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