1484.5 miles in

It’s been tough to find any sort of reasonable internet access in the Northeast.  The problem compounds itself since the longer I go without, the longer I need to be on a computer in a sitting.  That being said, let’s see if I can knock out a blog entry before they kick me off this computer.

We awoke at Ernie’s on Thursday July 14 around 10:00am.  Ernie’s neighbor Karen had brought some breakfast sausage patties the night before, so I fried those up with some eggs and put it all between a bun.  Handstand kept up with some emails while I did the dishes and scrubbed Ernie’s kitchen.  When I was done I left my blueberries in a rocks glass on Ernie’s stove.  Ernie told us the night before that his parents had taught him to strive to leave things just a little better than you found them, so that’s what I tried to do.  Ernie came home for lunch around 1:00pm so we talked for awhile longer, thanked him once again for his hospitality, and finally started hiking around 4:00pm.  We walked to the Rutherford Shelter which was deep in a valley, grabbed some water, and headed back up onto the ridge where we found a campsite after only another half mile.  The campsite was pretty buggy (as is everywhere these days), but we made a campfire to smoke out the bugs and we had a great cliff-side view from which we could see the full moon & the sunrise.  It was a nice night.

Friday July 15 we hiked just a few miles to Highpoint State Park where we got water from the restrooms.  We continued on to Highpoint Shelter where we checked the register for Raw Indy’s name, but she’s apparently been doing so many miles lately that she doesn’t have time for trivial things like signing registers.  The terrain was fairly easy, and we saw a bunch of swampland.  We finished the day by hiking into Unionville and looking for the Back Track Inn, which no longer exists.  In fact, that tavern recently had a change of ownership and was closed for a month, but re-opened as The Wit’s End the day we got into town.  Their bunkhouse was being used for storage, but they let us tent in their side yard.  We spent the evening in the tavern and a few of the locals bought us drinks.  We ate just down the street at Anabelle’s Pizza, which is in fact much more than just a pizza place.  I had a cheeseburger and spaghetti, and both were very tasty.

Saturday morning (July 16) we had breakfast at the Unionville General Store (they had a deli too) and I bought a few things for a small resupply.  Scribbles arrived in Unionville that morning and we chatted with her on the porch of the general store as we ate breakfast.  We hiked out and started the day easy with a roadwalk and a stroll through the Wallkill Reserve (marshland), after which I discovered I still know how to hike uphill as we climbed Pochuck Mountain (it’s been a long time since we’d done a climb).  We hiked through a lot of swampy areas in which the maintainers had built a rough boardwalk.  We stayed at a church hostel in Vernon, NJ.  Shortly after arriving at the hostel, a kind lady named Melissa stopped by with a van and invited everyone to a pool party.  Four of us (myself, Handstand, Navigator, Guino) happily obliged.  We spent the evening swimming, eating, and drinking to our hearts’ content and then Melissa’s son Josh drove us back to the hostel.  It was a welcome diversion from the tedium of hiking.  Thanks a lot, Melissa and Josh!

On Saturday July 17 I awoke at the church hostel, swept their floor mats (the church asks that hikers volunteer some work as part of their stay), paid the somewhat-mandatory donation of $10, then hit the town.  Handstand and I had breakfast at Burger King, then we headed to the A&P food store to resupply.  We hitched back to the trail and hiked 12.1 miles.  The hike had the usual views, but included the NJ-NY state line and also a view from Prospect Rock, the highest point along the AT in New York.  We stopped at a campsite next to Cascade Brook, which wasn’t so much a brook as a series of very yellowish-brown, stagnant puddles.  We were out of water when we reached the brook, so we drank it anyway.  I used a little extra bleach to treat that water.  Over the next few days we discovered that all of the water in New York is kind of sketchy.  We did however hear from a local that the water’s colour isn’t indicative of disease so much as the plentiful iron deposits in the area.  I suffered no ill effects from the rusty water.  I let the buzzing of the mosquitoes just outside my bug net lull me to sleep.

When I awoke Sunday morning (July 18), Handstand informed me that he had not slept at all on account of the mosquitoes, and that we were never again sleeping next to standing water.  Handstand has been using a tarp as his rain shelter, so he doesn’t have a fully-enclosed bug-free environment.  He bought a pyramid-shaped bugnet that hangs from a line and covers his chest & head (the idea being that your head is the only thing outside your sleeping bag, so it’s the only part of you requiring bug protection), but the nights have been so hot that his lower body is completely exposed to the bugs, and the bug net leaves a gap where it drapes from his body to the ground so some mosquitoes manage to find their way into the netting.  We packed up quickly and hiked about a mile onto a ridge before we stopped for breakfast, on account of the mosquitoes at our campsite.  The day’s hike was pretty strenuous with lots of steep ups and downs, but the scenery made up for the difficulty.  For example, we hiked up a cliff parallel to Fitzgerald Falls.  When we’d gone 10 miles to West Mombasha road we found a cooler full of water jugs and business cards advertising the following:
Attention AT Thru-hikers
Need a comfy bed?
A shower and laundry?
A hearty meal?
Call John & Susan: ###-###-####

Needing all of the above, we called and talked to John – he informed us that he wouldn’t be available to pick us up for another 4 hours, and he was already going to pick up another hiker 5 miles further at Rt 17, which was where we had been planning to stop anyway.  We hiked the additional 5 miles (which took about 3 hours due to the altitude changes and humidity), meeting Navigator along the way.  Upon reaching Rt 17 I was completely soaked in sweat – I could not have been wetter had I jumped in a lake.  I wrung out about a half cup of water from my shirt.  John picked us up and brought us back to his house, then did one more run to pick up another group which turned out to be the Booty Club (minus Gravity, who’d fallen behind on account of Lyme disease).  We all showered, laundered, charged our electronics, and enjoyed John & Susan’s impressive hospitality.  For dinner John prepared caprese (mozarella, basil, tomato, & olive oil), chips & salsa, steamed asparagus, grilled eggplant, rice, and steak.  He also shared a 750ml bottle of Chimay red.  It was an amazingly civilized evening.  Special thanks to John & Susan for their hospitality.

John awoke me Monday morning (July 19) while offering french toast and cereal, then drove us all back to the trailhead.  A mouse had chewed through Navigator’s Platypus bite-valve during the night so he performed emergency repairs using a bit of seam-sealant and duct tape.  We’d dodged a thunderstorm during the night, but we still had to deal with the resulting slippery rocks as we climbed the Lemon Squeezer and “The Hard Way”, in addition to the usual rocky climbs.  At both locations I had to remove my pack and toss it up onto the rock ledge with my poles, then climb up after it.  We took a 3-hour break at Lake Tiorati to swim.  At the lake I could smell people grilling and desperately wanted a cheeseburger, unfortunately we were only able to yogi some cherry doughnuts and orange sodas.  We hiked on to West Mountain Shelter which had an amazing view.  Supposedly you can see the New York City skyline from that shelter on a clear day, but it was too hazy while we were there.  Once darkness fell however, we could see a glow on the horizon that must have been the city.  The water at the shelter was from a pond – it smelled like rotting vegetation and came complete with dead, floating insects.  I treated with a little extra bleach again, but could still detect the taste of rotting vegetation in addition to the smell.  Not ideal, but again I escaped with no ill effects.  Navigator hiked with us and camped at West Mountain with us.

Note: My tent has no poles.  It has a metal ring that slips over the tip of a trekking pole, then it stakes out at six points in a sort of tipi fashion.  My trekking poles, however, no longer have tips – the tips have been ground into nonexistence, replaced now by a rounded metal area.  I addressed this issue by putting a small wood screw into the handle of a trekking pole.  At West Mountain Shelter I tested my invention, and found that it works beautifully.  I’m very happy that I don’t need new poles.  Looks like the cheapo Wal-Mart poles might make it all the way to Maine.

On Tuesday July 20 the three of us set off for Bear Mountain.  It was a very hot and humid day, and upon reaching the summit of the mountain (via an exposed set of very steep rock steps) we found a few vending machines but no water source.  We all bought sodas and powerade, then hiked to the bottom of the mountain where we were able to refill our water from the public restrooms.  We spent some time at the concession stand eating pizza, cheeseburgers (finally), soft pretzels and nachos, then hiked on.  Right after Bear Mountain the trail went through the middle of a zoo.  In the zoo there were some signs that had a wildlife question and a little window thing under which you could find the answer to the question.  One of the questions was “How do insects smell?”, the answer to which was something about scent receptors in their heads.  I wrote “AWFUL” on a notecard and stuck it behind the window, a tribute to Monty Python and the funniest joke ever.  In the zoo, right next to the bear cage, is the lowest point on the entire AT, at 124 feet – it’s all uphill from there.  After the zoo we crossed the Hudson River, and saw a sign on the bridge warning of impending attack by peregrine falcons.  I walked across the bridge with my camera at the ready, unfortunately no one was attacked by a falcon.  We stopped around dinner time at the Appalachian Market because it sold ice cream and contained a deli.  We were unable to resist the allure of even a single deli during our hike through New York.  After leaving the deli we had a short hike to the Graymoor Spiritual Life Center where the monks allow hikers to camp at their baseball diamond.  The field had a water spigot, (cold) shower, electric lighting, and plenty of space to tent.  It was luxurious to have running water, and to be able to drink it without treating.  I got to listen to the distant monastery bells as I fell asleep, which helped distract me from the oppressive heat.

I awoke Wednesday July 21 with a headache, likely due to dehydration on account of all the sweating during the hot & humid night.  We hiked 8 miles to a pump building with a water spigot.  We breaked at the pump building to eat, camel up, and soak our clothes in cold water.  I found a snake skeleton in the dirt, and let Handstand have all the vertebrae so he can make a necklace when he gets home.  We hiked on and I left the germans (Handstand and Navigator) in the dust, but stopped on the peak of Shenandoah Mountain at the 9-11 memorial.  We hiked on another 1.5 miles to the Shenandoah tenting site – a clearing with an abandoned house/barn, a shed, a privy, picnic table and water pump.  The water from the pump was cold, and there were also a couple apple trees.  The apples weren’t quite ripe, but I ate one anyway.  It felt good to do a respectable number of miles again (18).

Thursday morning (July 22) I awoke in an oven.  The breeze had died down during the night and it was oppressively hot even at 8:00am.  I threw everything out of my tent and crawled out to get into open air.  I couldn’t believe how hot it was – even just sitting at the picnic table in the shade, I was sweating.  I took some headache pills and drank 3 liters of water before hiking.  Larb (Mladin) caught up to us in camp around 10:00am.  We all soaked our clothes/hair/hats/bandanas with cold water from the pump and hiked 6 miles to the Mountaintop Deli.  The deli shared a building with a pizza place.  The people at the deli are very friendly, and the people at the pizza place are very rude.  We went into the pizza place and were greeting with an annoyed “Can I help you?”, to which we responded that we would like to order a pizza.  We ordered, sat at a table, and they brought the pizza to us in a to-go box.  We ate the pizza and left to get some ice cream from the deli and site outside to eat it, and the pizza guy brought our empty box outside and sat it next to our packs.  Apparently that shop can’t be bothered to dispose of their own garbage.  Conclusion: Everyone should boycott the pizza place connected to the Mountaintop Deli in Stormville, NY – their staff is incredibly rude.  The deli however is a wonderful place.  The staff were very friendly, and all of the locals in the shop were happy to meet us.  We sat at a picnic table outside the deli drinking water from their outdoor spigot and eating ice cream until 6:30pm when we hiked on another 4 miles to Morgan Stewart Shelter.  That last section of the hike wasn’t so bad – it was relatively level and the heat let up a bit.  I got ahead of Larb and Handstand on the way to the shelter, and shortly after I’d passed a viewpoint I heard a primal yell from behind me.  That’s one of Larb’s habits – he screams at every viewpoint.  The heat let up enough during the night to actually sleep comfortably.  It was a relief.  I no longer have a thermometer and I’ve never had access to weather reports, so I don’t know how hot it actually got this day, but some of the locals have told me it reached 108F, and the heat index was as high as 120F.  Supposedly this is the highest ever on record in the area.  They’re probably greatly exaggerating – people always do.

Friday morning (July 23) I did not wake with a headache, because it was still nice and cool.  The morning was overcast and it was even sprinkling a little.  I set out in the morning with Larb and Handstand, and the beginning of the hike was nice, but it started to heat up pretty drastically about the time we reached Nuclear Lake.  We took a break at Telephone Pioneers Shelter where someone had left 2 huge jugs of water (the shelter’s stream was dry).  We hiked on to the Dover Oak (largest tree on the AT) where a couple named Jan and Bob were providing trail magic.  I had a gatorade, some baby carrots, and some Lucky Charms cereal.  I was looking forward to stopping at the Garden Center at Pawling, NY road crossing – the guidebook said you could shower and tent there, as well as use their kitchen.  About 2 miles before reaching the Garden Center, I came upon an impending forest fire.  Someone had enjoyed a campfire and neglected to contain it properly or extinguish it before leaving.  When I arrived, the area was about six feet wide and charred, and the edges were still smoking so it wasn’t just going to put itself out.  I poured my last liter of water on the area but that didn’t help much, so I used my sandals to shove all the hot, smoldering mulch into the middle and shove the unburnt mulch further away from the smoldering stuff.  Upon arriving at the Garden Center, Larb and Handstand asked what took me so long, to which I responded that I spent 40 minutes saving their lives.  I also discovered that the “kitchen” was actually a microwave oven, and there was absolutely nowhere to tent.  We decided not to camp at the Garden Center, but we did however shower and rest there until the heat let up significantly.  Handstand headed into Pawling to resupply and I walked with Larb to a deli down the street for dinner.  When I returned from the deli, Jackrabbit had caught up to us.  We were all happy to be reunited.  When Handstand returned from Pawling we hiked another 2 miles onto a ridge and camped on some reasonably flat ground that was in no way a campsite, but served our purposes nonetheless.

That night (or Saturday morning (July  24) – not sure of the time exactly) it started raining, so I roused myself long enough to close my tent’s vestibule, thereby rain-proofing the interior.  I packed the tent wet in the morning, but everything else remained nicely dry.  The heat wave broke overnight (hence the rain), so it was a very nice morning and it didn’t get terribly hot during the day either.  We hiked 6 miles to CT 55 (oh right, we left NY and entered CT) and started walking 0.6 miles East to Tony’s Deli.  A nice lady pulled over and offered us a ride, so we accepted, but after going 2.5 miles we were in Gaylordsville, CT and had not seen a deli.  There was however a deli in Gaylordsville, so we just got out there to eat, then hitched back to the trailhead.  One of the locals informed us that Tony’s Deli was on Hoyt Road, not CT 55 (as the guidebook indicated).  We hiked on and took a break at Ten Mile River Shelter, and took a longer break at a random sandy beach on the shore of Ten Mile River.  Handstand swam, Jackrabbit washed his legs (fearing poison ivy exposure) then napped, and I read books on my Kindle.  We eventually hiked on to Mt Algo Shelter where we were reunited with Gravity, Larb, and two guys we’d met at the Mountaintop Deli (Groove and Papa Bear).  It got a little chilly during the night, but I was toasty in my tent and sleeping bag.  It was a nice change from the intense heat.

Sunday (July 25) I awoke at 9:00am and was packed and ready to hike by 9:15am, but we hung around camp ’till around 10:00am while Handstand boiled his snake bones.  Once we left, it was a short 1 miles to Kent, CT where Handstand ordered a hammock (for the full-body bug protection) with Jackrabbit’s help.  Jackrabbit and I resupplied, Jackrabbit checked for some packages that hadn’t arrived, we ate Chinese, Handstand searched all over town for his “lost” camera that he later found in his backpack, and we got ahold of Croc (he was done for the year when he reached Harper’s Ferry, but he owns a cottage in Falls Village, CT and told us to call him when we leave NY).  We finally left town around 6:00pm, descended some incredibly steep and slippery rocks, and hiked 2 hours in the dark to Silver Hill campsite.  On the way we met up with Avo, an old acquaintance of Jackrabbit’s.  He came with us to the campsite.  It was raining all day, and by the time we stopped it was downright cold, but again I spent a very cozy night in my tent.

Monday morning (July 26) we got a good look at the campsite, which turned out to be beautiful.  There was a picnic shelter with tables, a water pump (which worked, even though the guidebook claims it’s broken – it just takes 30-40 pumps to prime it), and a deck overlooking the Housatonic River.  We hiked 16 miles to get to Falls Village because we’d arranged to meet Croc there between 4 and 5:00pm.  There were some strenuous ups and downs and lots of streams.  All of the water in Connecticut has been crystal clear and tastes fine.  Right as we were getting close to Falls Village the trail started taking some insanely roundabout turns.  It was rather frustrating, because we could see a thunderstorm rolling in but we had to follow the trail around a field and through a few ditches for no apparent reason.  Nevertheless, we eventually walked through a clearing containing a power plant, right as the electrical storm was rolling in, and walked down Water Street 0.5 miles to Falls Village where we hid under a roof and waited for Croc to pick us up.  He drove up, we loaded in, and he took us to Pine Grove where he and his neighbours prepared a huge meal of sauteed vegetables, pasta, sweet corn, grilled chicken, hamburgers, and steak.  His neighbour Mrs Brown (or “Blisters”) hosted the party and all four of us (myself, Handstand, Jackrabbit, and Avo) left there unable to eat another bite.  We really appreciate the generosity of the Pine Grove folks.

Tuesday (today) July 27 is a zero.  We’re not hiking anywhere.  It’s nice to zero when you don’t have to pay for lodging, especially in this corner of Connecticut where everything is dreadfully expensive ($189 per night at hotels).  Croc dropped us off back in Kent, CT around noon today and I’ve been using the computer in the library to write this post.  We’re making spaghetti for dinner once we get back, and tomorrow we’ll hike on.  Less than 700 miles to go.