In a quest for the steepest, toughest climb in the area, a friend convinced me to hike the Half Dome trail in Pine Creek gorge on a brutally cold December morning. I think we succeeded; Half Dome is a dead end climb of around 1300' in 0.5 miles.

We started from the end of Naval Run Rd, just south of the town of Slate Run. It was around 6°F when we started, enough to make my eyes water as soon as we got out of the car. The ~4" of snow was untracked almost all day. We headed south on the Pine Trail, which was decent if wet until Callahan Run. After this it because surprisingly sketchy, as it was often reduced to a narrow, sloping ribbon of icy trail, skirting a sheer rock wall to the right and a steep, long drop to the river on the left (pic#2). I'd like to revisit this without snow, since it was a unique and beautiful section of trail. The climb up Half Dome started abruptly once we hit Pine Run, veering off sharply to the right as Pine Trail continued upstream. The climb is brutally steep and relentless. We're both reasonably fit, but climbing this 50% grade in dry, slick snow kick our asses. There were a few nice winter views along the way though, and a decent vista at the top. From here we took advantage of the winter and deer trails to bushwhack the ridge top over to Big Trail Rd and down Callahan Trail. Maybe we can blame the snow, but despite finding the sign and trailhead for Callahan Trail we essentially bushwhacked our way down the valley to the Black Forest Trail. We followed this back up to Hemlock Mountain for some nice vistas before dropping back down to Naval Run to end the day.

A friend back in PA from the west coast wanted to get reacquainted with the local forests, so we found something interesting and ill-advised. The Gooseneck is a wild, ~3 mile valley of Buffalo Creek in eastern Bald Eagle SF with no official trail. It's lined by massive talus fields on both sides, with an energetic stream flowing through the thick rhododendron in the bottom. We managed to create a rough figure 8 to also include The Hook Natural Area, just to the north. Both destinations, the Gooseneck and The Hook, were incredible and very worth visiting.

This map shows our route, but it includes some very rough off-trail travel (particularly climbing out of the eastern end of the Gooseneck). Check out the imgur link at the header for more pics.

Even the sections with trails with often challenging and overgrown, with steep climbs and descents. We started on Stony Run Rd just north of Rt 45 and headed in via Bartley Gap Trail. This driveway ends at a cabin before turning into the gap and briefly following a stream. It climbs up to the top of the ridge, where a trail heads east (possibly to an overlook over the Gooseneck?), but we descended steeply down Frederick Trail to Buffalo Creek. We followed this downstream for about 2 miles, usually sticking to a path but occasionally losing it. This is tough going, which at one point forced us well up into an unstable talus field (with great views). The bottom dumped us onto a much better established trail, which we used to cross the creek and head upstream on an old, remarkably well-built forest road. This had some excellent views both up and down the valley. The road abruptly and unceremoniously ended in the middle of a talus field, so we bushwhacked up the rocks and through the laurel to Old Shingle Rd, where we dropped steeply down Molasses Gap Trail to The Hook NA.

The Hook is fantastic as well. While it has developed trails, it felt wild and secret on this Friday morning. We walked through the sharply turning valley and took the beautiful but rough Mule Shanty Trail, which follows a typical old rocky rail grade typical of Bald Eagle and Rothrock. This dumped us onto the road, which we followed back to Frederick Trail (and several absurdly steep climbs & descents) back to the cars.

A seriously amazing area. I imagine the only reason it's not better known is because how rough and remote it is.