Mt. Minsi, PA. Delaware Water Gap

If you have a free weekend and want to hike a section of the Appalachian Trail somewhere close to the Philly, New York areas I would highly reccomend this 7 mile two night, one and a half day trip.

My group and I which consisted of Me (Sticky), Derel, Recon Joe and Bluto. Derel and I meet Joe and Bluto at the Lookout Parking leaving their vehichle and then shuttling to the start on 191.

We parked on the south west side of 191 and accessed the North Bound AT by crossing the road, to the left of the tower. Fairly easy to access considering that you will have AT
markers, which are vertical white rectangles painted on trees and rocks making trail location simple. If you walk more than 1/8 of a mile than you just backtrack to the last marker seen.

Shortly after entering the AT we came across a bulletin board with a map of the AT and and we were on our way. Since we started around 3:30 pm. I planned for us to camp a half mile in the first night so we wouldn't have to set the tent's and bear bag up at night. Not that we would have had a problem with doing so, it's just much easier in daylight. Our first camp was made at Nelson Vista which is a big meadow were there may have been a homestead many moons ago. It is super cool in that it is one of the few meadows located on the Kittatiny Ridge in Pennsylvania where a group of section hikers can camp.( Kirkridge Shelter is near by and normally has water till it gets cold and the water gets shut off. I had figured the water would still be on and made my water calculations accordingly, but left enough room to have water for the day and we would slack pack to the spring of stream once at camp.) Nelson Vista or Overlook is also a launching ground for hang gliders. It's kind of cool to walk on the launching area and imagine how intense it must be one's first time hang gliding. We hung our bear bag and set up tents, and Bluto got a nice fire going in the fire ring. The night was beautiful the stars were vibrant and the cool night air was refreshing. All of a sudden Bluto says he brought a surprise and Paul pulls out all of these foil wrapped meals and we cooked the first nights meal on the coals. It was awesome..... burgers, onions, carrots potatoes, and corn. The foil was latter crumpled up and put in our trash, which was a 2 gallon sized freezer bag. That simple. I recommend bringing in a meal like this, wrapped in foil the first night of a short trip because it tastes soooo good! I don't recommend doing this for a week long trip because of the additional weight. The night was originally forcasted for 32 degrees, but we were fortunate that it only went down to 35 which is is warm in a 0 degree bag. The rest of the crew had 20 degree bags and they were warm also. I had gotten up just before sunrise and because Nelson Vista faces south east, I was able to watch a beautiful sunrise! Their all beautiful.

We then packed and started our hike. The rocks are evident pretty much the whole trip. You are better off loving the rocks than hating the rocks, because once you get into dis-liking the rock it seems that accidents happen. I try to get into a zone and go with the flow. Especially down hill. Recon Joe reminded me to go slow up hill and faster down. After a few ups and downs we came to Tott's gap, which is a dirt rd. that crosses the the ridge and I didn't know this at the time but there is supposedly a farm on the north side of the ridge down Tott's gap rd. that has water. I did not know this at the time of our hike but will look for the farm next trip. Apparently not many section hikers know about the farm with water. Considering how scarce water is on this last PA section of the AT, water is gold! After passing Totts Gap we meet a Bow Hunter who had no success, and we told him about the dear we saw about a mile back. He was just happy to be in the woods anyway, so he didn't care to much. Shortly after that we were already at camp and it was only 1:00 PM. The campsite was cool, but it looked like someone had beaten us to it, but it was a beautifal site. It is called Vista Overlook. We still needed to find either the spring of the stream, and given all the tourist on Mt. Minsi because of a beatiful 60 degree Saturday morning in October, we elected to have two people stay with the packs to do some recon on the Vista Campsite and find out if it is Backpackers or day hikers who have set up a picnic, while Recon Joe and I search for water. So, off Recon Joe and I go searching for water. Now, at this point I should be looking at a map that has the location of the spring, but I left it on the kitchen table, sooo....now a 3/4 mile hike turned into a 3 mile round trip. At first we were actually headed in the right direction, but if the spring was not running it would have added an extra mile to the trip, so I decided we needed to back track which was just the thing Recon Joe wanted to hear, becuase it gave him the oppurtunity to bushwack (we didn't have a machete', but we traversed steep terrain in a Rhododendrum Forrest. Recon Joe was lovin' being off trail. I had thought..cool, the perspective changes. It's a different world off trail. You can be close to a trail also and if the forrest is thick enough you can't even tell there is a trail. It's cool. Recon Joe and I find the trial and start heading straight down the mountain. It's a super cool trail that steps down Minsi. On the wasy down are a couple cool lookouts and forrest's. At the Eureka creek we got about 9 litres, and was surprised at the numbers of people with dog's and retired folks some of who hiked a third of the way which is hard in itself, and some that hiked to the top of Minsi. One of those families was chillin' at the stream, and it was cool because of thier age disparity. The boy was 10 and the grandfather was 73. I thought "Right On"! Recon and I started hiking back up the mountain at this point and we meet a couple different groups of people. I had to come crawl out of these Rhodededrums and I look up and theres a couple with a dog wondering where the heck I just came from. It was funny to see their facial expressions. The woman said, "That must be your tree". We meet an elderly couple and the husband makes his own Black Birch walking sticks. They were really dark, light and thin. They almost looked liked the circumfrence was too small, but when you put your weight on it it would bend ever so slightly. I should have gotten the mans bussiness card. We passed a number of groups, and when we finally got to the top Recon notticed that Dave and Bluto moved our equipment to the cool spot, but we had about 20 Japanese tourists at the Vista chillin'. It was cool because I knew that it wasn't easy for them to hike to the Top of Minsi, some of them were in there 70's. Dave and Bluto were happy to see us and the water and we joked about how it was feeling like we were having guests for dinner. The funny thing is that by 3:30 the number of people doubled! It was cool, but if you want privacy I would do this hike on a weekday. we had a beautiful Dusk and made an awesome fire, eat and woke up the next day to another beautiful sunrise!
Me, Recon Joe, Bluto, and Derel then set off down the steppe trail and Derel's foot got stuck on a root doing a flip and skillfully landing on his back using the backpack for a cushion, then sliding down the mountain. and Recon Joe and I were enjoying the trail for a third time and he say's "Threes a Charm".