Trip Summary
📍 Susquehannock Trail System
📅 June 12–15, 2026
🥾 85 miles in 3 days
⛰️ ~23,600 ft climbing
🏕️ Shelter-supported backpacking

I’ve had the STS loop trail on my radar for some time as it is one of the longest loop hikes in the midatlantic region and easy logistics are high on my list of desirable traits for a trail. As I’m planning to thru hike the Colorado Trail in a few weeks, I needed a shakedown hike to stress test myself and gear, so I decided to do it in three days, back to back 30’s and a 24 mile last day.  I did know that DCUL has done this trail and reached out to David O after reading their trip report (https://dculbackpacking.com/2022/06/02/trip-report-spooky-hollow-danger-bigfoot-warnings-and-a-spider-man-sighting-susquehannock-trail-system-thru-hike-85-miles-may-26-30-2022/) to sanity check my plans. His response was that yes, it was doable for me, but I was unlikely to get anyone else interested with the short notice and high mileage days.

So I found a caltopo map of the trail and broke it into days.

For my gear selection on this trip, I went with:

• Durston wapta 30 liter pack
• Solomon 12 adv skin running vest (I have yet to find the perfect pack that has as
  much front pockets as I get when I also use my running vest)
• Durston iceline trekking poles,
• Durston Xmid 1 pro tent
• Western Mountaineering quilt
• Sea to summit silk liner
• Nemo tensor elite sleeping pad
• Sea to summit aeros ultralight pillow
• Dcf groundsheet (which I use in the tent as a double layer protection for the
  pad)
• Adotec bear bag
• Misc dcf and plastic bags
• Gossamer gear umbrella
• 2 running vest flasks, 1L cnoc foldable bottle, 1L  vapur bottle, 1 befree
  filter
• med kit basics( Misc creams, medications, bandages, toothbrush, etc)

Cooking:

• Toaks titanium cup 700ml
• Titanium long handled spoon (toaks?)
• Soto stove + 1 small isobutane canister

Clothes:

• Speedgoat 7
• 3 pair of darn tough socks, 1 lightweight, 2 midweight
• 1 paid running short (nike challenger) and underwear
• 1 kelt no fry shirt
• Folding hat
• 1 buff
• Calf sleeves, a compression/knitted pair and a spandex/cycling style one
• Topo gaiters
• Monbell rainjacket and pants

Electronics:

• 2 nitecore batteries , 1-10k, 1-5k plus usb c cables
• 1 nitecore headlamp
• 1 ultraaspire waistlight
• Garmin inreach mini 2
• Garmin instinct 2
• Phone and  bluetooth headphones

Food:

• 2 peak2 meals
• 9 pro bars
• 12 skratch energy chews
• 2 pouches of Peanut butter
• 6 tailwind

With my gear together, I headed out from Ohio at 2am. This got me to the trailhead at around 7am. There is a public restroom at the trailhead, which was nice. The day before it had rained a lot and the trail was wet. Almost all of the trail is overgrown with grass, brambles, stinging nettle and lots of ferns among other plants. All of these retain water for a long time as it is mostly shady in the forest here.

The trail had bridges across almost all of the streams, only 2 needed to be forded

There are 10 shelters on the trail, all excellent, most of them don’t have water near them, but some trail angels leave water at them. ½ of the dry shelters had water in the bottles left there and the other half hadn’t been refilled recently. This is the only fully enclosed shelter, which used to store dynamite.

Most of the other shelters follow this format, with a picnic table, some chairs, and a fire pit

At the end of day 1 I made it to Spook Hollow. It was a very long day with 5 hrs of driving and 10 hrs of hiking, a moving avg speed of 3.2 miles over 31.5 mile and 8200 ft of climbing. I stopped every 5-8 miles to wring out my socks and dry out my feet a little. By the end of the day they were macerated, very tender and getting abrasion wounds. A night of sleep does wonders though, and I felt I could continue.

Day 2 wasn’t as wet, but there was still a lot of climbing. My double calf sleeves helped with the stinging nettle all along the trail and it was a generally pleasant day. I went through the town of cross fork, which has a general store, restaurant and motel, though no cell signal. They did let me make a call on their landline to my wife to let her know I was doing fine and on track to finish the next day. I also saw this beautiful timber rattlesnake. I heard a bear running away and saw some bear scat, but otherwise very few animals other than the usual birds, deer, forest critters, and a couple of orange newts.

I ended day 2 at Gravel Lick shelter, which didn’t have anywhere to pitch my tent outside, so I found a way to pitch it in the shelter. Fortunately I didn’t see a single hiker at this point, so I wasn’t worried about taking up the whole shelter with my tent.

Day 3 started out fine, but half way through the day it started pouring rain. I brought an umbrella for the first time on this trip to try out and it turns out I don’t like hiking with an umbrella. Maybe in a sunny section of an open trail it would be fine. This trail had lots of blowdown trees to climb around and I was wet anyway. I bring a rainsuit on most hikes, but rarely use it. I only use it around camp, or will hike with it if the bugs are particularly bad. My feet didn’t hold up and the abrasions got worse, but not so bad that I couldn’t finish the hike.

Final Thoughts

I got back to the car at 3pm and headed home. On the way back I reflected on the trail. It was overall a tough trail because it was so overgrown that it was difficult to see the footing and it retained water long into the day even when it hadn’t rained. The best parts of the trail were the easy logistics, the shelters, which were great, and the town about half way through. I think that I would possibly do this trail again in the fall, possibly as a 2 day ultrahike staying in the motel in the middle doing a 50/45 split.

The following weekend I also did the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail, a 70 mile trail in PA that I did in 47 hours, 24/29/17 splits. The weather was much nicer and the trail was much less overgrown. It isn’t a loop trail, so there was a significant shuttle cost and shelters had to be reserved in advance, so in some ways they aren’t comparable, but in many ways they felt similar, but the LHHT was significantly easier and I saw a wild porcupine, so that was fun.