Good Friday was the opportunity for a grand hike to the High Rocks, also known as Boxcar Rocks, a high, elevated series of towering boulders. The High Rocks stood on the south edge of the mountain that formed the southern edge of the Williams Valley in western Schuylkill County.
The hike took us across the valley, up the side of the mountain and across the top of the mountain to the boulders. It was a distance of a few miles, depending upon your route. You could make the trek on the paved Goldmine Road or on a series of old logging and mining roads with a few deer trail connections along the way.
Or you could make it on a different set of old logging and mining roads that made a grand loop of several extra miles.
That was the route along which I led five of my friends one year. They’re only now learning that I lost my way for a good bit of our hike that Good Friday. By some stroke of luck we happened by my family’s mountaintop deer stands, and that allowed me to orient myself and get a fix on the direction we needed to move. We were a couple hours of extra hiking by that point, but we were young and had plenty left in us. Maybe it would be best if my old friends never found out about this.
We eventually made it to our destination, and even decided to continue on another several miles to the High Bridge, which no longer existed except as the location for its replacement, the Lebanon Reservoir, near Suedburg.
Only miles later, as we pushed back up the south side of the mountains, this time on the paved roadway, did we really feel it in our calves and soles of our feet. A hitched ride (another experience of bygone days) the last few miles really was appreciated. We had already done more than the standard Good Friday miles.
