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| Hiking | 6.45 Miles |
599 AEG |
| | Hiking | 6.45 Miles | 4 Hrs 13 Mns | | 1.65 mph |
| 599 ft AEG | 19 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | Drove back to where I left off the day before and continued westbound on the trail. I planned on going in over 5.5 miles, but had to stop at 3 miles in due to a damaged creek crossing.
The trail starts off along a dirt road with a very small pullout to park at. It continues as another narrow dirt road into the shady woods. It's pretty easy going at first, downhill and mostly clear of vegetation. After a mile, it narrows to a single track and starts the ups and downs. There are 2 overgrown areas in the sunlight then a shady level area in the pines that crossed Wolf Run.
After that, the trail gets closer to Tionesta Creek and stays in the sun. It also gets massively overgrown with shoulder to eyebrow height vegetation. The markers let me know that I was actually on the trail, but it didn't make any difference whether I was on it or now. It was at this point that I noticed I was off the track I made but still on the trail track in Route Scout. At some point the trail was supposed to cross the creek, which was a few feet deep. I finally found the makeshift bridge, but it was partially under water. I stepped on it with one foot to test it out and it was very slick and impassable. From there it was easy to call it a day and head back.
I stopped nearby in a shady area by the creek and had an early lunch. There were 2 large fallen pines across the creek which made a crossing more a possibility here. I contemplated it briefly but decided against it. The trail was very hard to follow at this point and looked like it stayed along the creek for the rest of what I intended to hike that day.
Once I finished lunch, 3 rivers otters surfaced from under the pines. It took a minute for them to spot me, and then they were spooked. They made several grunting noises at me, which seemed similar to a small dog barking. One swam under a mat of floating stick and stuck its head up out of the water at me, grunted, and then took off. Kind of cool to see some rarely seen wildlife like this.
Got back to the car fully soaked from sweat and overgrown wet vegetation. There is still another 6 miles of this trail that I haven't hiked, at which point it junctions with the North Country Trail, which goes thru PA and a few others nearby states. It appears that the western end of this trail isn't maintained very well, so I don't think I'll be very motivated to try to complete this soon, at least not in the summer when the forest is overgrown. |
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