Saturday/Sunday September 26th/27th - Pine Creek Canyon - Near Wellsboro PA - Days 2 and 3 of PA Grand Canyon Road Trip, 16 miles, unknown elevation gain

After our breakfast we headed straight to Pine Creek Outfitters to be shuttled down the trail 16 miles, leaving our car at the North trailhead for the West Rim Trail.  Our shuttle driver was awesome.  Very talkative, full of information and she even took some pictures of us before we headed out.

When our shuttle driver drove off and we were standing at the Bradley Wales overlook the reality of being far from anything and 16 miles from our car was an interesting sensation.  With the tent (last time we had a lean to) and 2 separate sleeping bags (last time we shared the big for two bag) and about 6 liters of water between the two of us, the packs were really heavy.  The first few hours weren't too tough.  We always have a good pace and tend to cover the same amount of ground almost regardless of the different difficulty trails we do.  Still, I'm sure our backpacking pace is lower.  There are definitely some amazing views of the canyon and the creek but also a lot of more ordinary long stretches of trail slogging up and down hills or through the woods. What wasn't hum drum in any way was the fall colors.  September is early for this much color but it was magical and breath taking.

We had a plan to cover about 9 or 10 miles the first day in the hopes that our 2nd day would be less than 6 miles.  We did make that goal but it was extremely tough.  There was a huge gap with no camp sites and as soon as we got through that we wanted one of the first two sites.  Thankfully it turned out that there were more camp sites than we first thought. Not only were some of the sites really multi sites, some of the map symbols for campsites that DON"T have a water source nearby were a little harder to notice on the map.  The first site we came to after meeting our goal had some hikers resting at it.  I asked them if they were staying the night and they said no but one of them also explained that there was another good creek side creek just 1/4 mile or so further up the hill and also that after that there was a lot of climbing before the next set of sites.  I had been shuffling along at about half my normal speed the last 45 minutes of our hike and I was really weak and tired so the thought of even a few minutes more on the trail was actually really hard to face.  Thankfully that guy was right about the next site.  It wasn't too much farther up the trail and it was really private and along one of the only creeks that had a useful amount of water in it at this late date in a very dry summer.  

We got camp set up fairly quickly and the weather was very nice throughout our entire long weekend.  Our day 1 hiking time was almost exactly 5 hours and about 10.5 miles.  We had to rest (on the log) for a while before we had enough energy to deal with dinner.  I bought some new food to have on this trip but the Backpacker Pantry brand Three Cheese mac and cheese was the only dinner I brought for our single overnight.  It wasn't nasty exactly but it was pretty tough to get down.  We were so wiped out and unenthused about our dinner that we didn't even bother making the dark chocolate raspberry cheesecake we had brought for this trip which and enjoyed a lot on the prior trip.

Sleeping was, as with the other backpacking trip earlier this year, the worst part of the whole adventure.  Last time we had a lean to and shared double sleeping bag.  It was pretty tight sharing even that double bag and every time either of us moved, our Therm-A-Rest Neo pads made a ton of crinkling noise, similar to the notorious Sun Chips bags from a few years ago.  So for this trip I made an expensive trip to REI in Rochester and purchased a new Moutain Hardwear bag.  The sales experience was really fascinating because the REI employee I worked with was deaf and we used his really cool little e-ink pad thing to write notes back and forth. Unfortunately, despite saying I wanted a NOT mummy shaped bag, by the time we looked through what was in stock and would compress down small enough etc I ended up leaving with Mountain Hardware calls a Semi-Mummy.  I didn't fully realize this until I got home with it.  Although it is warm and packs down nicely, neither my physique nor my peculiar habits of sleeping with a pillow between my knees etc make anything remotely mummy like a non-starter. Brian wouldn't even consider using it and I struggled mightily with it all night.  So despite my efforts and investments, the quality of sleep we got was very poor again on this trip.

Day 2 was, as planned, much shorter.  While the sleep quality wasn't great, we were in bed for 12 hours so we did get quite a bit of sleep albeit in bits and pieces.  The northern most 5.75 miles or whatever we had were both the most scenic and the least scenic of the whole 16 to 17 miles we hiked.  The last mile seemed to take forever, not because it was tough but just because we kept thinking we were almost to the end and we were ready to be done.  We also opted not to bother trying to make breakfast at camp both because it just seemed like more work and also because our water supply was tight and we would appreciate water to drink more than the oatmeal we could have made with it.

It was a good experience, a challenge met and something I'd wanted to do very badly.  We were also very happy to get in the car and head towards Erie after it was all done.  I'll have to try again with sleeping arrangements because it has been the only part of the experience that has seriously fallen short of being acceptable or enjoyable for both of us on both trips.