturally steered clear of the summit. However, I noticed something as winter of 2008 approached. It just never got too cold to hike or bike at the summit. In the past, I had sometimes gone up in October to hike in the snow. Now, I was going up just to hike in October, and November, and December. A new kind of person was enjoying the fall and early winter up there--hunters, as opposed to skiiers and snowmobilers. I kept waiting for it to get too cold to hike. It never did. I was hiking at the summit in January, February, and March. In fact, the summit became somewhat infamous because a young man and woman were killed falling off of Beam Rocks. The summit had become so popular for hiking that now people were actually getting killed up there. There is a brand new sign warning of the danger at Beam Rocks. All winter, I hiked and ran across many mountain bikers up there.

It hasn't taken long for the powers that be to realize the impact of the climate change. This year, they are fixing the roads on the summit. A lot of money is being poured into revitalizing the summit for a warmer climate to appeal to hikers, mountain bikers, and hunters. Brand new picnic tables and grills are also starting to appear. It just is amazing to me how fast this has happened. I have been back here 16 years and the climate has totally changed just in that amount of time. In fact, the climate at the summit, which is a little less than 3000 feet above sea level, has just totally changed in the matter of a few years.