Here's a post that I just put up on my old blog: A Pittsburgh friend and I were planning a trip to the incomparable Dolly Sods Wilderness Area in West Virginia, but the forecast down there predicted rain all weekend. My friend wanted nothing less than "wilderness," so I sold him on Hickory Creek--where the weather was going to be chilly and cloudy but otherwise dry.
If by "dry" you mean "no rain," then it was a perfect time to go to Hickory Creek. But if your definition of "dry" includes not being saturated all the way up to your knees at all times, then we did not have a dry hike. This guy had a book I'd never heard of: Bruce Sundquist's Guide to Hiking the Allegheny National Forest. And using this book, he suggested that we do the lesser-traveled trails that follow the streams and old railroad beds along the northern part of the wilderness area. Little did I know (until after we were already good and lost) that Sundquist's book was published 27 years ago.
Strangely enough, for all my years of exploring and blogging about the ANF, I had never been inside the Hickory Creek Wilderness Area. And so, it was with a real sense of excitement that I ventured northward once again to the Allegheny National Forest, the hallowed ground of my past. I liked it that there was a witness in the car to see just how confidently I drove straight from Pittsburgh all the way to the Hickory Creek Trailhead--without so much as calling upon Siri or peaking at a map. Yes, that old forest is still such a part of my soul. I could have wept tears of joy and loss as I felt it folding in around me as before. But alas, there was still a "witness" in the car, and so tears were out of the question.
Of course, "wilderness areas" are designated by Congress, and they come with their own special rules. The Hickory Creek Wilderness Area has a single old 12-mile loop path that is pretty well established in most places. But the Forest Service is allowing the trail blazes to fade in order to enhance the wilderness feel of the place. This can create confusion for hikers. My friend and I arrived at 6:00pm of a Friday evening. There was only one other car parked at the trailhead, and we decided to take the road less traveled. Instead of the Loop, we settled on the old railbeds along the East Branch of Hickory Creek. C'mon, it's a "wilderness area," but it's still Pennsylvania, right? You can't really get lost. If you lose your way, you go downhill and find a stream, or a road, or a railroad, and you follow it to a house, right? Besides, the whole wilderness area is only 20 miles square, which is about 1,000 acres bigger than Raccoon Creek State Park. There's no way to get lost, right? Right?!
We got so lost. From the connector trail that runs from the parking area to the Loop, we took a right that went downhill. My friend needed water, and we assumed (correctly) that there would be a stream down there. We also assumed that the downhill path was a certain faded old trail that, in reality, only exists on paper in a book that came out in 1990. We spent the first night camped on the edge of the clear, cold, lovely waters of East Hickory Creek, a deep, rushing stream that is shaded by hemlocks and beeches. My friend admired my hanging of the "bear bag" so much that he flattered me into taking a picture of it. Perfectly 12 feet high and 4 feet from the tree's trunk. We had a fire and slept in late because of the unnecessary exhaustion of our citified lives.
Off to a late start the next day--Saturday--we began to look for landmarks mentioned in Sundquist's book: a beaver pond; an old logging camp; a bridge; an old railbed from logging days. Things just got weird from there. The stream has a wide floodplain in places, and most of the trek was incredibly boggy, requiring frequent crossings over the creek. We hopped between tufts of grass in standing water; we forded the stream on slippery fallen trees in search of higher ground. We frequently lost our footing and plunged ourselves into the frigid water. The beaver pond was lovely, though, and when we came upon it, we took it for evidence that we were on track. Though Sundquist doesn't say what the "old logging camp" is supposed to look like, I didn't expect it to feel so much like...Leatherface's hunting cabin.
This neglected old cabin might be all that's left of the logging camp; I don't know. A sturdy but very old metal bridge connected it to a cleared area on the south side of the creek. The place creeped my friend right the hell out. (He's originally a Long Islander and very Italian, not your standard outdoorsman.) As we approached it to ask for directions, he began calling out, "Hello? Is there anyone there?" I tried my best to look folksy and laid-back as I strode up to the backdoor, scrambling to remember the Western Pennsylvania dialect of my childhood: the slight whine, the slurred diphthongs, words like "nebby" and "jaggers" and "you-ins," which was our north country equivalent to Pittsburgh's "yinz." It turned out that we didn't need to make friends with Leatherface. We didn't have to convince a hostile, gun-wielding hoarder that we were non-threatening. We didn't need to hide the fact that we both supported Bernie Sanders. Leatherface wasn't home...yet.
Not to perpetuate unfair stereotypes about rural people--I'd still be one myself if I had my way about it--but for some reason, all the detritus surrounding this cabin made me think it was owned by a serial killer. I suspected--rightly--that we had strayed onto a small bit of private land that juts into the Allegheny National Forest. None of the old logging camps ever left so much debris and garbage to rot among the trees. There was the carcass of a 1930s model car, old furniture, empty propane bottles all shot full of holes, clay pigeons, old oil drums, and a lot more. I noticed as we high-tailed it back to public lands that there was a yellow rope drawn over the bridge as if to block entrance to the cabin's debris-yard. When we would come skulking back this direction the next day, after a loud, sleepless night, we would see that the yellow rope had been drawn off to one side. Leatherface was home....
It didn't detract from the creepiness factor that this place has a sign on the front: "Trail's End." We wandered far, far down the old railroad grade--frequently losing sight of it--in search of Jacks Creek, where we expected to hike back uphill to the main loop trail. But the further we went, the swampier it got. We were both soaked almost to our waists from failed creek crossings and discouraged that so many landmarks described by Sundquist were no longer in place, or else so deeply buried in the overgrowth that we'd missed them. At a certain point, after searching long and hard for Jacks Creek and wondering if every tiny rivulet pouring down the hillside might be it, I prevailed upon my friend to turn back. It was a stinging defeat. The old railbed led us back through the dismal marshes. The contours of the railroad ties still showed beneath the grasses. Little beech saplings snagged our packs and slapped our faces as we retreated in shame. It was tough going through otherwise lovely country. Down along the streams, it could almost have passed for Alaska--but in my distress I ended up taking few photos. We put down camp for the night at a little streamside site that we'd noticed on the way in, a place that felt chilly and dank and anxious.
We were discouraged and VERY tired from difficult trekking with almost 40 pounds on our backs. But the brook laughed soothingly beside us. The night was cold but the fire hot. It turned out to be a nearly pleasant evening, despite having missed our goal. (Why do we have to be so goal-driven?) My tent felt like a nest, where I read by the light of a book lamp and slept soundly from 9:00pm until 1:30am--which is almost a full night's sleep back in the overworked suburbs. We were wakened at 1:30 by an ungodly noise, like the sound of a really, really loud speedboat accelerating, except that it maintained the same rate and noise level from start to finish--for about ten seconds. It sounded like an alien death ray had just obliterated Leatherface's cabin--which wasn't far off. Maybe a sonic boom. There was rapid gunfire late into the night and the distant beat of heavy metal music. The few times I dozed, I had troubling dreams about Leatherface coming to find us and public speaking engagements back in the city that I hadn't prepared for.
The following morning, we did end up finding a little rail-spur, described by Sundquist, that leads uphill along a certain stream near the beaver pond and back to the main loop. The spur line only goes a very short distance up, then disappears altogether. The trail he describes is long since gone, and we had to use a compass to bushwhack due south and uphill. In fact, we almost missed the main trail as we crossed over it, which would have been disastrous. But we did see it and cut east to the beginning of the Loop. Even Jeff Mitchell's 10-year old guidebook was a little outdated, and we worried whether the connector trail would indeed lead us back to the parking area or if it was some other trail altogether (like the Tanbark?) until a band of Ohio hipsters came strutting by and told us we were on track. When we got to the parking lot at 12:30 on Sunday, it was filled with cars. All in all, I went to the Hickory Creek Wilderness Area in search of silence and peace. Instead I got an adventure. But that's alright. My life lacks adventure just as much as it lacks silence--so it was a great trip. I'd highly recommend going off trail in this beautiful place, but first invest in some waterproof socks, bring a topo map and compass, and don't camp anywhere near Leatherface's cabin.
PS: If you'd like to look into this trek, follow this link and check out the map. You can see that the northern area along the East Branch of Hickory Creek is marked as an old railroad line.
