Days 10 and 11

I ended up not zeroing at the Doyle in Duncannon. Instead I hiked 11.3 miles to the Peters Mountain shelter, which is a hotel of a shelter that has two floors and can accommodate 20 people. It just so happened that about that many people were there: A group of about 13 boys from a church adventure group took over the second floor and muddled around the fire place and steps, and a party of five med students from Hershey, on a brief section hike, caroused until 2 a.m. to celebrate one of them's taking a big test. And there were about five hikers.

For dinner I had Ramen and a view of a wet forest.

I slept between two hikers who snored. One of them, Underground, snored like 20 cannons going off every few seconds. Sometimes there would be silence, but I heard no breathing. Then the cannons resumed.

I've never looked at my watch at night so many times in my life. The med students woke me up at 6 a.m. by chattering away as if they were in their own living room before they moved on. T-Suds - a girl who graduated from Fordham in 2005 and has worked for AmeriCorps since - left early, as did the Canadians [Gaspard and Tin Man] and Underground.

I left at about 8 a.m. and hiked along a rainy ridge for 17.8 miles, stomping through puddles of water up to my ankles. By the time I reached Rausch Gap shelter, at 3 p.m., I had passed everyone but T-Suds.

The med students joined us again, but they were more chill this time. They even gave us Oreos.