Orange Trail

Dogs Leashed

Features Birding · Fall Colors · Lake · River/Creek · Spring · Views

A loop route with great flat spaces, creek crossings, some logs to cross, and a few good scrambles up ravine edges. On this hike, visitors will have the chance to enjoy almost all of the terrain available in the area!

Make sure to stop in town for dinner at the Mudlick Tap Room.

This hike uses the outside loop of the High View Trailhead Access (can also access from the south). You can choose to bail out on several trails that intersect this outside loop and create your own shorter route, or at the south trailhead continue south to add another three or so miles to the journey.

If you are very adventurous, make the loop and continue north to connect with up to 26 miles of trails. The trail is mostly wide enough for two and sometimes three, but in places it goes back down to singletrack (especially in the ravines) where it almost becomes a scramble.

Along the way, you'll see multiple trees down with amazing displays of shelf fungus, small fish, and crayfish in the streams and the occasional deer on the margins (several field margins are viewed). Plus with the abundance of conifers (eastern red cedars dot the area) there are plenty of small birds flitting to and fro.

Near the south of the trail, you have the opportunity to see the remains of the mound builders work, the trail bisects those earthworks twice and you have a rare opportunity to get up close and personal with man-made earthworks that have been around for thousands of years.

Multiple hardwood species including oak, hickory, birch, sycamore will shade your way. Softwoods including eastern red cedar and what appeared to be eastern hemlock can also be seen. Deer, crayfish, and birds are all in abundance.

This trail crosses an NPS listed property, the Carlisle Fort made by the Hopewell Native Americans. Much is still visible in the woods during winter, and during the summertime I would imagine that it would become difficult if not impossible to see the trail when the undergrowth is in bloom.