I think this is a fairly telling quote from keith, who has ridden “over 50 24 hour events in the past 3 years”, and placed really high in all of them.

“The woods around State College are laced with singletrack. If the devil rides, and I am pretty sure he does (when he is not running along chasing pros up the cols in summer) it is very likely that he had a hand in laying these out. They are about as rocky and evil as they can be and still be called trails. In fact, it is occasionally not obvious that they ARE trails. There are a few big rock gardens that make one think they must have taken a wrong turn - the trail just seems to stop at this big pile of rocks… Then with a closer look, the trail doesn’t stop. It goes out the other side, so these rocks are part of it. It just goes straight into those rocks, intentionally.

If you think you are good at riding rocky singletrack, or you just want to appreciate how good the locals here actually are, this has to be one of the stops on your knobby life tour. The folks at Mt Nittany Wheelsworks will be happy to show you the good lines. Watch them closely. And give it a couple of days too. You’ll want to do it all properly, and it takes a few rides in the rocks to get the knack. Maybe more than a few.

After that build up you’d be pretty disappointed if the course wasn’t pretty damn gruelling. Here’s what I consider to be an apt description from a local, swiped from a web forum (that I lost the url to - apologies to the author):

“I rode this course (probably pretty much the same course as ECNASSCU*) a few years ago….brutal. Make sure your dental insurance premiums are up to date. There are so many rocks here I think they imported them from the rocky mountains. Sharp, jagged, pointy rocks. And beside the start the first couple of miles are a rocky ridge ride, either up or down. Of course, I liked the uphill better. One section that I remember that was particularly brutal was the 12 minute white knuckle descent. It was by far the most exhausting. My arms were on FIRE at the bottom. I had to have the race promoter peel my fingers from my handle grips. The second notable section of terror was the downhill from hell with a monster rock garden of death at the bottom for which spectators gather to watch 80% of the riders endo, faceplanting on the rocks.”

From cyclingnews.com, in the 2005 diaries section.