Finally hiked the Black Forest Trail located in Tiadaghton State Forest in Pennsylvania. This trail is by no means an easy one and perhaps the most difficult so far in my short hiking experience. There are demanding ascents and descents, rocky paths, several streams crossing and will test your endurance and in my case my feet ended up with several blisters and blackened toenails (not the trail’s fault just poor selection of hiking boots). I purchased The Black Forest Trail – A backpacker’s Interpretive Guide that includes a waterproof map from Pine Creek Outfitters and used it to navigate with my GPS and did an outline with mile marks of points of interests from the guide book with my location of campsites and other points of interest. I took an opportunity to make hot cocido, a Paraguayan drink with yerba that I used to drink as a kid and it brought back many memories. I need to improve estimating my daily hike, I either overestimate my abilities or underestimate the trail or both but I have been short of my daily mileage goal of about 3 miles. It doesn’t seem a lot but with elevation gain/loss through rocky terrain 3 miles could easily take another 3 hours. I can definitely say that I will remember this hike for a long time and hope this video will assist you in planning your own hike of this difficult but rewarding trail.

Day 1 mile 0 0:50
Day 2 mile 7 5:40
Preparing cocido 15:17
Day 3 mile 18 16:50
Day 4 mile 31 22:20

My gears list
Backpack : REI Trail 40 [ Ссылка ]
Sleeping bag: REI Radiant 20 degree (discontinued)
Sleeping bag liner: Outdoor Vitals [ Ссылка ]
Sleeping pad: Therma rest Z lite [ Ссылка ]
Tent: Sierra Designs Tensegrity 1 (discontinued)
Water bladder: Platypus 3lt
Water container: Cnoc Outdoors 2 Lt
Water filter: Sawyer mini [ Ссылка ]
Trekking poles: Black Diamond Trail Back [ Ссылка ]
Umbrella: Gossamer Liteflex hiking umbrella [ Ссылка ]
Stove: Etekcity ultralight [ Ссылка ]
Chest rig: [ Ссылка ]
Camera: Sony Alpha a6000 [ Ссылка ]
Camera lens: Samyang 12mm F2.0 [ Ссылка ]
Sony action camera: Sony HDR-AS15 [ Ссылка ]
GPS: Garmin Foretrex 401 [ Ссылка ]
Power pack: Anker 10000mAh [ Ссылка ]

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