kokonstas’ Trip Reports

Would not recommend in it's current state. The first half of this hike was awesome. Great views, some fun elevation changes, kinda weird being on private property, but no big deal. On this first half, the first ~2miles were marked, and after that, I was dependent on the GPS to keep me on trail. I had to backtrack a few times and the trail wasn't always clear, but not a big deal. Once you make the turn off Gas Well road, things took a turn for the worse. This was not a trail, just woods. The ground cover was heavy and uneven. The trees were marked, but poorly. The markings were very faded, and the next marked trees weren't visible until you walked at least a few yards out from your current ones. At one point, there were two sets of trail markings that split, until one set just ended. It seemed like whoever marked the trees was also lost. The GPS did not match the trail markings, but the trail marks are so bad, you'll need a GPS to at least keep you in the right direction when you can't find the next set of marked trees. So once you're starting to get lost in the woods, and you notice the GPS doesn't match the only landmarks you can find, and you're tired from crawling up and under plenty of trees, rocks, and crevices, you'll notice there's plenty of claw marks on the trees and you must be in bear territory. Once you get to Jacob's run, there's still no real trail. At some parts, you can kinda tell where a trail was, but was so underused and unmaintained that it sorta disappears and comes back here and there. Plenty of down trees made me have to cross the creek a few times, hope you got waterproof shoes. Once you get to the pond that Jacob's run feeds into before the bridge, I couldn't find a single way through. Maybe I was tired and struggling at that point, but the only option I found was to bushwack through a swampy thicket to get to the road. So yeah, first half awesome. Second half, dangerous without being properly prepared and expecting a challenge