Route: AT Pen Mar to Pine Grove (PA)

Submitted by @melrunsultras on Sun, 02/12/2023 - 07:01pm
Location
Pennsylvania, US
Distance
37.3 mi
Vertical Gain
5,652 ft
Description

GPX is from parking lot to parking lot.  Essence of the route though is to start at the Mason-Dixon line (MD/PA border) and follow AT all the way to Pine Grove State Park. The route completes at the day use parking lot, and roughly a few hundred yards from the general store which is home of the half-gallon ice cream challenge for thru hikers. This is considered the "easier" part of PA on the AT, but takes one from the typical "north/south" separator to essentially the half-way point on the AT (it varies slightly depending on year).

Below are links to a section hiker's blog that fully documents this section: (Note: This is not my blog; but it is an excellent description of this section of trail)

https://bulldogsdroppings.com/2020/06/13/finally-back-on-the-at-pen-mar-rd-to-pine-grove-furnace-state-park-part-1/

https://bulldogsdroppings.com/2020/06/17/finally-back-on-the-at-pen-mar-rd-to-pine-grove-furnace-state-park-part-2/

 

GPS Track

Comments

I intend to give this route a go, tomorrow 2/25/23. I’ll be traveling S to N, and will be doing it as part of a female, self supported team with Nicole Werner. 

Forgot to post here. We completed the route in 8:35. Still waiting to see if your time is ratified. It will definitely go faster. We took a lengthy break at route 31 to eat and resupply with a drop we placed the night before, and had a hard time finding the finish parking lot. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Really enjoyable section with some quite long runnable pieces and a decent amount of climbing to break it up.