Lehigh Valley Gorge Trail

It may sound wrong to drive over 100 miles just to do a 35 mile ride but it really depends on the quality of the ride. It's also not always about the ride itself but the entirety of the trip. This long day trip was a result of a talk with Bruno on July 4 at his shop in Allentown during one of our long and hot rides. He and his wife had just done the Lehigh Valley Gorge Trail and raved about how nice it was. Since I'm planning to do the Great Allegheny Passage trail in August I thought doing this ride would be a good warmup since it would be a similar type of ride.

Making a day trip up to the Poconos means an early rise and a long day but it also meant more people would join me since it wasn't an overnight trip. I got Jack, Dorthy, Laura and Martin to join me at oh dark thirty (7am) at Jack's house for the drive up to Jim Thorpe where we needed to get the shuttle to the top of the trail. After getting all the bikes loaded it took about an hour an a half to get to Jim Thorpe where Pete would joined us. We got there about 8:45 am and didn't have to check into the shuttle until 9:30 am so after we got the bikes unloaded we rode around the town and went down by the river to get our first look at the gorge.

We then checked into to Pocono biking and got our bikes loaded onto the trailer.   

I wasn't sure how they were going to load 40 bikes in a trailer but they have a pretty good system where they just throw the front fork of the bike over a padded bar and strap it in. The bus left at 10 am for the drive up to our starting point. The way this works is that they drive you to the top of the trail and then you ride back down to Jim Thorpe. They have a 25 and 36 mile option. Dorthy did the 25 mile option while the rest of us did the 36 route. I thought there would be two buses, one for each option but what they did was drive everybody up to White Haven where the 25 mile option begins then transfer to people doing the 36 mile option into a van to take then to Glen Summit.

The bus ride to White Haven was mostly uphill and I wasn't sure the old yellow school bus was going to make it up some of the hills. It took about 40mins to get to White Haven then another 20 mins to get to Glen Summit. It was a little after 11 am by the time we got on the bikes and finally did some riding.

The advantage of taking the shuttle is that it did most of the up hill work so the 36 miles of trails was flat or downhill. The first few miles was easy pedaling as we were going downhill. The trail was packed gravel through the woods and was a smooth surface that we could cruise on pretty quickly. The only real sights in the first 10 miles was a couple of lakes.

The first lake was Moosehead lake which wasn't really shaped like a moose head but was scenic. The other lake was Cranbury lake and looked like a large lily pond.

There was only one place where we actually encountered a road or any civilization. We had to cross over the railroad track by a road. They had this paved path, next to a road, up to the railroad tracks but we had to carry our bikes over the tracks then followed another short paved path back to the trail. Not sure why they added this path as it would have been easier just to use the road.

The last few miles of the trail before we got to White Haven was a little wet and rough. I'm glad I had the wider tires and shock. Once we got to White Haven we took a little break by a General Store that was more or less a crap shop that sold everything including smoked cheese but really didn't have any food. He did fill our water bottles though. There was also a Rite Aid in the town but the didn't have much food or drink either so I'm glad I brought a lot to eat and drink.

From White Haven the trail was hard packed white gravel that you could almost of ridden on a road bike. We were now following the Lehigh River down the gorge and heard the occasional yell of the many rafters that were floating down the river and going through the rapids. It was scenic but the trees along the river made it difficult to get any good pictures of the river.

Besides the river the main sight for the first part from White Haven was some waterfalls along the way.

The first was Buttermilk falls where Jack is cooling himself off in the water.

The second was Luke falls which wasn't as picturesque 

We eventually got a good spot to take a picture of the river

And the rafters.

The last main sight on the ride was at Glen Onoko where a bridge went over the river showing a tunnel in the cliff.

The cool thing was that we could actually walk in the tunnel. This tunnel is called Turn Hole Tunnel and you can find more details about it HERE.

From the tunnel it was about 2 miles back to the parking lot where our cars were. We had one more bridge crossing where we got a good view of the river and gorge.

Once we got back to our cars we found something to eat in a town that was now packed and teaming with people.

All in all it was a good ride. It wasn't as scenic as Bruno described it but the trail was one of the most well maintained smoothest trails I have been on and a very enjoyable ride. It also gave me a chance to test out the new mountain bike on a long ride and give me confidence that I should have no problem doing the GAP trail. If I came up this area again I would probably make a weekend of it since there are other trails along the Lehigh River and Delaware River that we could do. In fact I learned that we could probably ride all the way from Jim Thorpe to New Hope on rail trails if we wanted to so that is now on my list of future trips.

If was also fun riding with Martin as I have only met him briefly before and was nice getting to know him. He also took some great pictures so I'm officially making him the staff photographer on any future rides he joins us on.