The Quehanna Trail: A Western Loop

 

The Botanical Hiker and Amos Thunderfoot on the Quehanna Trail!

A week ago today, I loaded up the car with weeks-worth of food, extra hiking clothes, jugs of water, a selection of books, Amos’ favorite snacks, and of course, my very heavy backpack. This too was loaded to the gills. There may have been times when I approached ultralight, okay maybe light…but those days are gone. This experienced hiker now carries more stuff than ever and I attribute that to Amos. His food bag weighs more than mine with wet food and kibble, plus he’s got his own sleeping bag, nanopuff blanket, jacket, tie-out, and due to a skin condition he’d developed at home, a can of antifungal mousse and a bottle of antibiotics. I have also learned to carry extra water and extra food for him just in case. Still, he is my companion and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m the lucky one who gets to walk miles and share a tent with a coonhound.

Amos all geared up passing through some rhododendron

We drove west through Pennsylvania, watching the leaves grow more vibrant with every passing mile. What a thrill to see that Welcome to the Pennsylvania Wilds sign as we coasted through the mountains. By the end of the day we pulled into Parker Dam State Park, start to the Quehanna Trail. The Quehanna Trail has been on my radar for the last couple of years, however I couldn’t figure out how to do the whole trail with Amos. We don’t do big miles and there’s no resupply for the 75-mile loop. However, given our time, I decided we’d split the loop in two, using the East Cross Connector Trail as our cut-through, so that we could resupply ourselves.

The Quehanna Trail passes through what’s called the Quehanna Wild Area, which is roughly 80-square miles, and the largest Wild Area in the state of Pennsylvania. The Quehanna Wild Area is within the sizable Moshannon State Forest; the trail also travels through a bit of Elk State Forest. However, it is this Wild Area that has the most colorful past, and that’s putting it nicely. In the 1950’s the Curtis-Wright Corporation, with a contract from the U.S. Department of Defense, purchased this land to experiment with top-secret nuclear-powered jet engines.  The venture resulted in the Quehanna Highway, a road that traverses the Wild Area, a nuclear reactor and waste storage facilities. Though these facilities didn’t stop them from dumping nuclear waste into a creek or burying toxic waste in the woods. Their experiment lasted all of ten years and then various other companies made use of the nuclear facilities until 2002. By then, the Wild Area, was again state-owned, finally abandoned by business and highly contaminated. In 2008, the nuclear reactor was sealed off and demolished. Due to the radioactivity, robots were required to do the work. Contaminated soil was dug up and replaced, small buildings buried. $30 million dollars later – the Quehanna Wild Area is open to hikers, fisherman, and hunters. This storied past, too, had dissuaded me for some time. I didn’t want Amos and I to return from our hike glowing. However, after talking with locals, rangers, trail folks, and finding at least two accounts of persons – one a hiker and one a ranger – that explored the trail with a Geiger counter, I am satisfied that the area is just as safe as anywhere else with industrial impact.

We have now completed our western loop, totaling around 52 miles over 5 days. What an incredibly stunning a very different landscape from any place I have ever hiked before. I may be a Pennsylvania native, but this place is wholly unique. It is home to elk, which I could hear bugling at dusk in the far distance. One morning, Amos spotted a large black bear padding through the forest. Another day coyotes called from forest. Nightly barred owls serenade.

 It is rife with flowing creeks. Water dances over boulders and cascades along large flat stone. The shores are a mixture of moss-capped rocks and blond sand. Never would I have expected to walk any sand along this trail. Rhododendrons crane their branches overhead, violet leaves and ancient lycopodium speckle the forest floor. Amos gets so many dips a day. I’m pretty sure he thinks this is our walking tour of swimming holes.

Considering another dip along one of the Quehanna Trail's many creeks

The forests are full of beech trees, as well as yellow and black birch, black cherry, swamp tupelo, eastern hemlock and white pine, among others. Yellowing hay-scented fern sometimes carpet the forest floor, other times its huckleberry, mountain laurel, and wintergreen. The path sometimes a carpet of green moss, other times a crunchy path of freshly fallen leaves intermingled with thigh-sized roots of some of the biggest trees I have seen on the east coast. Periodically we weave through house-sized boulders, naturally fractured with age, creating shelves and hollows. I wonder what secrets they keep within them. Atop them grow leggy yellow birch and sometimes even an eastern hemlock.

Through a fern-filled forest

When not in the woods we travel along the edge of marshy valleys, created by the resident beavers. Here golden vases of cinnamon fern grow, and the gray trunks and scarlet leaves of red maple stand stark against the blue sky. I envision returning and simply tromping through them one day.

A marshy valley with golden ferns

The East Cross Connector Trail was by far the most beautiful of the leg of the journey. Here I walked through what are called “meadows” although very different from the grassy wildflower meadows one typically imagines. For miles we wound on slender grassy path between wintergreen ripe with minty-tasting berries, blueberry and huckleberry shrubs, and bracken fern. Clumps of trees stood here and there and the sun shone down upon us. It was challenging in midafternoon, and I took the lead keeping an eye out for rattlesnakes which are said to be very present, but what a stunning stretch of trail. These meadows were interspersed with dry woods filled with the orangey mittens of sassafras and deep evergreen mountain laurel and dark hemlock glens. Here we walked the heart of the Quehanna Wild Area, even passing an old pumpstation that was tied to the nuclear reactor. I wondered how humans could lay eyes on such a paradise and think let’s dump toxic waste.

An eastern hemlock glen

And so we’re taking a day in between our loops, giving all six of our legs a rest, cleaning up, eating, and sorting gear for the eastern half. Thanks for following along in our journey and thanks to all the folks that make this trail possible, it is well maintained and a treasure.

*Photo uploads were limited given service - so many more to come! Check out The Botanical Hiker on Facebook and Instagram to see more photos in the next couple days.

*The Quehanna Wilds backstory is attributed to Ben Cramer and his book A Guide to the Quehanna Trail.