DC UL Backpacking

Have you ever hiked the Bucktail Path? Of course you haven't, nobody has! This is one of the least used (and most rugged) of the Pennsylvania State Forest hiking trails, but it looks short enough for some strong DCULers to do in a regular weekend, so why don't we give it a shot?

Trip Plan
This hike requires a car shuttle, so we'll need at least three vehicles. We'll meet up at Grosvenor-Strathmore Kiss&Ride at 3pm on Friday, and drive up to the southern trailhead at Brooks Run. We'll find a place there to drop one car, then pile into the other two and drive an additional 30 minutes to the northern end to start the hike. We've got roughly 2 miles and one steep climb to knock out on Friday night before we find somewhere to camp along Crooked Run.

Saturday will be a 23-mile day, with plenty of elevation. Apparently this is a pretty rough trail so it may be a challenging day. We'll follow the orange blazes southward across remote sections of Elk State Forest until we reach Square Timber Wild Area, where we'll camp for the night. The second half of the day sticks mostly to ridges, so we'll have to be cognizant of where our last water is; camp will most likely be dry.

Sunday morning leaves 10 mostly flat miles to the southern terminus, where we'll reverse the shuttle and begin the journey home.

Resources

So, this is just me putting the dates up. Essentially, this will be a Memorial Day leg-stretcher in Pennsylvania, somewhere on the middle stretches of the Mid-State Trail.

For those who don't know, the Mid-State Trail cuts across the center of Pennsylvania, running roughly 504 kilometers from Maryland to New York. It is an adventuresome trail that resists being hiked. Think of a trail like the Tuscarora Trail, but wilder, rockier, wetter, stranger, bramblier, etc. (Beware the trail hookers!) Very few boots or running shoes cross these miles each year.

If you sign up for this trip, you will probably get lost and feel miserable; you will likely curse my name, at several points, but afterwards you will tell everyone what a great time you had just to fool them into trying it themselves. In short, good clean class 2 fun.

In your own home, at your own leisure (anytime -- not just the date of this event): now you can learn a ton in the online portion of Disaster + Travel + Wilderness First Aid! COURSE TOPICS VIDEOS are almost exactly as MEDIC SOLO always presents them with the latest on disaster and wilderness medical science. Intermixed at several points we guide you to practice various skills.