Days 42 and 43/July 21 and 22: Reaching into the hiker's bag o' tricks

When I arrived at Levardi's, Chance told me about the scheme he had to get to Ahab and Rainman's huge hiker party near Manchester, VT scheduled for July 22 and 23.

That would be a party that was scheduled to start in two days more than 60 miles away.

The invite to the party had been extended to the entire thru-hiker community as long ago as Graymoor. It sounded cool. Ahab and Rainman are cool guys. Ahab wears a hat that looks like the hats that Asians wear while picking rice and won first place in the Trail Days talent show. I hiked a few miles with Rainman in Jersey.

A few of us later did the math in Kent: 185 miles in 8 days. No way.

But Chance was determined, and had a plan. Getting to Manchester Center would involve slackpacking 17 miles back to Dalton from the summit of Mt. Greylock [elev. 3,491 ft.] on Tuesday, then hiking 25 miles over the next one or two days from the summit to Bennington and getting a bus from there to Manchester. We would bus back to Bennington after the party. Finally, Rainman [the party would be at his house] had assured Chance that he would send somebody to drive us the last 6 miles from the town to the party.

I was in. It beat zeroing in Dalton.

Levardi drove us up to Greylock on Tuesday, and we hiked south, with daypacks. It rained all day. I was soaked head to toe. At Cheshire, a trail town, we had some food. The bicycle trail looked awfully tempting, compared to the steep climb and long slog on the trail. So we blue-blazed it, hiking about 8 miles on hardtop in the rain.

It killed my feet.

And the next day, when Levardi drove us back to Greylock, the road to the summit was closed. No go. It was almost 7 miles from the gate to the top.

So we skipped the Greylock descent, or about 6 miles of the AT, and hiked from North Adams, Mass. to the first shelter in Vermont, the Seth Warner. Along the way I started seeing hikers who had previously been assuredly ahead of me: Leon and Halifax, MD3.

I'm hoping this means I've gotten slackpacking and blue-blazing and yellow-blazing out of my system, and all in a two-day shot.

Most hikers I've met at some point do at least the slackpacking bit during a thru-hike. A purist hiker doesn't do any of them, but there aren't many purists out here. An ultra-purist is a hiker who feels compelled to pass by every single white blaze from Georgian to Maine. I haven't met any of those.

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy gives 2,000-miler recognition based on the honor system; slackpacking is technically allowed, while the organization recognizes blue-blazing on an emergency basis.

As for those 6 lost miles, I could go back and do them later or do the approach trail to Springer Mountain in Georgia [the trail's start] and bank it, or bank some other miles somewhere.

It's all part of the journey.