Agile Trekker: PA Appalachian Trail - Section 2 - Smith Gap Road to Superfund Trailhead

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
3/18/2018	12.1 miles	8 hours?

Map: Appalachian Trail Guide, Pennsylvania plus map that comes with the guide
Parking: One car at Smith Gap Road 40.8255, -75.4143. One car at the Superfund trailhead 40.7832, -75.6041.
Directions: Start hike at the Superfund Trailhead and hike north to Smith Gap Road.

We were able to join up with a blogger friend to do a longer section of the Pennsylvania AT. At this point, Pennsylvania is getting to be too far to just go down for and out and back, so having two cars was really nice. We had been watching the snow depth maps for a couple of weeks, hoping to do this section. The start of the hike at the Superfund site at Lehigh Gap is a steep rock scramble, so it was necessary to have dry non-icy rocks for the day. We drove through the area, and the town below the AT had no snow! The rock scramble area was also clear. The rest of the trail was snow covered.

You can read about the superfund site here:
http://files.dep.state.pa.us/EnvironmentalCleanupBrownfields/SiteRemediation/SiteRemediationPortalFiles/MultiSiteAgreements/Final_Palmerton_RPEA_FINAL_4-4-11.pdf

We joined up with blogger Daniela and her dog Brodie. Her blog is a great resource for finding hikes in our area: http://gonehikin.blogspot.com/. I was really happy that Brodie is a sweet dog, and he and Trek got along fine.

The beginning of the hike was a steep climb towards the rock scramble. I think its about a 1,000' elevation gain in 1 mile. Both dogs needed assistance with the rock scrambles. I would definitely recommend having 2 people to assist with lifting a dog - because it would be hard to maintain your balance on a ledge and lift a dog by yourself at the same time. We often needed someone above the dog, and someone next to or below the dog. It wasn't a trivial rock scramble. We took our time and figured out the safest way to get up. After the rock scramble, we still had to cross a couple of boulder fields. We ended up on a snow covered woods road. Hiking was slow due to the rocks and the snow. We all wore trail runners because the snow wasn't deep, but it just takes more time. Crossing snow covered boulder fields was also tricky - because you can't see if there a hole underneath the snow you're crossing. This was a long day, but really good prep for doing more Pennsylvania day hikes on the AT. We repeated a small section that we had hiked before - between Stempa Spring and Smith Gap Road.