HALIFAX, Pa. (WHTM) — It’s a point of discussion almost nowhere anywhere else knows anything about — and everyone here knows everything about.

“Did you go over or around the mountain?” someone asked me the first time I visited Upper Dauphin County, back before we even moved to the Midstate. Little did I understand the importance of that question.

“The mountain” is Peters Mountain, which — truth be told, at a peak elevation of 1,273 feet — would be called a hill, not a mountain, in other parts of the county. But here, “the mountain” is enough to divide rural, sparsely-populated Upper Dauphin County from the rest of the county — geographically but also, some people will tell you, culturally too.

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Lots of people up here would just as soon never go to the other side of the mountain at all, explained Dr. Craig Match, the only optometrist on this side of the mountain, who — partly for that reason (although not only for that reason: he’s a nice guy, too, and — people will tell you — a good eye doctor) — has a loyal following.

Match once lived up this way. For the past few decades, he has lived down in Harrisburg. But one way or another, for the past 40 years, he has found himself traversing the mountain, which makes him an expert. And he can assure you, there is only one way to do it.

“I’m an around-the-mountain person,” Match said.

That wasn’t always the case. He started off going over the mountain, in the days long before GPS navigation systems recommended (as they generally do now) going over the mountain because (all things being equal) doing so — on Route 225 — is two or three minutes faster than going around the mountain on Routes 147 and 22.

But then he blew a transmission — all the upshifting and downshifting going up and down the mountain will do that to an automatic transmission. And then another. So he started going around the mountain. His next car, a 2004 Toyota minivan, has 231,800 miles on it and is still on its first transmission.

Case closed. Right?

Actually, Katherine Zerby of Lykens — who commutes in the other direction, from her lifelong hometown of Lykens down to Harrisburg — is just as sure there is only one way past the mountain.

“I only go over Peters Mountain,” Zerby said. “Never around. Always over the mountain.”

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The reason?

“The road is really curvy,” Zerby said. “And all of a sudden, you’re coming around a curve, and the traffic’s backed up. And there are always accidents going around the mountain.”

Not that there aren’t ever accidents going over the mountain, she conceded. But not as many, she’s sure. (abc27 News didn’t try to independently verify that. What fun would that be?)

And not that she hasn’t blown a transmission too, once, in all those years going over the mountain.

“As I was starting up over the mountain, I was about half way up on the Halifax side, and my transmission just went,” Zerby recalled.

Maybe that gave her pause about which way is the right way?

“No,” Zerby said. “I kept going and going. As soon as the car was fixed, I went back up over the mountain.”

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Match conceded going over the mountain has its benefits too.

“Certainly when you get to the top of the mountain, you make that turn and you see the whole valley — especially coming [north] — it is stunning,” he said. “It’s a stunning view.”

Sure enough, he still goes over the mountain — about twice a year.

To be clear, he said, the route around the mountain has gorgeous views of its own, of the river and sometimes eagles flying.

Maybe there’s no wrong way to get past the mountain?

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