Trip Report: Quehanna Trail (~75 miles). Election Week Escape From DC w/ Geiger Counters, Coyotes, and Altoona Pizza

Photo: Logan.

We love our traditions around here.  One week after DC UL’s annual Four State Challenge, we launched our third post-presidential election week escape from DC to the 75-mile Quehanna Trail in north-central Pennsylvania.  In 2016, I vividly remembered our shell-shocked faces after a surprisingly tumultuous week as we gathered at the trailhead on that long-ago Thursday evening.   In 2020, I sat out the Quehanna DC UL outing and sat on my couch instead, glued to the latest results and analysis.  I missed out on their adventure, and I loved hearing about Marika and Jen joining them mid-trip to let the group know who won the election.  So, in 2024, I wasn’t going to miss the chance again to unplug for four nights.  Quehanna got my vote.  The hiking plan: counterclockwise along the main Quehanna loop, starting from Parker Dam State Park with 2-3 miles Thursday evening, November 7, then 20ish miles each day on the 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th, finishing up the remaining miles on Monday, November 11.  For me, guidance was the latest Purple Lizard map and AllTrails on my phone.  Others also had the Caltopo route from previous outings.

Our Quehanna Six fought their way out of DC traffic at different times on Thursday, with Steve and Logan getting to Parker Dam State Park in the afternoon to hike a couple of miles to a flat spot near Little Laurel Run, similar to previous DC UL outings — including an epic 95-degree weather jaunt four months earlier.  Chet joined them shortly thereafter.  I registered my vehicle with the ranger station and parked at 10:00 p.m.  Though not planned to align so nicely, David and Wesal pulled in about ten minutes after me, and I turned around on the trail when I saw their headlights so we could hike together to find the others.  It had gotten into Wesal’s head when she arrived to try the infamous “Altoona pizza” after our hike since we were about an hour or so north of Altoona.  Soon, she got it into the rest of our heads.  Don’t know what this is?  A picture is worth a thousand American cheese slices.

This should have been easy.  It’s tough to walk by a group of tents at a spot you all knew to look for, right?  I blame (credit?) the astounding stars, including a swath of the Milky Way, for distracting us.  Having failed to find the early crew at about three miles, we decided to call it and regroup in the morning.  We found a nice flat spot and then got a little surprised by how close we were to a forest road when a couple of trucks roared by minutes later.  It was already brisk, in the mid-30s Fahrenheit, and we settled in for a short night of sleep.  The only thing that dampened my mood was an accident with a delicious tall boy of Bell’s Two Hearted Ale I schlepped out for this evening.  Rookie mistake on my part:  I cracked it open to take a first sip, then set it down to set my tent up.  When I turned back, it had, of course, tipped over, and the Quehanna Wild Area had accepted the offering.  We figured this was our way of pouring one out for those who couldn’t join us this year.

At 6:30 a.m., Steve, Logan, and Chet strolled up to us, packed up and ready to go.  Less than a mile back, they had made camp exactly where they planned to be.  David surprised us all with the most unexpected gadget on a UL outing:  a Geiger counter!  Somehow, I was the only one in our group who didn’t know that the Quehanna area was a mid-1950s testing ground for an experimental nuclear jet engine program.  And David was here to keep us safe and sound with regular readings.

Photo: Logan

Throughout this trip, we benefited immensely from Logan, Chet, and Steve’s recent outings.  They plotted for us the best campsites and notes on where to fill up on water.  I couldn’t really remember much from my time on it eight years ago.  God bless them, Logan and Chet had even done the aforementioned 95-degree trip in June and returned in November to do the trail again.  For our first full day of hiking on Friday, we had glorious weather, picture-perfect break spots, and a smooth and even mostly flat introduction to the Quehanna Trail. 

Photo: David

The 22 or so miles passed by, and we were all together near a tributary of Mosquito Creek — apparently an infamous area of extra contamination — to regale each other around the fire with the kinds of superpowers we would manifest after being exposed to radiation all weekend long.  Suffice it to say that we would not make a formidable superhero team with our particular choices.  You may be surprised to read that David did NOT choose the powers of a spider.  (Side note: Dan Durston does not sponsor us, but five of the six of us were all sporting his X-Mids for shelters.).  We even got our first burst of nighttime coyote chatter, a Quehanna usual.

For Saturday and our 23 planned miles to make it to a set of ruins for our next site, the trail got a bit more challenging with classic Pennsylvania ups and downs, dropping off the plateau to hike along the sides of hills, up creek valleys, and picking our way along some fascinating rock formations.  Though the deciduous trees, mostly birch, beech, oak, and maple, had all shed their leaves, now crunchy and deep underfoot, we were surrounded almost nonstop with a combination of green ferns, mountain laurel, rhododendron tunnels, white pines, spruce, and/or hemlock.

Photo: Wesal.

We even had a little gift of trail magic in the form of filet mignon sandwiches (I shit you not) from a very friendly family who were out for lunch not far from their hunting camp.  Logan stopped first to chat with them and walked away with two carefully tinfoil-wrapped gems.  Though Logan kindly earmarked the second sandwich for Steve, the Baconator, when he surprisingly declined, I enjoyed it for him.

Quehanna can be a famously underused trail based on DC UL’s prior jaunts, but we bumped into a few backpackers this time out, including a solo hiker who, it seemed, did not particularly appreciate all of us saying “hi!” to her in turn as we passed.  By the time I caught up with her, the last of our group in drawn-out succession, she responded to my cheery “Hello there!  How are you doing today?” with a wordless snap of her head in the other direction.  I scurried away to give her space.  I can see her point on how annoying it might be if you came to such a trail to not deal with overeager hikers passing you like it’s a DC running club.

Logan, Chet, Wesal, and David got in before sunset to our unique site nestled amongst some unknown building ruins that I can only speculate once housed nuclear jet engines and a nearby pit of doom that David wisely set his Geiger counter up next to, just in case.  I rolled in a bit later, calling out to them in my coyote and elk howls as I saw their tents in the distance.  We settled in for another great evening around a roaring fire and got a text from Steve that he pulled up short when it got dark at a little site near the top of the plateau at Little Fork Vista.  We think he just wanted to have his own solo dance party and didn’t like our moves.  We got even better boisterous coyote shenanigans, including what seemed like multiple packs howling at each other with us in the middle — until I foolishly decided to yell out in brotherly love with my best coyote call and promptly silenced the lot of them.

For Sunday, our last 20-mile day on the trail, we knew rain was going to hit at some point.  Logan hoped it would be after we arrived at camp, but the forecast kept trending sooner and got us all a little worried.  Unlike previous days of more collegial group hiking, everyone pretty much set out at their own fastest pace to get as many miles in before the rain started. Before we went our separate ways, we enjoyed a spectacular red sunrise against the backdrop of a pure birch forest, which is one of the most uniquely scenic spots on the trail. 

It hit midday, slow and light at first, but picking up in volume over the afternoon.  The crunchy leaves were now slick on the hillsides.  This weather didn’t deter a heroic trail maintainer who was out with a chainsaw and covered in druid-like billowing rain gear.  We were pretty spread out by the time we all passed her, and she gave Steve, last in our party that day, some grief on his behalf for the rest of us “leaving him behind.”  Her superpower was clearly maintaining this fantastic trail and caring for wayward hikers.  Unfortunately for Steve, she wasn’t around when he took a wrong turn on the short road walk that had him doubling back a bit.

I rolled into camp on the plateau just beyond Caledonia Pike to a great site scouted by David.  There was no nearby water, but we had been warned in advance to load up near Medix Run before the climb.  Logan, Chet, David, and Wesal were all cozy in their shelters by 4:00 p.m., and I quickly joined them.  Steve rolled in a bit later.  There would be no fireside fun.  The rain kept on pounding until after midnight.  We enjoyed our solo downtime.  I read a New Yorker cover-to-cover.  Wesal dreamed of American cheese on pizza. (I admit to feeling guilty that I didn’t reenact early Whiskey Fairy moments in similar conditions when I danced around in the rain to deliver whiskey rations to individual tents to brighten the mood. Alas, I’m off my game these days.)

We woke to a rain-free day and a handful of final miles back to Parker Dam State Park.  A bit scarily, Chet pointed out a tree that fell across the campsite the team had used in June. He noted it might have taken out three tents had it fallen when they had camped there. Widowmakers are real, y’all. We were all off trail by 9:30 a.m.  Alltrails tracked a little under 10,000 feet of elevation gain for the hike for me and 75.5 miles.

We beelined to the Knickerbocker for a traditional pint and lunch at one of DC UL’s most beloved restaurants.  It hit the spot . . . almost.  No Altoona pizza.  And we weren’t going to pass this chance up.  Our waiter directed us to Dino’s Pizza across town, and off Wesal, David, and I went to finish this part of the quest.  Altoona pie was everything we thought it would be.  Or rather, everything the Knickerbocker waiter intimated it would be: “Some people swear by it, but I wouldn’t eat it.”

In other news, Steve made friends with his pretzel.

In four years, I’m sure a new crew will say screw it to DC politics and make their way out to the wilds and radiation to keep this Grand Ol’ Tradition going.  The Quehanna Trail is special like that. I hope I’m with them.

-Evan/Whiskey Fairy