I'm in the middle of St. Anthony's wilderness, which is the second largest roadless area in Pennsylvania. And this is where I'm hiking today. Good morning, it's another Saturday, which means another day of hiking. Today's said to be the warmest day we've had all year. It's already 60 degrees, and it's only a little after 8 a.m. It's going to get up to 8 a.m. which is awesome. I'm hiking up Stoney Mountain, which is a ridge in the Chene of Appalachians here in Pennsylvania. Stoney Mountain is about 15 miles north east of Paris. And it takes me just a smidgen under one hour to get there. I have an 11 mile hike plan. It starts along the Appalachian Trail. The trail takes a pretty nice steady diagonal along the side of the mountain, up to the top and where it hits the top of the ridge. It actually meets with the very end of the horseshoe trail. I first heard of this hike in the book, 60 hikes within 60 miles of Paris. By Math Will, it has just been something of my Bible for a day like the past couple years. I'm going to try to make a couple of slight adjustments to his route. As I'm driving there this morning, I'm thinking about what I'm going to be doing differently today, and I think the big thing is that it's warm out. So I don't need to carry any extra warmth. I'm going to be taking some just a case stuff, an emergency bitty, and the lightweight hat. And those are just a case I'm there after dark. I made it all of a mile before I paused to take a break here this morning, alongside this stream where I can water up and make it up the rest of the way, the top of the ridge. I've climbed about 300 feet so far in the first mile, I have about 700 feet left to go before I get to the top in the next two miles. I'm getting a really slow start here this morning. I think it's because I only had a quarter cup of coffee, probably not enough carbs for breakfast, and there were a lot more people in the parking lot this morning than I expected to see. So that had me just feeling a little constrained, but the traffic has actually been light on the trails because there's a bunch of different trails at start here. And so I'm hoping the things get better from here now that I'm stopping, and we'll see what the rest of the hike up the mountain is like. So this spot where the horseshoe trail meets the Appalachian Trail is at the ridge of Stoney Mountain. I'm actually really happy at the moment because one of my goals was for this last two miles of that uphill section to not stop. And I succeeded at that. One of the reasons I had that goal today was simply if I take fewer breaks, I know that I can improve my overall speed and how far I can go in a day. And so I went very slowly, in fact many times I've pushed myself and told myself to slow down. I know that if I can establish a steady pace and be able to hike long distances without stopping at all, then I can work on improving the pace, I can improve the speed with which I'm actually hiking, covering that distance. So that's one of my goals for today. I'm using my evening hikes to work on my pace when I can, and then my weekend hikes to work on the distance, endurance and endurance and the ability to maintain a steady rhythm. So that's what I'm doing up here. From here I still have about eight miles to do the day. From here I'm going to be descending about 500 feet back down along the south side of this mountain into Rattling Run, which is a ghost town. It has the foundations of about 10 houses left from when it was an old coal mining town, now completely abandoned. From there I'll follow what's called the Devil's Race Course, which is just a big stony area. I'm not a geologist, so I can't explain it to you, but it's pretty cool to see I hear, so I'm going to check that out. So all in all yesterday was a difficult hike. I used up the last of my water in there at the top of Stony Mountain, which was actually perfectly according to plan. I didn't want to carry more water up the mountain than I needed to, so I carried just enough to get me there and it worked out really well. So I drank the last of it there, and then the plan was that I would descend into Rattling Run and fill back up at the stream there. Well it turns out that the stream there is exactly what runs underneath the Devil's Race Course. So the Devil's Race Course is a long talless field because it's actually a little bit between two ridges at that point, third mountain splits into a couple ridges and that's where Rattling Run sits. And so all the water coming down from those ridges is collected there in the stream. When I looked at the map, I saw there was a stream and I kind of figured that would be a great place to refill plus with a name like Rattling Run. It's going to be a good place to fill water and filter it. Not the case. So I wound up spending just a little bit of time there, holy cow is it, Rocky, I can't imagine living there, and it was difficult walking. And so I was ready for some water, but there was none to be found. It's another slow steady climb up out of Rattling Run along the Devil's Race Course as it climbs up towards the Stony Mountain Lookout. And I was expecting that I might run into at least a feeder stream of Rattling Run, which is the stream that runs underneath the Devil's Race Course, but not to be that area is just so filled with boulders that any water was running underneath them. And eventually I'm really thankful that I took the course that I did because by getting off of the Rattling Run Trail, also known as the Stage Coach Road, I did find that kind of the headwaters of Rattling Run were more like wetlands, and there are some places that the streams were flowing, and I was able to fill up there, which was great. So I found a lot better for a time, made my way through some really cool trails there on the game lands to the Stony Mountain Lookout Tower, which was beautiful. It's at a great location. I continued on and went back down to the parking area. By the time I was done, I was very tired, and the water in my car was warm from sitting in there all day. Overall, a really good experience, a tough hike, but also the one that's going to get me ready for the warmer weather here. I was looking at it kind of like a cold weather hike, where I didn't have to take the extra gear in order to stay warm. And I knew that water management was going to be an issue, but it wound up being kind of even more of one, I realized. But through a period there where it was really tough, and I was definitely dehydrated. The nice thing is there are a lot of different ways to hike this area, so I plan to go back and do some of that hiking. The thing that my biggest takeaway from this hike is that I still have a lot of work to do to dial in how I deal with water, balancing between carrying and milling that I'm going to collect and filter some water. There were a number of hikes this winter where I carried four more water than I needed to, because there was water all along the trail there, places to stop. And so from that I've learned to study the maps and the apps ahead of time, look where the water sources are, and factor that into my overall plan. In this case, I just made the big mistake of looking at a stream on the map and thinking I'd be able to access it, and in fact it was underneath this gigantic talus field of rocks and boulders. And there's a lot less wiggle room when the weather is so hot. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, please hit like. And if you're a day hiker like me, I've got a lot of other videos playing, including tips and how-tos that you can share with beginners and maybe even learn something from. So please hit subscribe and follow along. .