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The Back Mountain Trail climbs about five miles from Luzerne Borough, on the edge of the Wyoming Valley, up the Toby Creek cut to Trucksville and Dallas. It follows a former Lehigh Valley Railroad grade, so the climb is a steady rail-grade of one to two percent. The lower half is wooded with a hard packed crushed stone surface beside Toby Creek, past Wildcat Falls, roughly parallel to Route 309. At Carverton Road in Trucksville the route leaves the grade for a set of stairs with a bike rail and a short stretch along Memorial Highway. The upper half runs through quieter suburban and grassy sections toward Dallas, with several trailheads along the way.
Back Mountain Trail
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Back Mountain Trail has about 117 to 162 days of excellent weather for popular activities such as hiking, dog walking, e-biking, running, biking, birding, and walking, with May, September, and October the best months.
Hourly comfort scores for the next 15 days of weather, tuned to your activity and your own thresholds.
Plan your visit to this trail. Get the best windows for a comfortable outing.
Enjoy the Back Mountain Trail!
In half of past years, color along the Back Mountain Trail peaks October 18 to 29, typically around October 23. The trail has 36% deciduous coverage, with the majority being red maple, black cherry, northern red oak, sugar maple, and chestnut oak.
Albert Lewis laid this line in the 1880s to haul ice from Mountain Springs Lake down through the Toby Creek cut to the Wyoming Valley. Lewis was the region's lumber and ice king, and the grade was his own private outlet to the markets of Wilkes-Barre. Toby Creek had been working water long before that. Peter Grubb ran mills on it around 1800, a paper mill followed in 1812, and a charcoal furnace in 1836. In 1887 the Lehigh Valley Railroad bought the line and widened its trade. Lumber, ice, leather goods, and anthracite coal moved down the valley from the Endless Mountains to urban markets and steel mills, and the traffic held on well into the 1940s. Then it thinned. The railroad abandoned the corridor in 1963, and the cut above Luzerne went quiet. A volunteer group changed that. Judy and David Rimple organized the Anthracite Scenic Trails Association to save abandoned rights-of-way in Luzerne County, and in 1996 ASTA acquired easements and recorded deeds with the county for public use of this corridor. The first 2.2 miles from Luzerne to Trucksville were converted to stone-surface trail through the cut, and later work carried the route across Carverton Road and on through Shavertown to the Dallas Township building. ASTA still maintains the trail today, along with the Luzerne Creekwalk and the Rimple Loop, and plans eventually to extend it fourteen miles from Riverfront Park in Wilkes-Barre to Harveys Lake.
David and Judy Rimple Loop TrailLuzerne Creekwalk
