10K Course Description
10K Challenge: Part 1 (3.5 5miles | +39 feet / -1032 ft.)
Runners will start down Evergreen Lane between the pavilion and the clubhouse so make your move fast because the next 2.5 miles is narrow but a true gem of singletrack trail as you take a left turn onto Black Bear Trail. The singletrack is “surprisingly technical” in some places and twisty and turny throughout. Black Bear Trail is a gradual downhill amid Pennsylvania hardwoods and ferns. You will take a left onto Lost Porcupine Trail which offers even more twisty turns on singletrack. Then you make a right turn onto Tree-odge – “get it” – then Code Blue Trail. On the northeastern side of Spruce Knob, these trails with its pine, lush moss, mushrooms and mountain laurel, is reminiscent of the great trails in the northern PA Wilds or Catskills. Not to give away any secrets but you might end up doing a little bit of “wilderness parkour” before you are done.
Afterward, you will find yourself on a grassy double track. The downhill fun is about to begin. It’s the first half of Devils Hairpin! Part one is a 630-foot descent in three-quarters of a mile! What makes this even more exciting is that the downhill is wide-enough for two, maybe even three runners wide! If you are brave enough and good at finding a line, this is the place you can pass.
At the bottom, there will be an aid station, then the second half of the Devils Hairpin is on deck…
[Map and Elevation Chart of the 10K Course]
10K Challenge: Part 2 (2.7 miles | +1364 ft. / -161 ft.)
Hyner has Humble Hill and the Megatransect had Raw Trail. Every great PA trail race has its own signature section. We call ours “Throat Punch”! It’s the second half of Devils Hairpin. (Imagine the shape of a hairpin with one zigzag-shaped side and a straight side.) It’s time to go up, my friends. Throat Punch scrambles up Spit Hollow to almost the top of the mountain.
At the end of the climb, it’s a right turn onto an old logging route and about eight-tenths of a mile downhill through the Cadillac Alley. Formerly known as “Needle Patch”, we renamed it after a meth head drove a Cadillac down the trail thinking he was a “bomb”. Long story…
Then it’s the final climb – a combination of ATV trails, a logging flune and logging roads – it is a mile climb of 600 feet we call The Soul Sucker Slopes. Once at the top, Not Fairway is a splendid runnable singletrack to the intersection of Oak Hill Lane and Summit Way before going back onto the singletrack to the finish.
