Hiking the North Country Trail in Pennsylvania - Part 2

See the previous post for part 1.

Day 4, 17 miles
Tuesday our good luck ran out as we woke up to rain and wind. We had 17 miles to go and our destination was a shelter on a small tract of state forest land just north of Cooks Forest State Park. Reluctantly we took down our tents in a light rain and started out. Within 10 minutes my shoes were soaked from the wet trail from the nights rain and I knew it would be a long day. From the starting point we had another 11 miles or so through the ANF as the NCT heads due south. I was exhausted from the previous day and the next 8 miles turned out to be the toughest we had hiked on the trip. Instead of a gentle plateau walk this section was lots of ups and downs with more climbing than we had done the previous three days. The forest composition changed as well with no hemlocks at all. The hiking reminded me more of trail further to the east where the Allegheny Plateau is more rugged. All morning it rained and we were hit by strong winds. The temperature never got above 50. We pushed on quickly to reach the Amsler Spring shelter, the third and final shelter in the ANF. We were planning to take a long break there, get out of the rain, and get some hot food in our stomachs. About noon we finally rolled in the shelter. Unlike the other two shelters we passed this one is right by a road so it is not in as great a condition as the other two in the ANF. There was quite a bit of bird poop and dirt on the floor. Nevertheless we were very cold so being able to get out of the rain was a nice treat. We cook a hot lunch and tried to warm up as best we could. The shelter front was facing into the wind so we never could get really warm in there. Forty five minutes later with hot food in us we faced the rain and moved on. We had 3 miles uneventful miles through the ANF. About 1 miles south of the shelter underneath some hemlocks we passed the only established campsite I recall seeing for the day. The end of the ANF brought us into PA state gamelands. About this time the rain finally let up for the most part. We had a short climb up to a plateau at which point the NCT merges with the Baker trail at a grassy forest road. The rest of the way to Cooks Forest the Baker Trail and NCT are one and the same. The next couple miles through the game lands we simply followed the grassy road. After the harder hiking earlier in the day I was fine with this and actually thought this stretch was scenic in an odd way. At certain points the road was also a gas line which we could tell as the line was a small pipe at ground level. Sometimes we simply walked on this since the trail was so wet. The trail crossed PA 66 at the gameland boundary. Shortly before this the trail went back into the woods and through and interesting wetland with a cool bridge.

The bridge has seen better days

We crossed the PA 66 and the NCT followed a gas line swatch on private land for about a mile. It then turned left and made its way through a small section of state forest land. Surprisingly this small stretch of state forest land was one of the most scenic parts. Through the middle of it runs Maple creek and there were lots of trees that looked a lot like red spruce. The trail paralleled Maple creek before turning to cross it. Right after we crossed it we arrived at our destination for the day, the Maple creek shelter. This shelter had just been built last year and was in perfect shape. Indeed the whole area around the shelter was a beautiful little area.

Maple Creek Shelter

Bridge Over Mapl Creek near the shelter

The one side of Maple creek was lined with spruce was quite beautiful. The rain stopped and the sun even peaked out a few times. We managed to even get a fire going and warm up making for a pleasant evening despite the crappy weather that day.


Day 5, 8 miles
We woke up at first light and started hiking. We had 8 miles to our car. As soon as we started the rain came. We had a little more of the state forest to go through. We crossed the south branch of Maple creek before leaving the state forest.

South Branch of Maple Creek

A short road walk brought us the boundary of Cooks forest. Pretty much for the rest of the time we would be in a large hemlock forest. Most of the way the trail paralleled Toms run and we had about 5 miles of easy walking on an old grade in the hemlocks. Unfortunately it rained harder and we got very cold and wet. We pretty much raced through this section. We arrived at a road and the parking area for the forest cathedral trail. This section has some virgin hemlock and unlike the Tionesta area they are still there. The size of the virgin hemlocks here are quite impressive. They are huge and rise for hundreds of feet. We quickly admired them but the cold and rain made us keep going. After leaving the forest cathedral trail we had a short mile back to the car. We had made it, albeit very cold at this point. We quickly told the park office we were back and were on our way to find food. A stop at the pizza hut buffet in Brookville was heavenly.

Overall Impressions
The NCT was certainly different than a lot of other long distance PA hiking trails. Overall the terrain was gentler than the long trails further to the east like the Black Forest, Mid-State, and Standing Stone trails for example. The fauna was different as well. Hemlocks seemed to be much more prevalent and the forest was generally more "open" for lack of a better word instead of being choked with mountain laurel for example. This would be the one area in Pennsvylania where bushwhacking wouldn't be that hard. We saw relatively few established sites and overall other than the part by Minister Creek and Hearts Content I don't think it sees a lot of use. Despite the lack of established sites the forest is so open finding a place to camp would almost never be a problem. The section south of the ANF in the state forest and Cooks forest was very scenic. All the shelters we passed except Amsler springs were in really beautiful locations and very clean. It was also the most well bridged trail I have seen in PA. Every stream of any note had a bridge.

One of the interesting bridges we crossed

Finally there were quite a few active oil and gas wells on or near the trail. Note that none of these were Marcellus shale wells but rather conventional gas wells or oils wells. This certainly detracted from the trail in the stretches were we saw a lot but looking back this was only a small part of the total trail. I would not let this influence your decision whether to hike it or not.

Hiking the North Country Trail in Pennsylvania Part 1

At over 4000 miles the North Country Trail (NCT) is America's longest national scenic trails and runs from New York to North Dakota Unlike the Appalachian or Pacific Crest trails the trail is not fully complete. Long sections of the trail in places still follow roads nor does it have the shelter infrastructure the Appalachian Trail (AT) has. Pennsylvania is fortunate to have a 100+ mile stretch of completed trail. Starting at the New York border the NCT runs almost exactly 100 miles through the Allegheny National Forest (ANF). From there the trail continues off road through state games lands and Cooks Forest State park following the Baker Trail for a ways. In April a friend and I got a chance to hike a 70 mile section of the completed trail from midway through the ANF to Cooks Forest.

The NCT in Pennsylvania is a world apart from the AT segment in the state. To start with the terrain in Northwest PA is far different that the southern part of the state the AT goes through. The AT follows dry ridges for much of its length. The NCT is a deep forest walk through the gentle Allegheny Plateau. The first section of the NCT roughly parallels the Allegheny Reservoir created by Kinzua Dam. I had been on a short section of the NCT here before so I decided to start further south. The stretch of the trail from US 6 to Cooks forest was almost exactly 70 miles, making a good 5 day trip. We started the last Saturday of April.

Day 1, 10 miles
My father graciously agreed to shuttle us from Cooks Forest to US 6 saving us time at the end of the hike. We registered the car at Cooks forest and headed up to US 6. We on were on the trail at 12:30. Our goal for the first day was to go about 11 to where the NCT crosses PA 948.We were treated to great weather and the walk was a gentle ascent up to a plateau we followed for a couple miles. Our first major landmark was the crossing of the east branch of Tionesta Creek.

Hemlock lined bank of  the East Branch of Tionesta Creek

 This was a wide body of water with hemlock lined banks. After crossing we had a our first walk through a large hemlock forest. One thing that struck me was how many more hemlock trees were still here compared to further south. There would be many more on the rest of the trip. We followed the creek for a while before veering off to follow one of its small tributaries for a couple miles. Eventually we veered west and reached the start of the Tionesta scenic area. We had read that this was an area of virgin hemlock that was never logged. Unfortunately in 1985 a tornado came through and devastated the area and must have destroyed much of it as we didn't see any. Instead the forest was thick decaying trees with small trees that had grown up after the tornado and was not a particularly scenic area.

The Tionesta "scenic" area

We also learned that the maps we were using, both the official NCT map and the Trails Illustrated map of the national forest were slightly lacking. They indicated we would cross a couple roads and there would be another interpretive trail we would pass, neither of which we ever saw. Indeed we had no idea how far we were when all of a sudden we came to the junction with the Twin Lakes Trail at the end of the scenic area. Ironically the scenic area we just went through was the least scenic part of the entire trip. The rest of the day was an uneventful walk down to and along cherry run. We saw quite a few active wells which was a theme for the rest of the trip.

One of the many oil wells we saw in this section

Close to the end of the day near our destination we found a several established sites, none too far from roads. These were the first we had seen all day. Where the NCT crossed a forest road before PA 948 we found my father and a great campsite near some trailhead parking that didn't appear to be heavily used.  He ended up camping with us. We had a nice fire and were asleep about 10 pm.

Day 2, 15 miles
Day two we were up early again were treated to beautiful weather again. The first leg of the day involved a 3 mile walk crossing PA 948, then a climb up to another plateau before heading down to PA 666 and Tionesta creek. Once again the hemlocks were very prominent through this stretch. Unfortunately at the top of the plateau there were a large number of oil wells and roads that were rather ugly. The maps had not been updated in a while as there is a major reroute of the trail down to PA 666. The climb down to PA 666 was quite nice as it followed sidehill down a steep hemlock lines slope. We arrived at PA 666 took a break and began the next leg of the day.

Tionesta Creek

We had about 12 miles to get to the intersection with the Minister Creek trail where we planned to camp. Like earlier in the day we had a climb to get back up to the plateau. The trail switchbacked up the side of the hill and followed an old rail grade to the top of the plateau. On the way up to our right was a hollow that had some of the most open forest I have ever seen. You could see a couple hundred feet down to the stream.

The climb away from Tionesta Creek

Once at the top we generally stayed on the plateau through open forest and large tracts of hemlock. We saw other backpackers, the only other hikers we saw the entire trip. About 5 or 6 miles from PA 666 we arrived at the Hunters Run shelter. The NCT has 5 shelters from here to south of Cooks Forest. The shelter was really nice and was in great shape as it didn't appear to be heavily used.

Hunter Creek Shelter

There was a picnic table and lots of nice looking tentsites around. We had lunch and I tried to take care of a blister that had developed. From here we had another 5 miles to the Minister Creek trail. The trail went up and down several times as we passed upper and lower Sheriff Run. At each crossing of Sheriff run was a nice campsite. Once again in this section we crossed multiple roads that didn't correspond to what was on the map. We arrived at Minister Creek at about 4:00. At this point several tributaries of Minister Creek meet in a small valley with multiple established campsites. There was nobody else there so we took the largest which had a huge fire ring and stone seats. The valley was gorgeous and this was by far the nicest campsite we saw on the entire trip.

Minister Creek Campsite

Day 3, 21 miles
The third day brought another early start and we were on the trail at 6:45 am. Our plan was to get to the town of Kelletsville where there was a restaurant, Cougar Bob's. The initial climb away from Minister creek was a gentle rail grade along a stream and by 8 we were back up on the plateau.

Trail West of Minister Creek

After 3 miles we arrived at the junction of the Tanbark Trail. This heads off towards Hearts Content but the NCT makes a sharp southern turn here. We followed a grassy forest road for a mile and arrived at Queen creek where the second shelter we would was located. The shelter was beautiful and was only a year or two old. It would make a great spot to camp.

Queen Creek Shelter

We still had about 10 or 11 miles to get to Kelletville so we didn't hang around too long. The terrain to Kelletville was gentle with minor ups and downs as we stayed on the plateau. The forest was once again very open with large numbers of hemocks in places. There was little evidence of trail use as we only passed one established campsite in this stretch, although the forest was so open finding a spot to camp would not be any trouble at all.

Typical scene on the stretch of trail between the Tanbark trail junction and Kellettsville

As we got near Kelletsville we got another surprise as there was a reroute that was not on either of the maps we had. The maps indicated we would end up on PA 666 and have walk a mile along it to Kelletville. Instead we ended up on a dirt forest road that went straight down to Kelletville. At this point we had gone almost 17 miles and the thought of real food had kept us going. So you can imagine how disappointed we were when we got to Cougar Bobs only find they were closed on Mondays! From here the trail crosses Tionesta creek again. On the other side is an Army Corp of Engineer campground we intended to stay at. We sat there about 20 minutes deciding what to do. It was not even 4 so we had plenty of daylight and good weather still. We had a 1.5 mile road walk with camping indicated on the map where the trail went back into the woods. With so much time we decided to do the road walk, eat dinner and decided what to do. We quickly finished the road walk and found several sites near a large tributary of Tionesta creek. I had a dinner mashed potatoes and we looked at the maps. From here it was a climb and we decided to get it out of the way as it looked flat at the top and we figured we could find somewhere to camp. So up we went with the biggest climb we had all day. Just as we started up we could feel a little rain so we raced up the hill as fast as our tired legs would go. On the way we passed some giant boulders the size of houses but with being tired and the threat of rain we didn't stop to take pictures. At 6:30 we made it to the top and looked for a spot to set up. It was ironic that the entire day we had been walking through relatively open forest where setting up a tent would not be a problem but now when we had to set up were no good spots for two tents. We ended up having to pitch our tents in the middle of the trail just in time as it started raining steadier. I was exhausted after a 21 mile day, the longest I have ever hiked in one day. We both went to bed early. It rained hard at times in the night and the wind picked up considerably.

More continued in part 2 . . .