Nan's 2014 Appalachian Trail Journal

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August 7, 2014

7/30 Back on the trail. We left Camp Hill about 7:15 to drive to Wawayanda SP where I had parked my van. I will be leaving it there until we get back from Maine. After we ate our lunch, we set off for a 12.1 mile hike to Wildcat Shelter. The profile for the 12 miles is fairly level with no great elevation gain but, oh my, what a horrible hike. AWOL, the guide book that we use, says, “Despite the unimposing profile, rocks and abrupt ups and downs make the section challenging.” And boy, he is not kidding! Somehow I do not remember all of the rock climbs up and down steep, steep rock faces. This is not hiking, this is mountaineering. At one place they have a metal ladder propped against a cliff so at least there is something to put hands and feet on. But most of the time it is just a search for hand holds and steps. In the words of Shutterbug, who I have hiked many miles with, “I really suffered!” Made it to the shelter at 8:00 and found Grizzly there still heading home to Maine.

7/31 This morning Freckles said the trail could not be as bad as yesterday. Well, she was wrong. More of the same steep rock cliff ascents and descents. More up than down which is better. Not nearly as scary. I forgot to mention yesterday that we crossed Prospect Rock, the highest point on the AT in New York at 1,433’ elevation. On a good day you can see the New York City skyline. We did not see the skyline but will have another opportunity at Perkins Memorial Tower on Bear Mountain tomorrow. After we passed over NY 87, we went into Harriman State Park. This part of NY I remember from my other hike. It is a wonderful park with a nice lake and nice trail. There is one challenging rock formation called Lemon Squeezer. It is a large rock formation with a very narrow passage, the squeeze part. You can just make it through. At least, Freckles and I could. I am not sure about a wider person. After the squeeze there is a steep climb up huge rocks. But after that we were back to nice trail. As we always do if we are going to be getting into camp late, we found a nice spot with a large flat rock and stopped to cook our dinner and take a long break. After that you feel a lot better for the last miles and don’t arrive tired and hungry to set up tents. We got into Fingerboard Shelter for a total of 14.3 miles today. Guess what? Grizzly was there. We have 801 miles to Katahdin! I am going to start counting down with the mileage.

8/1 783.9 miles to go. Four months on the trail. Time really flies when you are having fun. 17.1 miles today. More nice hiking in Harriman SP. So far water has not been a problem. There has been trail magic and road crossings with good bottled water. Today we did the suicide run across four busy lanes of the Palisades Parkway. We were lucky and got there around noon so the traffic had some long breaks. Big climb over Bear Mtn. It was hazy so no view of the NYC skyline. There are steps up the south side of the mountain and a nice trail that winds around to the parking lot and tower and then there are 800 steps down the north side. This is all new trail improvement and work is still being done. We stopped to cook dinner by Hessian Lake in Bear Mtn. Recreation Area before going under US 9. The AT goes thru a zoo at this point passing the lowest point at the AT at the bear cage! The zoo closes at 4:30 so we had to use the blue blaze trail around the zoo and missed seeing the caged bear. After crossing the Hudson River we hiked another mile or two and found a good camp spot.

8/2 767.0 miles to go. Hiked 16.9 miles today to a campsite just south of NY 301. Woke up this morning to a light rain and cloudy skies. We were on the trail by 7:00 heading for the Appalachian Market four miles north for a second breakfast of bagels, eggs, and ham. We also planned the stop for resupply so our packs would be lighter. They have good prepared food and a good selection of resupply for hikers. Freckles and I both bought subs for our lunch with the other half being for dinner. The rain did not turn into anything and the sun peeked in and out. The trail is better in this section and is lined with blueberries and red raspberries. We just walk along grazing through the berries. We are not alone with this habit as we saw a lot of bear scat on the trail. So the bear are also enjoying the harvest but we did not see any. We were extra careful hanging our food bags since we know they are around although I can’t imagine why they would want what’s in the bags when they have all those yummy fresh berries.

8/3 751.4 miles to Katahdin. Another rainy morning. Started to rain about 5:00 but stopped after an hour or so. Just enough to get the tents wet. I hate packing up a wet tent. The mosquitos were horrible last night and this morning. Hiked over Shenandoah Mtn. which has a large flag painted for a 9/11 memorial. In New York you are never far from road noise and that was the case today. We went under Taconic State parkway then up onto a ridge. The hike was nice but the traffic noise really detracts from the wilderness experience. Of course, there are some good things about being close to the road. Like the delis. In NY you can just go from deli to deli having good pastrami sandwiches and bagels. We walked 0.4 miles down NY 52 to get to the Mountaintop Market Deli for dinner and to get water out of the faucet. Met Cherry Blossom and Yellow Beard there also enjoying the good food. Hiked to Morgan Stewart Shelter for the night for a 15.6 mile day. There were 10, or more, hikers at the shelter, more than we had seen for a while.

8/4 Mile 734.8. 16.6 miles today to Wiley Shelter. Nice hike with just rolling hills. We had lunch at Telephone Pioneers Shelter. Two other thru hikers came in for lunch. We have been seeing them for the last few days. They said they remembered us from the Smokey Mtns. but the only thing they knew about us was that we got up at some obscene hour in the morning and that we ate pop tarts for breakfast. That is something that I never thought that I would do but I have grown quite fond of them. I put a little peanut butter and jelly on them and like “a spoon full of sugar”, they go down.

Today we passed the Appalachian Trail RR Station where for $15 one-way you can get into New York City. The station is just a platform and bench along the tracks. Lots of hikers who are from western states or foreign countries take a couple of days to visit NYC. We passed the Dover Oak which is the largest oak tree on the AT. Rambler came into the shelter for the night. We had not seen him for a while. He said that he had been off of the trail for a wedding in Texas. His third one this summer. Nice to see him again.

8/5 Mile 721.5. Hike was 13.3 miles today. We are right on schedule for reaching Katahdin. Averaged 15 miles per day for our first week since making the decision to continue northbound rather than flip flopping. We will need to continue at 15 miles/day average to reach Katahdin by October 1st, our goal. We left NY and went into Connecticut then back into NY and back into CT. We leap frogged a group of young backpackers with a Wilderness Camp and every time we passed them or they passed us, one young man was trying to figure out if he was in NY or CT. Hiked 0.3 miles into Bulls Bridge to get a second breakfast and a few snack things for tomorrow. We met a 91 year old man getting ready to do a little hiking. Not backpacking but he looked pretty spry. The trail had several high rocky areas with nice views. We met a south bounder with trail name of Sky Chicken. She and her husband are helicopter pilots in the gulf working for the gas and oil companies. She warned us about a weird man who was also hiking southbound and had been causing problems along the trail with ridge runners. He had been run out of town at Kent, CT, by town police. Sky Chicken wanted us to know in case he was at the next shelter, Mt. Algo. We had planned to stay the night there but when we got there, sure enough, there he was with no one else around. We waited a little for the group from the Wilderness Camp and their counselors to catch up but when they didn’t show, we decided to put some distance between us and the weirdo. That meant climbing another steep hill but we felt better about camping.

8/6 Mile 711.0. Into Cornwall Bridge, CT after 10.5 miles. Time for a shower and laundry. We had also sent boxes here for resupply. Last night there was a pretty good thunder storm with rain and wind. Freckles slept right thru it. Lucky her. We had the steep climb up Caleb’s Peak and then the perfectly horrid hike down St. John’s Ledges. Steep steps, well, not actually steps, just a steep rocky descent for about 500’. Very nerve wracking. I just hate those steep rocky descents. At the bottom there is a high sheer rock face on which two young women were setting up to rappel. We sat down with a snack and drink to relax after our descent. While we were there a man about 50 yrs. old came up the trail and told us he was coming to do some climbing on the same rock. Well, when he started up he fell and was doing loud moaning. I went over to see if he was okay. He said that he was. He just slipped on the wet rocks. So he got up, dusted himself off, and started climbing again. Freckles and I decided to get out of there before we witnessed something really bad.

After that we had a 4.7 mile level walk along the Housatonic River before a 1,000’ climb up and over Silver Hill and down to CT 4 for a 0.8 mile walk into Cornwall Bridge. We hit the deli for 8oz. burgers, cold drinks, and ice cream before checking into the Hitching Post Motel.

On to Katahdin.

Drag’n Fly

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