Examining a deformed tree on the Old Loggers Path.
Any deep-winter backpacking trip worth its salt begins with a hearty breakfast.
Since we're headed for the Old Loggers Path in northeastern Lycoming County, I should be ordering the Lumberjack Slam on my menu at the Denny's Restaurant in Selinsgrove.
I settle on something only slightly less unhealthy: country-fried chicken smothered in gravy, hash browns, two eggs over easy, heavily buttered sourdough bread and orange juice.
This is my eighth winter foray in what has become a nearly annual, eagerly anticipated tradition. The criteria are to penetrate deep into a remote area and camp overnight in harsh conditions.
It has to be a different place each year. Snow is desired but not required.
Seduced by tales of breathtaking scenery, stimulating campfire repartee and machismo, a record eight hearty souls had signed on for this year's trip.
Just days before the trip, we lose one to illness and another to a last-minute meeting he can't wiggle out of.
Then, just north of Shamokin Dam en route to the trail, Vic Brutout and Lee Gajecki are forced to turn back when their SUV develops mechanical problems.
We're now trimmed to four and have lost our shuttle vehicle. I discuss our options.
My brother-in-law and a longtime winter backpacking friend noticeably tense up when I mention the possibility of bushwhacking.
Dave Finnegan, my kin, remembers all too well a cross-country climb up a face of the Dolomite mountains in Italy I had portrayed as a walk in the park. Jon Rutter shudders at the memory of a precarious ford in West Virginia's Otter Creek Wilderness Area I had led him into following a summer cloudburst.
No, we will stick to blazed trails, even if it adds 3 miles of road walking.
North of Williamsport, we crawl over a snow-packed and snowmobile-churned dirt road in Loyalsock State Forest to reach the trailhead at Masten.
A true ghost town from logging days, Masten opened its hemlock and hardwood sawmills in 1905. Swelling to more than 1,000 residents, the town featured a company store, post office, band and its own baseball team.
The denuding of the surrounding, hulking mountains was complete by 1930. The feds took over and set up a CCC camp there until 1940.
But today, only foundations and a few houses turned into hunting camps remain.
Shouldering our packs, we follow the orange triangle blazes onto an earthen dike. This is what's left of the Susquehanna and New York Railroad on which steam engines heaved to get thick trees out of the hinterlands to market.
Below us, two anglers pick their way up Pleasant Stream, plunking worms into holes in the ice in hopes of enticing native brook trout out of their near-dormant stupor.
We head uphill by branching off on an old logging road or bark trail. Felled trees from the steep slopes were dragged onto them by immigrant workers.
The sense of history envelops me. I try to imagine the mountainside vibrating with the rumbling of trains and splintering tree trunks slamming down.
But what we hear is the silence unique to the winter woods.
I love the way the skeleton of the forest is revealed. I love the creaking and groaning of trees drawn taut by the cold.
I love the way the long shadows fall through the trees and the crisp echoes of an unseed woodpecker's rat-a-tat-tat.
On frozen streams we cross gingerly, hoarfrost from the extreme cold has tattooed the ice with star shapes.
I wish I could show you pictures of these sights, but my camera froze after a single picture.
We crunch our way upward through 6 inches of snow, grainy as sand. Up on top, the wind is roaring like a freight train.
Around a bend, we catch a porcupine in the act of shearing off tender beech branches. Meekly, as if embarrassed by being caught with its quills down, it dangles 10 feet off the ground as we stand a couple feet away, gawking.
In the failing light, we reach the top, take in the vista from Sprout Point, but have to beat a hasty treat downhill in search of a suitable campsite out of the wind.
We end up camping in a bend in the trail. I don't like to camp so close to a trail, but there is already a stone fire ring here and flat surfaces are hard to come by on the downslope of the mountain.
Evenings in winter camping are devoted to the essentials of survival: pitching tents and gathering lots of firewood.
We spend most of the night huddled around the fire like penguins, shuffling occasionally out of the way of the smoke.
When night falls, the stars twinkle with an intensity unseen back in Lancaster. Around 8 p.m., the mercury falls to 4 degrees.
Once the fire fades, we scramble for our sleeping bags. A veteran hiker who introduced me to backpacking years ago insisted the best way to stay warm in a sleeping bag was to sleep in nothing but your underwear.
Hah! We hit the sack dripping in layers of fleece.
I do take my boots off.
I cuddle with my water bottle and can of V8 to keep them from freezing. Rolling over during the night makes for strange bedfellows.
You don't linger in this cold, and we are back on the trail shortly after first light. Rock-hard breakfast bars, not hot oatmeal, this morning.
Our wildlife sightings have been restricted to the porcupine and several grouse thundering off the ground. But the white canvas at our feet is brimming with tracks, revealing the movements of wild things trying to scrounge a meal in a tough winter world.
I recognize deer, mice, wild turkeys and coyotes, but I wonder what else I am following.
After an achingly hard climb, we reach Sharp Top vista. The stupendous view from 2,123 feet into the forested backbone of a valley and the floating mountains beyond is tarnished only a little by the realization that you can drive to this spot.
Then it's a long descent along Butternut Run, a tumbling stream frozen into icy silence.
After 14 miles of hiking and within several hundred yards of our parked car, we must deal with a final obstacle.
There is no bridge across Pleasant Stream at this end of the trail. Rutter shimmies across on a fallen tree. Finnegan and Dan Betancourt ever so slowly inch across a spot where the fast-moving stream is frozen.
Me? I simply stride through the icy water. My socks get slightly damp under my boots, but I am pleased with the abandon of it all.
Driving home last Monday, we realize we are missing a foot of snow by a day. Instead, we get stuck for hours in a massive traffic jam at the Dauphin Narrows when a tractor-trailer overturns.
Timing is everything.
THE WINTER TRIPS TO DATE