Day 3: Keuka Lake Trip. Pine Creek Gorge or bust.

Today was supposed to be a key decision point along the route: stick to a 5-day journey and take the remaining segments 60-70 miles at a time, or hammer through in two roughly 100-mile days. Yesterday I learned that my own personal suffer-fest isn’t a long day on the trail—it’s the boredom of getting to camp too early. Triple-digit days or bust.

My destination is Hoffman Campground, halfway up the Pine Creek Trail, a relatively flat path winding north through Pine Creek Gorge. To reach the trailhead I first need to make my way up and down three peaks in Bald Eagle State Park. My morning includes roughly 2,500 feet of elevation over 18 miles on forest service roads. Is that a lot? A little? Can I climb it fully-packed in the mud, dirt, and gravel?

Bagels and Bald Eagle State Forest

First things first: bagels. Lewisburg sits right in front of Bald Eagle State Forest. I pop into a local bagel joint for an egg and cheese on an everything and an iced coffee as big as my head—hill fuel. I grab a poppy seed with butter to go. You will be my top-of-the-hill celebration bagel.

A few miles out of Lewisburg the road turns to dirt. After a day on tarmac, it’s good to be alone in the woods again. I feel the bike jitter with life along the studded path. On paved roads my mind can wander to other thoughts while my body does the biking. I pay attention to obstacles and surroundings, but for the most part it’s type 1 thinking, instinctual and fast. Gravel roads nudge your brain into second gear. They don’t light it up with adrenaline the way a race or technical single track might. They just ask for a little more presence. I can feel the aperture of my focus tighten slightly. Almost time for the climbs.

Actually, climbs are nothing the rolling meditation I just described. They are plodding, painful, slogs. After living in flat Philadelphia for a while, I don’t know what to expect from this segment. Turns out, I love it. The love is a little masochistic, but the grind is satisfyingly. Philly’s coastal plain be damned, my people were HILL people. Swarthy southern Italians who wouldn’t be caught dead in a valley. My tree legs may struggle to fit into skinny jeans, but they have been bred to claim the higher ground. I put it in low gear and eat up the elevation. All of this is not to say I don’t curse the gods as I do it….

I’m through it before noon. That’s it. No boogieman after all. From here to Jersey Shore, PA, where I pick up the Pine Creek Trail, it’s all downhill.

Pine Creek Trail and Thunder

I emerge from tree cover into a goldilocks day. It’s sunny, cool, and I’m feeling fresh with about 50 miles to go. I park myself on a bench overlooking the river, munch on my celebration bagel, and wonder how a town in landlocked north-central Pennsylvania had the huevos to call itself Jersey Shore.

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I pop into a supermarket to pick up a hoagie, some baby carrots, and—in what may be my first unforced error of the trip—a Pay Day bar. How much of Pay Day revenue depends upon calorie-starved bikers mistaking it for Baby Ruth? It’s got to be at least 25%.

As a converted rail trail, Pine Creek is much wider than Day 1’s D&L Canal Trail, but it’s a similar vibe. It’s a relaxing way to close out the day, apart from the occasional game of “rattlesnake or stick” I play along the way. The PCT Facebook group is full of posts of rattlesnakes spotted along route. So far, everything’s coming up “stick.”

With about 10 miles to go, the weather turns. Fluffy white cumulous give way to darker clouds. After a short drizzle the sky just unloads. It’s dumping buckets. I press on. I hear a massive crack of thunder. Sunshine and dark clouds are churning throughout the gorge. It’s tough to tell whether the mountains are protecting me from the worst of it, or trapping it in the valley in front of me. I pause for a bit to collect my bearings. With no shelter behind or in front of me, I decide to just press on.

It pays off. Around 4:30 pm, just as the sun fights back through, I pull into Hoffman Campground. A couple sits under a pavilion riding out the last of the rain. It’s a Friday night on a holiday weekend, but the weather seems to have scared everyone else off. I make polite conversation until it lightens up, and then excuse myself. There’s a hoagie and a fake Baby Ruth calling my name.