Before visiting Happy Valley, I had never stepped foot in Pennsylvania. It was one of the final four states I had left to see, and with its blend of history, nature, small towns, and agventures, central PA felt like the right spot to explore the Keystone State.
When average employees take part in “team-building” exercises with their coworkers, they might participate in a scavenger hunt or trivia game. But at Appalachian Outdoors, you might end up ascending Mount Aconcagua in Argentina, the highest mountain in the Americas, and at 22,837 feet, the second highest mountain in the world, after Everest. It’s also known, by the way, as “the mountain of death.”
Native elk roamed Pennsylvania’s mountainsides before colonization. Moose and buffalo also inhabited the region. By the 1860s, only a few elk remained in Elk and Cameron counties. Hunting was unregulated then, and by the late 1870s, the last native eastern elk had been shot for food.