Last weekend (6/25-26), I co-led this trip with Andrea Deaton. It was successful because I had wonderful participants. Everybody was in good spirit!

The later half of the trail we hiked on the second day is on private land, and I guess this is why that part of the Loyalsock Trail (LT) does not seem interesting enough (frankly speaking, I should have said boring) – we had a lot of dirt road walking on the second day. However, if you want to finish the trail, you just have to bear with it. Last year, I hiked the eastern sections of the LT where I saw a lot of great waterfalls. If you don’t plan to finish the whole trail, I recommend you to focus on the more scenic half.

The campsite we stayed on Saturday night was great. My original plan was to enter the campsite from the junction of the LT and a white-blazed side trail at LT mileage marker 13.08, and camped near the junction of two branches of the Hessler Run. Unfortunately, we kept walking until we reached the mileage marker 14.00 and realized that we with no doubt missed the junction. It resulted in a change of plan: we ended up turning into the white trail from the other direction from 14.82.

I provide the link to my first version of the trip information here. This version has another camping option for Friday night, which does not exist in the final version. Worlds End State Park is a great place to stay if you want to hike the LT, especially when you have a large group. If you are hiking alone or with one or two friends, I would suggest you to consider the other option, which saves you much driving time.

Oh, I’m not a leader-in-training anymore, though I still need to wrap up some administrative stuff, but you sure can call me an official leader of the AMC now! Well done! Congratulations!!

Link: Trip Info

Picture: A waterfall in LT.

I co-led this trip with Kevin Perry for the AMC (Appalachian Mountain Club) in Feb, 2005.
I was a leader-in-training, so I had to do all the things a leader should do such as trip planning, trip scouting, coordination, trip writeup and so and so …

This trip was a 2-day winter backpack in Catskills. In average, we hiked 4-5 miles a day. On the first day, we reached the lean-to at around 2:30pm, that gave us some time to bushwhack a near-by summit. On the second day, we were out of the trail around noon time.

The general comments about this trip: not too hard, not too easy, and very short car shuttle. Kevin said he would keep this trip in his database for future outings. That was really a compliment to me.

I provide two links here, trip info and gear list, for those who are interested in doing this trip on their own, and for myself, as a record.
1. Trip Information
2. Winter Gear List

Picture: This picture was taken in Nov, 2003 on Devil’s Path in Catskills.