Sunday December 27 2025 - Gas Line and Black Forest Trails - Tiadaghton State Forest PA near Lock Haven - 5.6 miles, 400 feet elevation gain

With an intense but short warm up period coming the next day, I thought Saturday would be a good day for a relatively far away winter hike before it all gets sloppy.  We headed out pretty early and had breakfast at Cracker Barrel before heading all the way south into Pennsylvania.  It was about 2 hours 45 minutes drive (not counting the drive to breakfast) but traffic was very light on this cold day in the middle of an extended weekend.  The roads in PA weren't as well plowed or salted as in NY but it wasn't too bad.

This trail starts out from a trailhead off a very quiet PA-44 highway.  Most of North Central PA is very sparsely populated.  The main trail led through a seemingly unending and unchanging corridor of brush and trees.  

  

While not unpleasant, the almost completely flat and unvarying scenery wasn't very exciting.  Thankfully, the Alltrails plot we were following led to not 1 or 2 but 3 scenic overlook spur trails.  Even better, by looking at the maps in Alltrails I could see an obvious opportunity to extend their hike and make a little loop out of the farthest away part of the hike.  This loop we built started off by going past the last scenic overlook (instead of doubling back to the main trail) and headed downhill gradually on a nerve-wracking section of sloping hard packed snowy trail.  That trail then came to a 4 way intersection.  To return to our 'main' trail we had to hike up a pretty steep section of trail which was shown on Alltrails and (mostly) obviously cleared path but not officially blazed or maintained.  It added a nice adventure element to what was otherwise not a very ambitious hike.  Temperature and wind wise, conditions were great with almost no wind and temps in the 20's.