I've done the vast majority of my hiking in north-central PA, and even after moving away I keep going back because of the incredible trail network. It's always possible to put together an worthwhile loop of any distance you want, from 2-200 miles (attached screenshot of my day hikes in the area as evidence).

I'd like to break my pattern and explore more areas, particularly Virginia. Any specific forest/area in VA (or the rest of the Mid Atlantic) with a comparably dense and extensive trail network?

Big tracks on a hike through Michaux State Forest (size 12 shoe for scale). Tracks were a few days old, so no actual bear spotting.

Repost of an old trip report of mine, when my phone's camera was much suckier.

On May 23rd, a friend (Dave) and I set out on an attempt at backpacking the newly crafted but constantly evolving PA Wilds Trail. Our best estimates put this version of the trail somewhere near 200 miles, but I’m still waiting on the final GPS verdict. Starting on the Quehanna Trail at Parker Dam State Park, we planned on a roughly 10 day journey to the northern terminus of the West Rim Trail. This won’t be an exhaustive trip report, as u/ANF_Hiker has already written a much more detailed and better photographed report.

Big 3 gear: Gregory Optic 58, Marmot NanoWave 45, Borah Gear 7x9 UL Tarp

The rest: REI Flash Insulated pad (RIP), Pocket Rocket, Z-lite.. ask if you want to know any others

Day 1: This spring was a late one in northern PA, which became obvious as we drove from my friend’s house in Lancaster to Parker Dam. The full green canopy gave way to brown, mostly bare branches, with little groundco

Got my butt kicked by a couple inches of new snow the other day on some local trails

2 day backpacking trip in the snow, working off the cookies.

Posting as a test while I figure out how to use this site. The 500kb image limit is absurd.

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 upst

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 cabi