A couple weeks ago, my mom and I were talking about what hikes we could do around Penn State. We were heading up there to drop my brother off for the spring semester, so we wanted to make the most out of it. I have heard some great things about Mount Nittany, but assumed my brother had hiked it.

I asked my brother about it and he responded that he never hiked it. I asked my other brother, a Penn State graduate, but he had not hiked it either. My mom and I decided that Mount Nittany would be the perfect place to hike.

We got there and the mountain was covered in an inch or so of snow. We decided that it was okay to still hike it since it was only a small amount – and what a difference that small amount made. Each overlook, view and trail was almost sparkling as the sun hit the snow. The thin layer of snow made everything just that much more beautiful.

We ended up hiking to the most popular point first, station 3, which gives a beautiful overlook of the Penn State campus (seen in the picture above). It was interesting to climb up the top and finally be enough above the trees to look out over everything.

We decided to hike the long loop, taking us to many other overlooks which ended up being  a little over 6 miles. On the descent, things started to ice over a lot since the sun was setting. This made things very difficult. We spent a solid thirty minutes traveling on a small 0.2 mile section.

Aside from this struggle on the way down, we completed a very beautiful, refreshing hike. As we were walking the last half mile, we saw a dog which turned out to be Shane, the trail dog. He was so well trained and led the way back to the road. The picture on the left above shows Shane out in front of us on the trail and on the right is the trail guide board showing Shane’s wood carving.

This trip would get a  7/10 for the views, 7/10 for the difficulty because of the snow and 4/10 without the snow or on a smaller loop. A big thing I learned is to always plan ahead and know potential dangers that may arise. We did not expect the mountain to be as icy as it was at the end, so planning for these things is critical.

I definitely would recommend any Penn State student to hike this mountain at some point during there college years!