Christmas Camping at Quebec Run and Bear Run

The pandemic has been isolating, and impoverishing, and deadly.  I do not mean to minimize the pain that it has caused for millions of people around the world.  But two things 2020 delivered on in a big and beautiful way: 1) an end to the Trump cabal, and 2) a WHITE CHRISTMAS in Pennsylvania.  2020 also gave me the great majority of my weekends free to go backpacking.  A friend and I did a snowy overnight at Quebec Run in the Forbes State Forest just a few days after Christmas Day--but still well within the season of Christmastime.  

The wintry forest was hushed and bright.  There is nothing to equal the silence of the woods under a fresh carpet of snow.  Not a bug, not a bird, not a gust of wind.  My friend has a 4-season tent, but my 3-season worked nicely with a borrowed double-down sleeping bag.  We laid waste to all the dead and fallen wood in the environs of our campsite and built for ourselves a great blazing fire at the edge of the scenic Quebec Run.  This is a land of rhododendrons, and hemlocks, and oversized rocks.  Because all the snow insulated the fire from spreading, I didn't feel the need to smother it when I went to bed.  The next morning, it still smoldered.  It is indeed a joy to waken on a chilly winter's day to a fire ready made. 

My second backpacking trip of Christmastide was yet another solo trek.  This time I returned to the Bear Run Nature Reserve, which is the first place I ever backpacked (in this very same tent) nearly ten years ago.  

Camping here is free, but you have to reserve your spot online.  The campsites are very dispersed and you never have any neighbors.  I claimed site #4 because it sits at the end of its own little dead end trail.

Bear Run Nature Preserve is on the estate of Fallingwater, which also belongs to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.  There's nothing especially great about Bear Run; it's just woods.  But it made a quick and easy destination for a single night away from Pittsburgh.