EPAC is excited to announce that we have received a mini-grant from the Lehigh Valley Greenways Conservation Landscape to clean up Bauer Rock. We will be working with our friend at Lehigh County Parks and Rec to schedule the work. It will begin with a major effort in Fall 2026 and then continue into Spring/Summer of 2027.
Climbers know it as Bauer Rock but its official name is South Mountain Big Rock Park – not to be confused Wildlands Conservancy’s South Mountain Preserve which is nearby. It is considered to be an Outstanding Geological Feature of Pennsylvania.
Excerpt from Pennsylvania Geological Survey Publication:
“Bauer Rock, also known as Big Rock, is a local topographic summit composed of a mass of dark- and light-banded hornblende gneiss, a metamorphic rock. The high point rises about 40 feet above the ridgeline of gneiss, at an elevation of about 1,040 feet. A view of Saucon Valley, about 400 feet lower in elevation and underlain by softer carbonate rocks, can be seen to the south. The gneiss is resistant to erosion and less fractured than the immediate surrounding rocks. The gneiss is part of the Reading Prong, a section of the New England physiographic province. More than a billion years old, these rocks are some of the oldest in the state. They have undergone metamorphism and have been affected by at least three mountain-building events. As a consequence, these rocks have been thrust over and pushed into other rock types, so that the entire sequence of rocks is extremely complicated. Multiple sheets of thrusted rock packages—called “nappes”—have been pushed and rolled together. “
