If you follow PA 321 north exactly 7.2 miles from US 219, there's a little pullover for the North Country Trail. Don't be fooled by all the other NCT signs that you see prior to this one; they'll lead you to segments of the trail that run alongside the road on the banks of the Kinzua Reservoir. Roadside hiking is the worst, and the North Country Trail has its share of the stuff.
Follow the little connector path from the parking lot into the woods and turn right onto the NCT. This segment of the trail runs along the banks of the scenic Nelse Run and ascends the mountainside just above a beautiful, broad valley of hemlocks. I love hemlocks, and with the morning sunlight filtering through the delicate, lacy branches, it felt to me as if all the world was on the brink of being made new.
This is truly remote country. Mine were the only tracks in the snow that day, and as the altitude gets higher, and as the valley gets narrower, the trail becomes less and less visible through the snow. In fact, at the point where it crosses over the summit of the hill, the path is very hard to find. Blazes are infrequent, too, which makes for slow going. At some points it was downright frustrating to stand in the forest, staring into the trees, scanning every gray trunk for a blue rectangle to indicate the direction of the path.
After summiting, the trail descends toward the lake, which glows icily through the trees far below. My goal was the Hopewell Campground, which is one of those lakeside camps in the Allegheny National Forest that are only accessible to backpackers and folks who arrive in boats. The patchy blazes and slick trail conditions meant that it took me a long time to reach my destination.
Call me melancholic. Call me morose. I love being the only person in an abandoned place. I love trekking to these summertime spots in the dead of winter. The water level had been dropped for the season. Not a bug, not a bird troubled the deep silence of the forest. Once I arrived at the pleasant hillside campground, I looked around for a while, found a nice table near the frozen lake, and had a solitary winter picnic. The wooded hills in the distance are lovely and serene. They're quiet and dark, the keepers of ancient secrets. The Seneca Chief Cornplanter made his home in the now-flooded valley between my picnic table and the distant hills pictured here.
A snow squall moved in as I was relaxing at the beach. Within ten minutes, the hills on the opposite shore were almost invisible through white flurries. This troubled me because my only way to get back to the car was to retrace my footsteps through the snow. The trail blazes were hard enough to find when the weather was clear; they would be impossible to see through falling snow. And if it fell fast enough, it might obscure my footprints and leave me stuck in the wilderness, four miles from the car.
As it happened, the snowfall wasn't heavy. I picked my weary way back up over the mountain, down the other side, through the hemlock valley, and to the parking lot on PA 321. This was the main trek of the two-night trip back to the Allegheny National Forest. It took place on my 43rd birthday. When I got back to the cabin, my wife and little girls had a cake waiting. I gotta say, I'm beginning to feel my age. But it's not every 43-year-old who hikes 8 miles in 15 degree temps. Who is the Arctic Fox? Whose dreams are peopled only by frozen lakes, and bare branches, and snow, and jaggers?
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