Camping Reservations Made

I will be hiking a 17 mile loop I created that has over 8000 feet of elevation deviation throughout the hike. 

 I will be headed down around the Ohio River for the weekend and see you on sunday when I return! 

Headed to Pennsylvania on Sunday

Hello I will be headed to Potter County, Pennsylvania on Sunday. There I will be tent glamping for five nights.

The hope is that the creeks are fishable and hike a few small sections of the Mid State Trail (MST) there in Pennsylvania.

I have packed and repacked my gear because if you don’t have it, you can’t use it lol.

Plus, there is nothing worse than in IMHO than forgetting a piece of gear when you need it.

I will be back with all kinds of content on Friday.

Be well and get outside.

Video Entry of Waterfalls Today on Paine Creek

 

This just means I need to return and make some ladders!!!!

Here is the climbing profile up the gorge wall.

Triple Falls Hike

 

Paine Creek is a tributary of the Grand River in Northeast Ohio. I have been hiking Paine creek a lot over the last few years.

The shale gorge of Paine Creek is in some locations have shale walls that are over 100 feet high.

The other thing about Paine Creek is it has a lot of tertiary streams flowing into it. Now, some of them are so small you can kick a rock across them.

Several sections of Paine Creek are accessible via the Lake County Park system.

Today’s hike will be a shorter hike than I normally do, but all the vertical deviation I will be doing will make up for it.

Today’s temperatures are going to be below freezing. The first part of this hike I have done dozens of times, but when it comes to hiking around ice and water, I always approach it like I have never been there.

I will be wearing my waders and changing into my regular hiking clothes for the overland part of the hike.

One of Paine Creeks features is that it has mostly a shall bottom. While this is generally very slick thew majority of it is shallow. The average depth is 18” and yes it has some deep holes that you can swim in. I will be steering clear of those today.

My main priority is doing some hike recon for what I am going to call Triple Falls Creek.  This little ditch has high gorge walls that are over 100 feet high.  I will attach a video that illustrates what I am trying to convey.

I don’t know if I can actually climb the two other falls and to be honest just getting past the first falls might be a challenge also.

I might have to return several times throughout this year and build some ladders to get up the falls. This trip is more about intel gathering than anything else really.

Have a great Sunday folks,

Sonder

I am working on the artwork and write from yesterday

Headed to New York for a day hike

 I will be hiking in one of the few gorges there in western New York. I will be hiking about 10 miles today weather permitting.

stay tuned,

Sonder

Hiking McConnels Mill PA State Park Pt 2

Hiking McConnels Mill PA State Park Pt 1

 

Today I brought my good friend R to hike with me. Today I chose McConnell’s Mill of PA but started at Hell’s Hollow Access. This would ensure us not running into other hikers for many miles.

 This section of the trail would be challenging for the two of us. Not to the point of whether we could not do it from the perspective of we are not used to this much vertical change in topography back to back to back.

This is also a part of the North Country Trail System. It was hot, muggy, muddy, and buggy! I am convinced the bugs play a game of how annoying we can be! Lol

We did find where mother nature is carving a small natural but deep bridge out of the small mountain that’s on the trail this can be found here at these coordinates (N40° 55.571' W80° 13.368').

I don’t know how long the bridge will last due to the water erosion, but it’s interesting to see how one way a natural land bridge is created by mother nature.

The sound of the Slippery Rock Creek and her tributaries were nice to listen to throughout the hike. You could hear the creek no matter where you were on the hike.

Since it’s been an incredibly wet spring and summer the mushrooms are growing everywhere. You could see where animals tried to eat them and found them to be awful.  You would randomly see them torn to shreds as the animal tried to find a tasty part of the mushroom!

We too ka rest on some large rocks at our turn around. It was hot an humid and that’s why we started early like 0730. We had chosen to turn around at mile 6. Now, here comes the moment where we look at the map vs the six-mile waypoint. It was 0.60 miles further. Now that might not sound like a lot but in this terrain, it was a bunch.

With all the up and down we had done at this point and how much the map had been off horizontally and vertically we decided to turn around at this point.

I need to point out that I planned the trail off “AllTrails” we all know they are normally off to begin with and not to be used as gospel. It was just another example of you can not trust technology all the time and especially when you did not create the map yourself!!

We ended up hiking  12.2 miles and ascended and descended a little over 2100 feet.

7 Mile Hike on the NCT in PA 6.28.2025

 Out on the NCT today I hiked with a good friend, and we only did seven miles. My Danner Boots sprung a leak! Well, I called them on the way back and because it was under 90 days they gave me a new pair off the shelf.

It was buggy and muddy on this section. I knew it would be this way because we saw evidence of the rain that fell this morning. It was good to get out and see this new short section of the NCT “North Country Trail”.

Sonder