Berea College has been a Kentucky treasure since 1855. With a current enrollment of 1500, Berea was the first college in the South to admit blacks and to be coed. Berea students do not pay. Each student works for the school in exchange for a full scholarship, currently worth $25,500 a year. Students choose from 27 majors. Berea's 140 acre core campus is where the Blue Grass meets the Appalachians. The school's holdings include a working farm and the 8000 acre Berea Forest. There is a Forestry Department and various outreach programs (Berea students major in Biology, Natural Resources or Agriculture, then earn graduate degrees in Forestry from the University of Kentucky). The Berea College Biology, History, Geology and other departments also use the forest for classes, research and activities. A college tradition since 1860 is October Mountain Day. The entire college, including students, faculty and administration, joins at the foot of the mountains for a county fair type celebration of Appalachian heritage. Everyone then hikes up to the top, where they eat lunch. Berea College sees the Appalachian Mountains as its mission, and the Berea Forest is central to that mission.

When you first arrive at Indian Fort Mountain, you'll park in a huge lot, although on weekends it may be surprisingly full. Then you'll stroll through a picnic area with tables, electrical hookups and other amenities. To your right will be a roofed shelter with rest rooms. The trail through here is paved. Eventually you reach the end of the pavement and start hiking into the forest. The trail begins climbing steeply. We highly recommend hiking sticks or a good pole. In the Spring it will be damp and the rocks and roots will be slippery. In the Fall the leaves will be so deep you won't know exactly where the rocks, roots and steps are. It's a pretty demanding hike up the mountain.

The Pinnacles is a seven mile loop. It is the most strenuous hike in Central Kentucky because two segments of it are more rock climbing than hiking, although they don't require ropes or special skill. Scrambling might be the better word for it.

These photos are taken in late November, so the leaves are gone and you can see the rocky spine of the ridgetop. You'll come back across the top of that ridge in an hour or so. A mile from the T intersection, you'll come to another junction. There are two interesting side hikes you can take.

The first one, which turns left about 30 feet before the main junction, is the West Pinnacle Trail. It becomes the Devil's Hollow Trail, and curls all the way around below the West Pinnacle until it dead ends at the farm that nestles in the valley between West Pinnacle, Main Dome and Indian Fort Lookout. Even though you have to turn around and come back, it's a neat hike which allows for some great photo ops looking UP at those three rock formations.

The second, which turns left directly at the junction, is the Walnut Trail. It also curls around below the West Pinnacle, but does so higher on the hill than the Devil's Hollow Trail and basically hugs the cliffline with some views.

But the West Pinnacle Trail heads up the hill. It's quite a climb, as you can see at right. As you go higher, it becomes steadily more of a scramble over boulders and rock layers. In the Spring, when everything is damp, it can be really difficult. Once you reach the spine of the main ridge, you turn left and continue to pick your way up the rock shalves until you reach the base of the Pinnacle itself.

This is a typical view from the West Pinnacle. Here we're looking South, into Jackson County. Hikers who started the day wearing jackets or sweaters usually take them off here. The sun warms all the pinnacles and overlooks, even in late Fall and early Spring.

That water in the distance is Owsley Lake. It's the water supply for the town and college of Berea. It produces 798 million gallons of water annually. The forest is also the watershed for that water.To protect its quality, the 1300 acres of timber surrounding the lake are not commercially harvested.

The next segment of the trip, the Main Dome Trail, is the most challenging mile in Central Kentucky. After you carefully descend the West Pinnacle, you follow the narrow rocky ridge eastward, actually descending for about a quarter of a mile. As the West Pinnacle Trail drops off to your right, you keep going straight along the ridge. You immediately face several problems. First, the trail is very poorly marked. Second, since it's so difficult, not many people hike it, so you have a hard time picking it out. Many people have tried to hike it and given up because they couldn't find it. Third, it's not well maintained, so you encounter downed branches and occasionally whole trees blocking the trail, and some of them are at very awkward places where you can't easily get around so you may have to go through the branches. Finally, as you climb the Main Dome, the going gets tougher and tougher until you find yourself climbing crevices and clefts in the cliffs, as seen at left. You never need ropes, but you do need to use roots, branches and thousand year old hand and footholds. This photo shows a group ahead of us inching their way up. We often see families bring a rope. The father climbs first, then throws the rope back down for Mom and the kids to use. However, we've also noticed that kids usually climb these places more easily than their parents. Eventually, you reach the top of Main Dome and find a more normal trail, which descends slowly until you come to the West Fort Lookout.

The trails around the top of the mountain follow the cliffline so there are some pretty spectacular views and you have to watch your step. There are no clouds of Ladybugs like up on Pilot Knob, but there are Fence Lizards and Skinks basking in the sun and scurrying off into the leaves when you approach. All of this land was underwater during previous epochs, so there are fossils embedded in the rocks. By now the college has collected all the good ones, so you won't find any to take home, but you can enjoy seeing the ones still there.

As you walk along the cliffline up on top, you'll be passing over top of numerous large caves. One of the largest is just beyond the tunnel seen above. There are fireholes, grinding holes, wall art, and other indications of habitation. These caves have remained pretty much unmolested because they're so hard to get to. Here, you can look down at it, but without rappelling it's almost impossible to get to. The Hopewell, Adena and Shawnee reached this and the other caves by tunnels from inside the mountain. One reason these caves made such great shelters was that the caves faced away from the wind and weather. It could be pouring rain or blowing snow and not a drop or a flake would fall inside the caves. There are further cliffs below the caves, so enemies approaching from the valley floor could not easily climb up to them. If a Native American tribe stocked enough food, there would have been no limit to how long they could hold off an attacker.

When Thomas Walker reached Kentucky, the Shawnee still lived here. They welcomed Walker and showed him the mountain. Cooking fires were in use in all the caves and smoke filled the valley and wafted up to the trail above. Walker dubbed the area The Devil's Kitchen and the name remains to this day.

Since the late 1800s, modern forestry practices have been tested and studied in the Berea Forest. As Berea acquired the land, tract by tract, it was not in good condition. It had been overcut, overtilled, overgrazed, and often burned over many times. Fortunately, Berea Forestry Professor Silas Mason was perfectly suited to restore this land. His specialty was in Old Field and Young Forest Regeneration. He had studied this topic at Kansas State and at several sites in France, Switzerland, Germany and Prussia. He knew the soils, colonizer species, grasses, and trees involved in the long process of reforestation. And so Mason set about recreating a Southern Appalachian forest on these 8000 acres. What you see today is the result of hard work by Mason and the faculty members who followed him. And this is still a working forest. Berea harvests trees both for sale and for use on the campus. In the 20th Century, 16 million board feet of timber have been cut for commercial use from the Berea Forest.

Berea Forest is about an hour from Lexington. Take I-75 south, take Berea exit 76 and turn left (east) on state highway 21. This will bring you into the town of Berea. After passing the small business district and the core Berea College campus, come to the intersection where Hwy 25 splits off left at the Boone Tavern Hotel. Turn RIGHT onto Hwy 21. This will put the Boone Tavern Hotel on your LEFT. From this point drive three miles on Route 21. Look for the large parking lot extending up the hill on your left.