Loyalsock Trail (Part 1)
My backpacking trip for 2014 was a thru-hike of the Loyalsock Trail in PA. For those of you that have never heard of the Loyalsock Trail below is the description from the Alpine Club of Williamsport (they maintain the trail; and do a very good job of it too):
"The Loyalsock Trail (LT) is a footpath which begins on PA Route 87, ..., and ends at a parking lot on Meade Road, .... The LT follows mountain ridges and streams through the Loyalsock Creek watershed as it travels through the woods on footpaths, old logging roads and abandoned railroad grades. It passes through parts of the Loyalsock State Forest for most of its 59.21 miles. The extremes of elevation are 665' at its lowest, and 2140' at its highest. ....Explorer Scouts of Post No. 110 (Boy Scouts of America) from Williamsport, PA, led by Howard Ulman, Jr., laid out the Loyalsock Trail in 1951. The Alpine Club of Williamsport was organized in 1953 to maintain the original 30.4 miles of the trail. Both ends of the LT were extended to their present locations between 1960 and 1962."
I decided on this trail because it met three important criteria: it was within two hours drive of my mom's house, it would take less than a week to hike, and there was a shuttle available to get me from one end of the trail to the other ( a very reasonably priced shuttle that is given on the Alpine Club website). Anyway, I started this trip on Friday July 11th, driving straight from my house to the western trailhead where I met the shuttle (I was a few minutes late to my scheduled meet-up time - it is hard to gauge these things precisely when a 4 hour drive is involved). After the nearly one hour shuttle drive to the western trailhead (there really is virtually no place to park there so I recommend the shuttle service instead of trying to park at this trailhead) I started my hike at about 1:30pm.. There was a crew working on downed electrical lines there that I had to avoid and start immediately climbing the first significant uphill slog of the trail.
I should mention that it being July, the day was hot and fairly humid and I was soon sweating a lot on this uphill section. After this initial steep section the trail leveled off for awhile and then started back downhill to the next even longer uphill section. The video below was taken just as the trail leveled off.
I should note that part of my reasoning on starting mid-day was to concentrate on these two uphill sections and not do a lot more of the trail than that so I could start fresh on the remaining sections the next morning. I took the video below near the end of the second uphill section at the point referred to as 'Helen's Window' in the trail guide.
.There are a lot of points of interest/vistas on the trail, but I only stopped at a fraction of them due to the amount of time they ate from my hiking schedule. So any that required more than 0.1 miles of off main trail travel I avoided. Anyway, shortly after the above there was another opportunity to stop and take a video, as seen here.
After about nine miles of hiking for the day I stopped and made camp (an off-trail stealth camp). The video below shows my camp fire that night.
The next morning I stopped for breakfast and water about a mile down the trail. After a few miles more of woods walking I reached the dirt road referred to as the Genesee Trail road. The trail follows this road for over 3 miles. There are a few camps and a farm, so that except for the occasional car I did not see anyone. I stopped for lunch along the road/trail (I really did not want to eat my lunch by the side of the road, but at mid-day I still had some distance before the trail would go back into the woods. After lunch there was a nice view, sort of captured in the below video.
Hiking on, eventually the trail turned back into the woods. Not long after I could see evidence of fracking activity to the right of the trail (there was just enough woods between the trail and large clearing the rigs were on to keep me hidden from the workers, but it was close enough that the noise was significant (in my personal opinion the allowed margins between trails and such activity is way too small). About 1 1/2 miles further the trail intersected another dirt road with a small parking area (there were cars parked there) and several young men got out of one car. They asked me about the direction to Angel Falls (there were no signs even indicating it was nearby, but was marked on my map). I told them which way (the way I was going) and they indicated they would follow me which I declined as I was getting water from the stream that was nearby (and that the bridge on the dirt road had just crossed). Anyway, they proceeded with just one water bottle each and no packs (probably okay for a short 1-2 mile hike). I also did not tell them I was not likely to go to the falls as it was 0.3 miles off the main trail and it was late in the afternoon. Anyway, they were well ahead of me when I got to the turn off for the falls (I felt a pang of remorse here for not going to see the falls, but decided that if need be I could come here another time on a separate trip). After another 15-20 minutes I saw the three young men coming toward me from the opposite direction, apparently they missed the blue trail junction for the falls and had only just now realized their mistake. I told them they missed the blue trail, but I didn't say that I wasn't even looking for it and saw it, so, they were not being very observant. After another mile or so I reached the Kettle Creek Vista, seen in the video below.
I hiked from here another hour and a half following McCarty Road for a little while (despite the name, here it was no better than a wide grassy trail). I made camp (another stealth camp) on a hillside before the trail crosses another portion of McCarty road. The below video shows my camp fire from that night.
It rained some in the night but not enough to cause any problems.
The next post will complete my narrative of this hike.