‘Rocksylvania’: Appalachian Trail hikers say Pennsylvania kills boots, rolls ankles, and crushes wills

Four bedraggled hikers lounged in the bowels of a mountain church, peeling off their socks to reveal a horror show of purplish bruises and blisters like schools of jellyfish.

They had just about conquered Pennsylvania’s 229 miles of Appalachian Trail, but the state took its toll. Their boots and trail running shoes were gnarled, as if they fell into a wood chipper, and most of them said they’d need replacements before hitting the trail again.

“It’s just, the rocks. The rocks here are relentless,” said Matthew “Maps” Mueller, a Boston native who began his journey on Georgia’s Springer Mountain in February. “We’ve heard the rocks start to stop here, so there’s that.”

The Delaware River was right down the road, and beyond it, approximately 900 miles to the trail’s terminus atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin. Some thru-hikers turn back after crossing the river and wave goodbye to Pennsylvania with two middle fingers. Others scream it aloud. One thru-hiker who went by “Smasher” even wrote a song, basically telling Pennsylvania to go ...

Pennsylvania has a reputation among the 20,000 people since the 1930s who have thru-hiked the iconic Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine, along with thousands of others who day hike it. Some call it “Rocksylvania,” a.k.a. “hell,” “the meat grinder,” “the ankle roller,” a place where hiking boots go to die. One specific 146-mile stretch of North Pennsylvania, according to TheTrek.com, consistently ranks as the least favorite section of the entire 2,198.4-mile trail.

“You know, New Jersey is just as bad, right? No one complains about it because you’re not there very long,” said Cindy Ross, a longtime hiker from Berks County who leads veterans on AT trips. “That being said, there’s a lot better trails in Pennsylvania than that northern stretch of the AT. I would never hike there on purpose, and I’ve lived here for 40 years.”

Pennsylvania hiking advocates say traversing the AT here is like learning to drive in New York City. Also, you don’t have a choice if you want the glory.

“When you conquer Pennsylvania, you’ll be able to conquer the trail in any other state, because there’s a lot of up and down and a lot of rock,” said Brook Lenker, executive director of the Keystone Trails Association. “The rocks are part of the challenge. If it was easy, it wouldn’t have the allure.”

Pennsylvania, most northbound hikers point out, starts off just fine when it crosses into Franklin County from Maryland. There’s lots of farmland and mostly flat graded trails. The halfway point of the AT is a major milestone at Pine Grove Furnace State Park, where hikers can attempt the half-gallon challenge of Hershey’s Ice Cream.

“Pennsylvania lulls in hikers like a siren,” one hiker wrote on a trail journal.

In Duncannon, a trail town in Perry County, crossing the Susquehanna River leads to an underworld of knife-edged rubble, where the devil spends his winters sharpening the rocks for spring and summer hikers. It gets hotter in the rocks, hikers say, and there’s little water. That half-gallon of ice cream becomes a cruel memory.

“You either get new boots before you leave Duncannon, or you’re going to wish you had,” said Betsy Webb, of Kind of Outdoorsy, an outfitter and hiker hostel on Market Street there.

Actually, the rockiness beyond Duncannon is just plain old geology at work, not demons.

“A lot of the ankle-turning on many trails in Pennsylvania is ultimately linked to permafrost processes during the ice ages, with ‘freeze-thaw cycles’ breaking rocks, which then crept downhill,” said Rich Alley, a longtime geologist with Penn State.

For Heather Anderson, arguably one of the world’s greatest living hikers, rocks are rocks, whether they’re in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the upper reaches of California’s Sierra Nevada, or the Scottish Highlands. Anderson, a Michigan native who lives in Altoona, has hiked the Appalachian Trail three times, and has logged approximately 45,000 miles across the globe. National Geographic named her its Adventurer of the Year in 2019.

“People dread it, of course, and for northbound hikers, it’s going to be the rockiest section you’ve seen so far,” Anderson said. “It can be a bit of a shock.”

Anderson took The Inquirer on a short, steep hike up to Hawk Rock Overlook on the AT in Duncannon in early June as the first wave of Canadian wildfire smoke drifted in. The trail was rocky, consisting of mostly flat “stairs” — this reporter tumbled off a rock — but Anderson said it’s tame compared to what loomed in the north, in places like Palmerton, Carbon County.

“It can be hard because you’re used to moving at a certain pace but you just have to accept that you’re not going to be moving fast,” Anderson said at the overlook. “You just have to slow down and take your time.”

The monotony of going slow, of looking down and carefully picking every foot placement for days, can wear on the mind, some thru-hikers said.

“It’s more annoying than anything,” said Bruce “Martian” Edmonds, a thru-hiker from South Carolina. “You want it to be over but you have to step carefully or you’re jabbing these rocks into your heel. Even if you’re careful, I’d imagine more falls happen in Pennsylvania than any other state.”

While a vast network of volunteers helps maintain the trail up and down the East Coast all year long, no one is making Pennsylvania an easier state to pass through, or safer for your feet.

“People joke that the volunteers go out there and sharpen the rocks,” said Jim Foster, a longtime trail maintenance volunteer in Pennsylvania. “We’re not trying to make the trail smooth as silk or anything like that. We try to make it durable so that it will last over the long term.”

Foster, 70, thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in the early 2000s and despite “trashing” his ankles on rocks that looked like “hatchet heads,” he thinks “the Rocksylvania thing is overdone.”

“The hardest part, to me, was the whole state of New Jersey and the first hundred miles of Maine, where you’re hopping from boulder to boulder,” he said.

Maine and New Hampshire are considered the most challenging of the trail’s 14 states, and for southbound Appalachian Trail hikers, Pennsylvania can actually be a welcome respite.

“Sure it’s rocky in a lot of places but it’s flat,” said Joni “North Star” Skogman, a Georgia resident who hiked south through Pennsylvania last year.

Back at the church hostel in Delaware Water Gap, Pa., Anton Pedersen blamed the rocks for a scary wildlife encounter he had just before coming in.

“There are so many rocks and so much looking down, I almost walked into a bear. We both scared each other,” Pedersen said.

Pedersen said he’d let his blisters heal for a few days in the hostel before heading north toward Maine, then back home to Sweden. He needed to let his mind forget Pennsylvania’s rocks for a bit, too.

“Now I have to worry about New Jersey, too, I guess,” he said.