Raccoon Creek State Park, PA Backpacking - Appendix A

In my two previous posts about my overnight hike at Raccoon Creek State Park (Part One Here & Part Two Here) I mentioned that once we had arrived at the backpacking shelters our evening was fairly uneventful. Well, that was untrue, but the events of that evening had not much to do with my review of RCSP so I felt it only proper to leave them unmentioned until later. Now I'll iterate my misadventures of that evening.

I want to come back in the summer. This looks like a beautiful park!

After we had finally sorted out sleeping arrangements and gotten ourselves unpacked we set about to collect firewood. Not far from the firepit was a very conveniently downed tree. I grabbed my backpacking axe (it is a Gerber Camp Axe which I had bought from Smokey Mountain Knife Works while on my Honeymoon) and set to work chopping some limbs for our fire.

Two things to note: One, I keep that ax sharp. Extremely sharp. It is a light weight axe and as such it needs a sharp edge so that it bites into the wood. Two, it is a light axe; it will bounce off once in a while no matter how sharp you make it.

As I was chopping, the head bounced. It skipped off the log and I felt it hit my pinky finger on my left hand, then bump my left thigh. I looked, finger didn't hurt, pants were not cut, everything is good. I went back to chopping.

Raccoon Creek State Park, PA Backpacking - Part Two

In part one, I had left off with our tired party just arriving at the Pioneer Camp area. Pioneer is located off of the Appaloosa Trail, which is what the Forest Trail is called once it crosses the bridge on Nichol Road. The spur trail for Pioneer leads you into an open area surrounded by different group campsites.

We dropped our packs and took a look around. Pit latrine, check. Water pump, check. Shelters... shelters... shelters... shelters... Since we didn't have a Simone handy, there was no one to explain to us where the shelters were. No obvious signs pointed to where they may be located. We looked, walked the perimeter of the camp area, we even wandered down a nearby path. Nothing.

Raccoon Creek State Park, PA Backpacking - Part One

In late fall 2009 I had a chance to go backpacking with my sister-in-law, her soon to be husband and my friend W, the former marine. I had been searching around the Internet for some backpacking areas that were closer to me than the Allegheny National Forest and I discovered Raccoon Creek State Park near Hookstown, Pennsylvania.

Raccoon Creek is located about 24 miles west of downtown Pittsburgh, just south of the Ohio River and very near the border of West Virginia. It is a 7500+ acre park that contains Raccoon Lake. The park features both standard drive-in camping facilities and a 19 mile backpacking trail. The backpacking trail has two designated camping areas along it, Sioux and Pioneer, and both feature pit latrines, potable water and three sided "lean-to" sleeping shelters.