Ride the Rapids, Explore the Depths: Kayaking and Caving in State College

[00:00:00] Brad Groznik: This is the Rediscover State College podcast. On this show, we talk to locals about how they were able to find their happy place in Happy Valley. I’m your host, Brad Groznik. Today we’re joined by Abby Hamer. State College local and avid adventurer, Abby is passionate about whitewater kayaking, mountain biking, gravel biking, caving, hiking, and climbing.

[00:00:26] Brad Groznik: In this episode, we’ll explore her journey back to State College, not just once, but three times. We’ll also dive into the details of the local caving community, the local whitewater kayaking scene, and how you too can start your journey paddling the waters around State College. Abby, thanks so much for joining me today and sitting down and chatting and really excited about it.

[00:00:47] Brad Groznik: Yeah, my pleasure. First, I’d really love to hear your State College origin story. I know you moved here for grad school. Is that what kept you here? Or how’d you how’d you stumble upon State College? And why’d you stick around?

[00:00:57] Abbe Hamilton: Yeah, I did come here for grad school. I have actually I’ve left three times and I’ve come back three times.

[00:01:04] Abbe Hamilton: I Didn’t really see a future for myself here when I was in school, but the community is what brought me back here every time, particularly the outdoor community.

[00:01:17] Brad Groznik: Really? So what were you studying? I had a similar experience. You know, I went to undergrad here, and you kind of go to undergrad here thinking, I need to get out of this small town, and here I am back.

[00:01:27] Brad Groznik: Curious, what were you studying in grad school, and what did you pursue elsewhere?

[00:01:31] Abbe Hamilton: I was working on a master’s degree in agronomy, which is through the College of Ag. Think like whole farm management with row crops, soybean, corn, wheat. I was working on an organic project. So I earned my master’s, jetted out of there, and finished off the winter working at the Killington Ski Area in Vermont.

[00:01:51] Abbe Hamilton: And six months later, I was back in the area. I moved back to County Conservation District for a couple of years. left there, basically blew up my whole career, worked as a journalist for three years out of New England, came back once I got a remote job. My boyfriend and I were at a point where we could move anywhere.

[00:02:11] Abbe Hamilton: And we, we chose State College. Yeah, we came back because we really missed our friends that we have through. paddling, mountain biking, caving, who continue to thrive in this area. Also, it’s a lot cheaper to live here than in New England.

[00:02:30] Brad Groznik: Yeah, I think, I think there’s a bit of a perception that this place is expensive and I think it is, is expensive compared to the immediate surrounding areas.

[00:02:38] Brad Groznik: But when you, when you compare it to New England or I was living in New York City and you coming here, it was just like jaw dropping, like, wow, I can afford a house. This is crazy. Yep. So take me a little bit back to that. Where were you living in New England? I was in New Hampshire, Southern tier. And it sounds like your boyfriend also had a connection to State College.

[00:02:55] Abbe Hamilton: Yeah. So, so my boyfriend went to Juniata, continued to live in Huntington. And so we met when we were both living there and we continue to have a connection to, to, to Huntington. We’re really tight with the new owners of Roth Rock Outfitters. We spend a lot of time down there biking, paddling, et cetera, with our friends.

[00:03:11] Brad Groznik: Yeah. So you guys both moved to New Hampshire. You were there, you said for about three years until you got the remote job. And then, so at some point. You start deciding that you’re, you’re going to move and you said you could move anywhere you wanted, bring me into that kind of decision tree.

[00:03:26] Abbe Hamilton: We were basically done with New Hampshire.

[00:03:28] Abbe Hamilton: Couldn’t afford it anymore. The job, all the rewarding was not materially. So we knew that we needed to make a change. We spent two months living out of our trucks in the Southwest. U. S., like, riding bikes and stuff, and then October found us, like, in my parents house in Massachusetts, and within about a week of looking for apartments up there, we realized that we were going to be unhappy regardless of where we wound up.

[00:03:55] Abbe Hamilton: Like, if we were in a place that we could afford in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts area, we were not going to be very thrilled about how much we were and how far away we were from the people that we knew. And so we started thinking about state college. We both had still a lot of friends in state college, and we told people that we were interested in moving back, wound up spending a week living in our friend’s camper on his property while we looked for places to stay and wound up back in Houserville and we haven’t left since then.

[00:04:25] Abbe Hamilton: That was 2021.

[00:04:26] Brad Groznik: So cost of living, friendships and community. So no understanding the area. Did the outdoors at that point play into living here?

[00:04:34] Abbe Hamilton: In a way, there are definitely things that you can do in State College that you can’t do anywhere else. Spring Creek as a local paddling destination is huge.

[00:04:43] Abbe Hamilton: Spring Creek is what makes State College a really great place to get into whitewater kayaking. That’s a thing that is not usual. There’s, you don’t usually live within 20 minutes of a place that you can get on the water any day of the year and it’s not frozen and you can practice basic moves. Like that, that’s, that’s a really valuable rare thing.

[00:05:06] Abbe Hamilton: The caving community is strong here. We have lots of local caves. We’re much closer to larger caves in the Virginias. That wasn’t really an option for us when we were living in New England. So it was really great to reintegrate with that. crew. And I mean, mountain biking is, is great the world over, but there happens to be some really good, good world class stuff in our backyard here too.

[00:05:27] Brad Groznik: So tell me about the caving community. I gotta admit, I don’t know much of anything about it other than the signs for Penn’s cave. I did the Penn’s cave tour one time where you get in the boat, they boat you around this, this awesome cave. How big is this group? How often do you go out? Where do you go?

[00:05:42] Brad Groznik: Like,

[00:05:42] Abbe Hamilton: When I came here for grad school, one of the first things that I did was I looked up local grottos. Those are chapters of the National Speleological Society. I found the Nittany Grotto. That’s the local caving chapter. And it’s a community organization. Anybody can come to our meetings. We have them currently in the Borough Building.

[00:06:00] Abbe Hamilton: We’re searchable. We have a website. We’re responsive. Membership is cheap. Generally, when somebody wants to get involved with caving, they reach out to the grotto, and then we connect them with people who are leading local trips and, you know, they sort of navigate from there. So State College is in the ridge and valley region of Pennsylvania.

[00:06:20] Abbe Hamilton: The ridges are largely sandstone. The valleys are largely limestone. Limestone is where the caves are. Sinkholes open up on the university campus all the time. It is built on just a field of sinkholes. You may notice that there’s not a whole lot of surface streams in many of the surrounding valleys.

[00:06:38] Abbe Hamilton: That’s because the water is underground. That’s where the caves are. So there’s actually a lot of really cool places that you can go within an hour’s drive of State College. Some year round, some only during the summer because we want to protect bat hibernaculums during the winter.

[00:06:52] Brad Groznik: What’s a hibernaculum?

[00:06:53] Abbe Hamilton: Bats hibernate in caves during the winter. We want to not disturb them while they’re sleeping. Oh,

[00:06:58] Brad Groznik: and so you’re spelunking, is that the right word?

[00:07:01] Abbe Hamilton: It’s not. Oh. We cave. Okay. Uh, yeah. It’s, uh, it’s a dumb semantic thing, but anybody who caves will call themselves a caver. And what is spelunking? Spelunking is if you go in with, like, a baseball hat and a maglite and, uh, and nobody knows where you are, including yourself.

[00:07:18] Abbe Hamilton: Okay. Haha.

[00:07:20] Brad Groznik: Yeah. Cool. And so, how many caves do you think you’ve explored in the surrounding area?

[00:07:26] Abbe Hamilton: The surrounding area? Like within an hour’s radius? I would guess I’ve been to maybe 20 unique caves in the surrounding area, but I do most of my caving in West Virginia.

[00:07:35] Brad Groznik: Wow. And does that Nittany Grotto plan big trips to West Virginia?

[00:07:40] Abbe Hamilton: I definitely want to make sure that, uh, We are characterized accurately, and Nittany Grotto is an affiliation of cavers. There are not always many official organized trips. It’s a whole lot of kind of informal, you talk to each other, and you know, then you get invited to places. Caving, unlike pretty much any other outdoor activity, is not something where you can look up a guidebook on the internet.

[00:08:06] Abbe Hamilton: You won’t find cave locations online. That’s because most caves are on private property and we’re really sensitive to making sure that the people who go to caves are really conscientious of both the landowners and the natural resources in the caves themselves. There’s a lot of ways to hurt the cave and also yourself if you get in over your head.

[00:08:28] Abbe Hamilton: We just want to make sure that we’re protecting the caves as well as each other. Which is why you start by speaking to other cavers who can help you. make sure that you’re progressing in a safe and responsible manner.

[00:08:38] Brad Groznik: How often do you think you go caving?

[00:08:40] Abbe Hamilton: Currently, once every other month, but we have, the students are going multiple times a week sometimes.

[00:08:46] Brad Groznik: That’s all new to me. That’s fascinating. You know, I also want to talk to you a little bit about paddling. Talk to me a little bit about Spring Creek and how you got involved in paddling.

[00:08:54] Abbe Hamilton: The year that I applied to grad school, I also trained as a whitewater guide in the New River Gorge in West Virginia.

[00:09:03] Abbe Hamilton: I had some knee problems that summer, I wasn’t able to stay the whole summer, and so I just had all this like pent up whitewater energy when I came to State College. My fourth day in town, I hadn’t even figured out how to use the shower in my apartment, but I went to Tussey Mountain Outfitters in Bellefonte, which sells kayaks, both of the Flatwater and Whitewater variety.

[00:09:23] Abbe Hamilton: I demoed a boat on Spring Creek, which is right next to the building. I connected with the local people who paddle it weekly, at least, and the rest was history. There are lots of regularly running Class 2 and 3 rivers within a three hour drive of State College. It’s the most a great place to learn how to boat because of your proximity to all kinds of really amazing places like the Lower Yawk, Ohio Pile, the Stony Creek, and Johnstown.

[00:09:52] Abbe Hamilton: And then of course, the Red Moshannon and Black Moshannon, which don’t run unless it’s rained a lot and the leaves aren’t on the trees, but they are some really fun whitewater within an hour of State College.

[00:10:04] Brad Groznik: Within four days of getting here, you had a, did you have a boat? Did you buy a boat from Testee Mountain Outfitters?

[00:10:10] Abbe Hamilton: Yeah, I bought the boat that I demoed. It was used. It was on consignment. I kept it for like a decade.

[00:10:16] Brad Groznik: Yeah. And then so how, how did you learn about like where you put the boat in and where, where the best routes are and all those kinds of things?

[00:10:23] Abbe Hamilton: Yeah. I talked to Ed Bowman who used to own Tessie Mountain.

[00:10:26] Abbe Hamilton: Now it’s BART. The people who run Tessie Mountain are great resources for where to go, who to contact, uh, what to look out for. I don’t do as much on. Ponds or other flat water, but they’ve got plenty of information about really nice day trips on the Bald Eagle Reservoir and other places. There’s plenty of that in the area.

[00:10:47] Abbe Hamilton: They connected me to local paddlers. There are lots of people who paddle locally. Some of them are organized, some of them are not. There’s a slalom kayaking racing team that practices in Belfont, so there’s almost always somebody on the water there when you put on.

[00:11:04] Brad Groznik: Yeah, so I rode in Belfont, they, they started running the train during like the Christmas holidays and stuff, and you could take like this holiday train, and the train runs along that, the Spring Creek right there, and you see the kind of slalom course.

[00:11:17] Brad Groznik: But it was the first time I ever saw that. So it’s like these, like almost poles just hanging from the trees. And it looks like you’re kind of going, you would go through them kind of the same way you would skiing poles, like sawn skiing, right?

[00:11:29] Abbe Hamilton: Yeah. It’s pretty much that. Yeah. We call them gates. They are suspended in the air, so they’re not quite touching the water, but they’re just PVC poles that just kind of hang above the water.

[00:11:39] Abbe Hamilton: And if you hit them, they swing. It’s annoying if you get your, you know, paddle tangled in them or whatever. But. Yeah, the goal is that you go downstream through the green marked ones, upstream through the red marked ones. It’s difficult. I mean, it really, it turns what might be a class 1 plus stretch of water into something that requires a lot of precision.

[00:12:01] Abbe Hamilton: You can really hone your skills on the, on just the very small features on Spring Creek that way. How long is the kayaking season? Well, so Spring Creek, because it comes out of a spring, never freezes, so if you are properly dressed, there’s nothing that says that you can’t paddle all year round. Other areas that don’t, that aren’t spring fed, you will find ice during the winter.

[00:12:25] Abbe Hamilton: Most people who paddle year round will have a dry suit, they will take fewer risks in the winter, because it’s never pleasant when you go underwater. You know, 33 degree, uh, water, but yeah, I mean, the thing about Pennsylvania is that you don’t really get proper winters, but that means that you can do things like paddle and bike through, through the winter, if you are so inclined.

[00:12:50] Brad Groznik: Have you done that? Have you fallen into 33 degree water before? Yeah, it’s

[00:12:54] Abbe Hamilton: terrible.

[00:12:57] Abbe Hamilton: You try not to do that.

[00:12:59] Brad Groznik: Yeah. Tell me a little bit about Raystown and Huntington, just over the mountain, just 35 40 minutes away from here, and a whole other scene. How often do you go over there, and what’s the pitch? Huntington’s great.

[00:13:11] Abbe Hamilton: It’s an amazing walkable community. You have the Allagrippus trail system, 20 minutes out of town, that’s amazing.

[00:13:19] Abbe Hamilton: Flowy, single track, right along Raystown Lake. Which is usually warm enough in the summer to be fun to swim in. Roth Rock State Forest is between State College and Huntington. It’s a great meeting place. There’s all kinds of hiking, biking, great gravel riding around the Huntington area. And some really fun creeks, too.

[00:13:40] Abbe Hamilton: Not necessarily technical creeks, but nice, uh, nice moving Juniata Stone Creek.

[00:13:47] Brad Groznik: And so you mentioned that, you know, you met the people that run Rothrock Outfitters.

[00:13:51] Abbe Hamilton: We’re very good friends. Yeah.

[00:13:52] Brad Groznik: Yeah. And so, so is that a store just like Tusty Mountain Outfitters?

[00:13:55] Abbe Hamilton: Yeah. Rothrock Outfitters specializes in bikes and boats, regardless of what kind of biking or boating you’re interested in.

[00:14:03] Abbe Hamilton: They’ve got you covered.

[00:14:04] Brad Groznik: Cool. Now we’re going to enter our segment called how to do the thing where we ask you to lay out briefly for us three actionable steps on how to do the thing or at least how to get started doing the thing. The thing in this case is getting involved in kayaking in the state college area.

[00:14:19] Brad Groznik: What would you say are three actionable steps our listeners could take toward achieving that goal?

[00:14:24] Abbe Hamilton: One is for sure to get in touch with a local outfitter, whether that’s Tussey Mountain Outfitters or Roth Rock Outfitters, a place that rents or sells boats. They’ll have information on good local trips you can take, people that you can get involved with possibly, and of course, the boats.

[00:14:40] Abbe Hamilton: A second step would be to just scout out some of the areas. resources and see what appeals to you. Go to Penn’s Creek, go to Collier Lake, Raystown, Bald Eagle, Spring Creek. If you see something that you want to do, then, then ask about it. Find the people who go there and go with them. And the third, go to Red Mow Race.

[00:15:01] Abbe Hamilton: Red Mow Race is the most fun that you can have on the last weekend of March every year. It is a downriver, whitewater race. All manner of crafts and paddlers go. It’s a seven mile class two race. Sometimes it snows, sometimes the water is very low, sometimes the water is very high, but it’s a hoot both to watch and also to compete in.

[00:15:22] Brad Groznik: Very cool. Abby, thanks so much for taking time to chat with us. I learned so much. It’s amazing to me just the resources here.

[00:15:30] Abbe Hamilton: You’re welcome. Thank you.

[00:15:35] Brad Groznik: Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Rediscover State College podcast. If you like what you heard and want to hear more, please subscribe to the Rediscover State College podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to connect with Abby about anything we just talked about, or you just have some thoughts about kayaking and State College that you’d like to share with us, email us at hello at rediscoverstatecollege.com.