Jul 24 - Clarks Valley to Susquehanna River - 16.7 mi - 8:40–5:00 - 80º F

We left Silver Spring at 5:00 am and arrived two hours later in Harrisburg, PA to meet Jerry Baugher at McDonalds for breakfast. From there we continued to the Susquehanna River trailhead under US-22/322. We left our car there and Jerry drove us to the Clarks Valley trailhead where the Appalachian Trail (AT) crosses PA-325. We initially had difficult finding the AT parking lot and backtracked to a shooting range to get directions from three gentlemen who said they gave the same directions the day before to other hikers.
We started out at 500’ with a 900’ elevation gain to reach 1400’. The trail had some rocks but was not difficult to hike. At 1400’ the trail leveled out but the rocks increased in both number and size. We took time to stop at Table Rock and Kinter View to look down on Clarks Valley.
Our lunch stop was Peters Mountain Shelter – a very well constructed shelter with a loft as well as areas below to sleep and room in one part for the picnic table. We skipped the 270 steps that took hikers down to the spring if they needed water. After lunch the ridge trail improved for awhile but then got rockier and rockier. Gale and Klaus decided that their trekking poles were absolutely essential during this part but Jerry disagreed and said they were beneficial but not essential. In any case we all traversed the area without injury, occasionally having to use hand holds on rocks to negotiate especially rocky areas.
Right before our descent and close to the Clarks Ferry Shelter at 13.4 miles we stopped for a 4’ black snake crossing the trail. After the shelter we hit one more very rough section that included considerable uphill. We agreed it was the most difficult stretch of the AT so far in PA because of the large rock outcroppings and steep descent. During our hike today we met 13 thru hikers and 10 day hikers. Later, as we met some of the same thru hikers on other segments, we learned that they acquired trail names like Grasshopper, Musher and Torch. In this spirit we eventually during the course of hiking the segments settled upon the following names for ourselves: Jerry – Rabbit (for his bounding ahead and keeping up the pace), Gale – Caterpillar (could use more feet, hiking in stages, saw caterpillars on the trail) and Klaus – Sweeper (bringing up the rear, planning our start and finishes).
From the Susquehanna we drove back to pick up Jerry’s car and continued to our at the KOA near Swatara Gap but then had trouble getting in the gate because the attendant inside was not paying attention to the keypad entry buzzer. Gale had to go back to alert the attendant to put the gate up. After setting up the tents we shared a very large vegetarian pizza at Pizza Town Pizzeria in Jonestown about 10 miles down the road from the KOA. Coming back late we discovered that the attendant had also not given us the after dark plastic access card with an embedded chip. After several attempts to try and find someone Klaus just pushed the gate up enough that we could get the car under without messing up the gate.