Day 38/July 17: The three mountains

I left Salisbury, CT after noon with Early Bear and Lil Dipper and got up 1,200 feet in elevation to Bear Mountain, which is the highest point on the AT in Connecticut and only .7 miles from the Massachusetts state line.


















[Me at the top of Bear Mountain, in Connecticut, July 17, 2009]

Massachusetts greeted me with an unending buffet of my least favorite hiking ground: The steep, slippery rock which must be descended:














After that I summitted Race Mountain [elev. 2,365 ft] and Mt. Everett [2,602 ft]. It was the first day perhaps of my whole trip to that point where the trail felt mountainous. Mt. Everett boasted a 360 degree view because of the low vegetation:














After a wet 14.1 mile hike I slept in The Hemlocks lean-to [New England way of saying "shelter"]. I got there late, at about 8 p.m., and everybody was in bed with the lights out while I ate dinner [tortilla + pepperoni + cheese + sun dried tomatoes] and read the trail register on my top bunk. Normally lights out is at about 9 p.m., but it was all good.

July 17: To Mass. or die

So I didn't make it out of Salisbury yesterday. However, the $30 I spent to split a room at the White Hart Inn turned out to be the smartest $30 I've spent this entire trip.

A murderous storm that dumped rain in buckets, felled trees, dropped lightning all over the place [with the loudest thunder I've heard in years] and pelted earth with hail struck the area at about 7:30 p.m. It will be interesting to hear, over the next few days, how all of the hikers stuck in the woods got through that.

I spent it on the porch of the inn along with Early Bear, Lil Dipper and Matchstick. Early Bear did some guy science and tested out the force of the hail:




Now I'm off to Massachusetts and I'll be hustling to get to Vermont, where greener pastures lie.

Replay Day 35: Keeping pace

I touched on July 14 earlier, when I talked about keeping pace with some faster hikers.

I didn't leave Kent until about 11:30 a.m. [trail towns tend to suck you in; I'm still in Salisbury [library] and it's after 10:30 a.m.].

After lunch at the top of the climb out of Kent, I met up with Trigger, Baltimore Andy [who apparently hangs out at Nola, the Frederick cafe where I go sometimes multiple times a day, about once a week. Small world!] and Blessed, who I hadn't met before but who is a 29-year-old youth pastor.

We came to a part of the trail where the Housatonic River meets a narrow sandy beach between the trees only a step away. Blessed did his best to convince us to go swimming, but Trigger and Andy weren't up for it and I was hesitant. The water
by the bank was still but a rapid current, about 20 feet wide, coursed through the middle, and there was no telling how deep that part was. Blessed jumped straight in and rode the current.

After a bit I waded in. My feet sank in the muck and I saw crayfish all over the bottom. I crouched on the rocks at the current's edge and eased myself in. The current whisked me downriver until I stroked out at an eddy, about 40 yards away. It was like a water ride. I went back for more.

Blessed found a couple of severed fishing lures meanwhile and kept one for himself and gave the other one to me. Now it's on my pack as flare, like a green, dangling badge [with a hook - I've already punctured my thumb once] that says, "I swam in the Housatonic"]. Picture of that later.

The rest of the day felt like soccer conditioning. We hit what we estimated was a 3 mph pace straight up the next hill and sustained it for the duration of several hundred feet of up. Repeat twice, and Blessed was literally wringing sweat out of his shirt. I'm sure I could have done the same with my bandanna, which I wore Rambo-style to keep the waterfall of eyebrow sweat from getting to me.

Camp: Caesar Brook Campsite, in tent.
Dinner: Noodles + hot dog + hot habanero cheese.
Stream bath? Yes! With Dr. Bronner's. Was cold.

Privy example No. 1

Using the restroom in the woods isn't so bad. It's how the old timers did it: In outhouses.

On the trail, they're called "privies," and almost every shelter has one.

Some are less private than others:














This is the privy at Caesar Brook Campsite, where a large number of hikers stayed Tuesday night. This privy was about 50 feet away from the camping area.

Always pack your own tp, and bring Germ-X waterless hand sanitizer.

Update: Thursday, July 16

So the miles in my thru-hikers' companion must be off, or else I hiked through a time warp, because otherwise I hiked 7.9 miles in like less than 3 hours. And that includes 965 feet of climb.

I left Falls Village, Conn. after 8:30 a.m. and took a 30 mins+ swim break at the Great Falls and was soon joined by the Condiments, the Pachadivas and the Georgia Girls, all of whom plus myself camped behind a cafe in Falls Village the night before.














The swim was my second in the Housatonic River, which is now my favorite river that I've encountered on the AT so far.

Now I'm in Salisbury and considering hiking the last 7 miles of Connecticut just to get it over with. It isn't much of a trail town, and not many hikers are here.

I'm enjoying looking at the beautiful New England landscapes so far.

Kent; So long, NY; Salty Dog

I am in Kent, Connecticut. It's a pricy little nook of a town in the western part of the state.

Last night a group of hikers including me camped out in a little yard abutting the local Episcopal church, with the church's blessing.

I'm going to try to keep pace with Trigger today, which means loads of hiking. I'll be reducing my pack weight in Salisbury, and then it's Massachusetts within the week.

New York was a lot harder to walk than I thought it would be. It had rocks, it had a roller coaster and ruggedness in the shelter/water aspects. The views were terrific and it was bizarre running into huge groups of Hasidic Jewish kids, and when I would say, "Hey," to people, I would inevitably get back "How you doin?"

On a sadder note, the trail is now missing one Salty Dog, a very laid-back but industrious hiker from Kentucky who I first met in Palmerton and saw again in Delaware Water Gap and Unionville. Read his valediction to the trail here. I'll miss him.