Duncannon, PA to Port Clinton, PA 7/23/18 – 7/30/18

Monday we hiked out of Duncannon and only hiked around 10 miles since there was rain in the forecast for the afternoon. We knew they were calling for a lot of rain this week so we decided to wait the first bit of it out and stay dry for a little bit at least. We stayed at Peter’s Mountain Shelter that night and also decided to zero there the next day due to all the rain. We did some reading and played some games throughout the day. A lot of people stopped by the shelter…most decided to stay but a few hiked on. We planned to hike the next day on Wednesday even though the forecast was pretty similar with lots of rain. We found out though through people we were with and looking online that there was a lot of flooding and it was a lot worse than we thought. We were told the river we were supposed to cross in a few miles after the shelter was completely flooded and chest deep…obviously not possible to cross. We all finally decided to get off the mountain since it would be a few days before we could pass. Not exactly what we had planned for but we had some friends come and pick us up and we were able to spend a few days with family/friends that live in the area. We enjoyed getting to spend time with my aunt and uncle, Nelson and Esther Zeiset and also stayed with Lance’s sister and her husband, Jean Herold and Anita.

Friday evening Myron dropped us back out on the trail. There was a storm coming but we only had 3 miles to hike to the shelter and we made it before the rain hit! We stayed at the Peter Mountain Shelter, the same shelter we got to Monday night. It felt a little discouraging to not have made any progress since then. We could have bypassed a large section of the trail that was flooded but we want to hike every inch of the trail so we had decided we would just wait till the water went down and we could pass through.

It was SO fun to get back out on the trail and hike again on Saturday. We put a full day in of 23.5 miles. Most of the streams that has been flooded were fine to pass through which was a relief. We did have to pass through a swampy section that was flooded because of a beaver dam. Because it was all swampy, it felt like there would be snakes and all kinds of creepy things in it…not an experience I would want to repeat. We also had one stream we crossed through that was at least knee deep but fortunately we could get through everywhere.

Happy Trails,

Marlisa