Pioneer Area, Raccoon Creek

           The fall season has me thinking again about going alone into the woods to do a vision quest.  It's a spooky prospect.  Besides, the only place where backcountry camping is permitted in the immediate region is in certain areas along the backpacking loop at Raccoon Creek State Park.  Backpacking in Raccoon Creek is kind of like going to the "China section" of Epcot Center and saying that you've been to China.  Yes, there is some genuineness about the place, some real Chinese people, and artifacts, and sights.  But you can step away from it at any moment.  (Much of South Florida feels like a third world country in a seriously cool and interesting kind of way; who needs Epcot?)  At Raccoon, the backpacking loop goes almost 20 miles, but it encircles the park and runs relatively close to public roads in too many places.  If you really needed to, you could bushwhack across short stretches of trackless forest and be at somebody's kitchen door in very little time.

           That's to say, at Raccoon, you might hike a whole day to get from the parking lot to your rustic campsite, but that doesn't mean that you're a whole day's trek into the woods.  You could be an eighth of a mile from a paved road, with attendant traffic.  And you'll feel remote, but you'll hear the occasional cars passing.  For being 35 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh, Raccoon is great.  It's pretty enough, with lots of untrammeled woods.  But wilderness it is not.  Noisome airplanes are forever ascending or descending in the sky just overhead, since Pittsburgh Airport is several miles due east.

          Backpackers into Raccoon have to reserve either a tent site or an Adirondack shelter in the "Sioux" or the "Pioneer" areas, both in the lonelier western reaches of the park.  Last week I checked out the backpacking campsites at the more accessible Sioux camping area.  They were sufficient, if a little close together.  The woods in that area is flat and relatively young.  Today I went into the Pioneer area, which is considerably further afield and can only be reached on foot...or bike...or horseback. Pioneer is far more scenic than Sioux, and Shelter #5 is the most remote.  The problem with doing a vision quest so close to home is that there is a real risk that you'll show up at your backpacking site only to meet your backcountry neighbors...and their dogs.