Pinchot Trail in PA – April 29 to May 1
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The origin of this trip began in January 2020 as my friend Erik and I planned his first backpacking trip together. We picked a weekend in May 2020 to go and then Covid hit, and everything changed. His day (and night) job as an ER doctor meant he simply couldn’t count on any time off. Finally, in January of this year, we picked the last weekend in April to go. I opened the trip up to some of my regular hiking companions and it turned out that Mark, Steve, and Bob would be able to join us. We decided to hike the Pinchot Trail in the Poconos of Pennsylvania. It’s mostly up on the Pocono Plateau so there isn’t a lot of elevation gain or loss. Without elevation changes you don’t have a lot of views, but the trail (for the most part) is really nice to hike, and I wanted Erik’s first trip to be a good one. It’s a 23-mile loop of about a dozen small trails strung together. Now we were hoping for good weather, and just before the trip it looked perfect:
We planned to meet at the trail parking area between 11-12 on Friday, to give Mark and Steve a reasonable morning start for their 6-hour drive from the Cleveland area. Erik and I got there a little early, so I drove to where the trail crossed a road close to where we planned to camp each night and stashed some beer in two locations. The others all arrived and at 11:30 we hit the trail. Most of the trail is in hardwood forests:
And we did have a couple of cool rhododendron tunnels:
And even a few swampy areas on Friday:
We took a couple of short breaks while hiking and arrived at the Choke Creek Falls, near our campsite, in just four hours:
I had explained to everyone that this would be a relaxing trip and to bring chairs because we’d have a bunch of time in camp each day. We put up our shelters and sat around enjoying the sun. A couple of us enjoyed the beers that Mark carried while our coffee fiends brewed a cup or two:
A couple of years ago, when Vargo released their folding TI grill, I decided to try cooking a “real” meal the first night on the trail. I pre-bake potatoes and then wrap them in foil. I also toast pine nuts and blanch green beans and wrap them in foil. For our entrée I like steaks. My local butcher prepares a cut I’d never seen anywhere else. They call it a “ribeye fillet” – it’s a ribeye steak without the cap. The potatoes and green beans are simply carried as is and I put the steaks in my coozie to keep them cool until it’s time to eat. We got a fire going and when we had a good bed of coals it was time to start cooking. The potatoes went in the fire first and then it was time to put on the steaks (seasoned with just salt and pepper):
It took me some time to get used to the Ti grill – the steaks usually stick to it. I’ve done this enough with Mark that he’s gotten very good at using a stick to hold the grill steady while I use my “tongs” to flip the steaks. I think I bought the orange connector from Vargo as well, but they don’t seem to carry it anymore. I’m really not a fan of sporks but my friends who don’t backpack seem to regularly give them to me as gifts and I finally found a use for them!
Quickly it was time to eat…Happily all five of use liked our steaks medium rare so I didn’t have much work to do…
We sat around enjoying the fire, some Pinot Noir, Scotch, and good friends. The night was perfectly clear, and the stars were amazing. We retired to our shelters around 10 pm. It was a little colder than we had expected (in the upper 20’s) when we went to sleep, but everyone slept well.
I think Bob and Erik were both up around 5:30 to enjoy some coffee and I reluctantly got out of my hammock at 6 am. It was much colder than I was expecting – I checked my thermometer, and it said the temperature was 19 degrees (with a low of 18 overnight). I was convinced my thermometer wasn’t working until I found my full 2-liter Platy frozen solid! A couple of the people we passed as we were hiking later in the day lamented that they hadn’t put their filters in their sleeping bags with them, so we weren’t the only ones surprised by the temps. We had a very leisurely morning – I even tried “baking” the Packit Gourmet jalapeno cheddar biscuits using a Ti fry pan and my Starlyte alcohol stove. It was okay but I don’t think I’ll bother again.
We were finally on the trail around 9:20 and were following Choke Creek for most of the first three miles:
There are a lot of campsites along the stream, and we passed several where the occupants were moving more slowly than us (or not at all). After covering an easy 6 miles we stopped for lunch at a campsite next to a stream. When you’re carrying a chair, you find that it’s very easy to pull it out whenever you’re stopping:
After 45 minutes we hit the trail again, and this time it hit back! The trail was hacked through another rhododendron thicket and was mostly 6-8 inches of swampy muck. The rhodos forced you to stay on the trail and it was easily the least pleasant portion of the trail. It wasn’t until we completed this section that we realized we were on the well-named Beiler Swamp Trail.
We hit a road crossing (where Mark again picked up a 4-pack of Boom Sauce IPA to carry), marking the end of the southern portion of the trail. While the southern portion of the trail had lots of variety and twisty turning trails, the northern portion has long straight stretches with either hardwoods, evergreens, or low scrub around you. We covered the four miles to where I had planned to camp in two hours and crossed Painter Creek to our campsite right at 4:00:
We had another relaxing evening in camp with a fire. We all agreed to be on the trail by 7:30 the next morning so that we could get on the road home as soon as possible. I turned in early (around 8:00) and the others called it quits in the next hour. The night was cold again, with a low of 29 degrees, but we all slept well.
As we’re all early risers, getting ready to go wasn’t a problem. Mark was completely packed up and Bob was finishing when I got up at 6:00. Because we were down in the hollow, I knew that we were facing some climbing to start our day. As I’m the slowest going uphill, Steve and I left at 7:00 knowing that the others would catch up with us. They caught us about 40 minutes later. Parts of this section reminded us that we were hiking in Pennsylvania:
At 9:30 we emerged in the Pinchot Trail parking area, having covered the 6 miles in 2.5 hours. We said our goodbyes and began our drives home. Hopefully we’ll be able to make the West Rim Trail (along the west rim of the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon) work for a trip in the fall. Everyone got along really well, and it was a very successful first backpacking trip for Erik.
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