Pine creek gorge - Day One

I’m counting “day one” as our first two days on the trip since we got a pretty late start. I flew into Ithaca, New York to visit my sister and we decided to hit the trail that same day! We drove a couple hours south to the West Rim Trail along the Pine Creek Gorge (also known as the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania!). We dropped a car off at the Northern Terminus in Ansonia and then took our second car another 30 minutes to Blackwell.

We knew we were racing the sun so our goal that night was to hike a little ways in and find a decently flat campsite near water – which was actually pretty tricky. We set off past the Southern Terminus sign immediately into surprisingly lush foliage. This was my first time ever in Pennsylvania and I was already enchanted with the scenery. The trail headed up hill in a small valley alongside Lloyd Run which was a disappointing trickle – a recurring theme on our hike! The sun set pretty quickly so we got out our headlamps and found a reasonably flat spot down the hill. We set up our camp and had a quick meal just before it started to rain. This was my first time testing our new Nemo ultralight tent in the rain and it held up perfectly!

The next morning on our true “day one” I had a Clif bar for breakfast to conserve water and secretly worried that all of the runs on the map would be dry! We packed up and climbed up the hill back to the trail. We’d probably only gone a mile or so to reach our first camp. We continued alongside Lloyd Run, a pretty gradual uphill stretch. Fortunately, with the morning weather we decided to wear rain shells and put rain covers on our packs because it rained nearly all day. I was OK with that because my gear held up well and I was ready for a change of pace from dry California!

As the trail flattened out we passed another trail junction and a dirt road where the trees started to become fiery reds and oranges. And soon after that we reached our first vista of the gorge, although it was hard to see much through all the fog! Continuing back into the next valley I was relieved to find a decent creek at Bohen Run where we refilled our water using a filter. We found more water again at Dillon Hollow also.

Throughout the morning the fog got more and more dense, and the rain only let up for a quick break when we ate lunch. We came upon a couple more gorge vistas with better visibility – a beautiful river carving down the middle of a sea of green and red trees.

We initially planned to stop at Good Spring Hollow, hoping for a nice campsite next to water, but the rain started pounding us and we practically ran down the trail. If there was any stream there we certainly didn’t see it through the rain! We eventually came to an established campsite under the cover of some trees just before the West Rim Road. The rain let up and we dropped our gear to look for the Fahnestock Run for some water but found a dry swamp. Luckily we ran into a pair of hikers who had done the trail before and said there was water coming up at the Bradley Wales Picnic Area! We trusted their advice and used our water to cook a much needed hot meal before playing cards and turning in for the night.