Lindy Run Trail

Lindy Run Trail loops through one of the most intact examples of high-elevation red spruce forest remaining in the central Appalachians, a forest community that once covered hundreds of thousands of acres of the Allegheny Highlands before commercial logging and the subsequent slash fires of the late 19th and early 20th centuries reduced it to isolated fragments clinging to the highest ridges. The boreal character of this forest—dark, moist, cool, and quiet—creates a complete sensory displacement from the deciduous forest world below 3,500 feet. Red spruce trees reaching 80 feet in height and 30 inches in diameter dominate the canopy, with the smaller Fraser fir filling the understory and seedling layer. The combination represents the same forest type that covers the highest summits of the Great Smoky Mountains and the Presidential Range of New Hampshire, and it supports the same complement of breeding boreal birds: Blackburnian warbler, magnolia warbler, dark-eyed junco, and hermit thrush fill the forest with sound from May through July. Lindy Run itself, the small stream draining this watershed, flows cold and clear through the red spruce needle carpet, supporting brook trout in its deeper pools. The rarity of this forest type—red spruce boreal forest this far south exists nowhere else at this latitude—makes the Lindy Run Trail walk among the most ecologically significant short hikes in the entire Appalachian chain.