A Day in the Woods - 11/1/10 - Part 2

Appalachian Trail - Port Clinton, PA - West side of gap

After the morning's hike on the east side of the gap, Dave and I drove around a little bit to grab a few geocaches (we ended the day with 10, or at least I did - I found a couple that he already had from a prior hike).

Finishing that, we parked at the trail head near the scenic railroad behind Port Clinton, and headed into the woods for a cache called Hooties Cubby that was located about 1.5 miles west on the Appalachian Trail. We parked at the blue dot, made our away to the Schuylkill River Trail, headed south a tenth of a mile or two to grab a cache, and then backtracked to get the AT and head up the hill. And I do mean up the hill.

Unlike the east side of the gap, where the AT tackles the slope by switch-backing across the grain of the slope, the west side pretty much goes straight up. As Dave has pointed out to me, the AT sign should AT pointing up and to the right, not just to the right. The first part that climbs away from the SRT is steep enough that rock stairs have been built into the hillside. The stairs soon end, but the climb doesn't level out much for maybe the first half mile.

Pictures of steep slopes never seem to do them justice, but in the photo from above the scenic railroad, you can get some idea of how far above the train cars we have gotten in a pretty short distance. The east slope we hiked in the morning is in the background of that photo. The morning's hike had us gain about 650 feet of elevation. This had us gain about 950 feet, and it was steeper getting there. In the shape I am in, it was a bit of a thigh-burner, but not too horrible. Dave let me set a fairly leisurely pace, and that coupled with a short stop to grab a cache halfway up the slope allowed us to get over the brow of the slope and onto the milder slope in good shape. It felt wonderful, and was probably the steepest slope I have hiked as an adult.

Once we achieved the ridge top, it was a nice easy hike, with a somewhat different feel to it than the morning. The ridge top was much broader, so that sense of ground sloping sharply away to both sides was missing. This also made the ridge top much less exposed to the wind, and so this part of our walk was not nearly as cold. At the end of our walk, we easily found Hooties Cubby, which was in a rock covered hollow at the base of a tree. Finding this cache was very very simple, but getting there certainly wasn't. The terrain rating on this was 3.5 on a 1-5 scale (higher being harder), and we felt like we earned this one. I have done caches with higher terrain ratings that required a lot less effort than this. Another nice thing about this cache was that it was placed in March 2003, which makes it a pretty old cache. Geocaching first came into existence when the military gps network was opened for broad public use, and the first cache was published soon after this happened (May 3, 2000 near Portland Oregon - thus a hobby was born). The oldest cache I have found at this point is from April 2001. So seeing the signatures in this one dating all the way back to 2003 is cool (only 23 of my 449 cache finds at this point are 2003 or earlier).

The hike back was easier, as it was downhill all the way. At the really steep part, I could feel the usual different kind of burn - your knees, shins and quads are your brakes on a down slope, and this was a heck of a down slope. I'm not sure how much fun this would be with a 30 pound backpack, but maybe I'll find out someday.

Back at the car, we finished up the day with a few more easy geocaches (park n grabs), and made the obligatory stop at Cabela's, a huge outdoors store just south of Port Clinton. Then home in time for dinner.

Thanks to Dave for taking the day and coming out for a nice day in the outdoors.