Man, it's been another scorcher today. I got to NJ94 about 1:15 this afternoon and walked a couple hundred yards to Heaven Hill Farm for a chocolate milkshake and to wait on the motel driver out of the sun. Hiker Cakes got dropped off by a pickup, he'd been in NYC with Lost Boy doing the tourist thing. He's hiking out this afternoon, which is insane. I'm not looking forward to the five miles and 900ft up tomorrow to the first shelter. I'm only going that far to avoid the heat and a zero tomorrow.
Today was a mindless day, except for the crossing of the Pochuck Boardwalk. It's a 0.9 mile boardwalk and a 110ft suspension bridge over a marsh. Very pretty, very few bugs, but the heat was oppressive!
There's one other hiker here tonight at the Appalachian Motel in Vernon, an older hiker like me whom I've not met. The younger crowd is down at the church hostel I suppose. The hotel owner tells me most for this year's hiker bubble has already passed through. Gee, thanks.
7/21/15 - Wawayanda shelter
I woke up this morning really wanting to take the zero I'd scheduled but also wanting to make up a day. Since I'd been able to resupply yesterday, I bagged the zero and made a late start out of the hotel. My feet felt a lot better by ten than they did at six, but the heat was already up and I had little energy. Still, I made it up the hill by one this afternoon. This shelter doesn't have a water source, so campers have to walk 0.4 miles up the trail and along a side trail to the State Park HQ to a spigot. Takes about twenty minutes round trip.
Bootscoot, Sleeps In, Scientist, Tiger Mike, Four B, Kaleidoscope, and several other hikers came in around supper time, just in time for an afternoon rain shower.
At six this evening, a close by lightning strike startled us and then the rain came down again hard, this time with pea sized hail. I'm glad I'm not tenting this evening!
7/22/15 - Wildcat shelter
I counted 25 tents outside the full shelter this morning. I haven't seen crowding like that since probably Hawk Mountain way back in Georgia!
Today was only twelve miles, but man was it rocky! As in rock scrambles rocky. at one point I had to climb an aluminum ladder, then edge left for eight feet at the top along a six inch ledge. Several times I was hand over hand with my poles collapsed to keep them out of the way. And the overall trail was a damn roller coaster.
A couple miles before this shelter, we crossed a road. Just off trail was a hot dog stand and an ice cream shop. Every stopped to eat. So good!
The weather was perfect, upper seventies with low humidity and a medium breeze all day. Perfect! Tomorrow should be similar.
People are starting to trickle into camp at 7pm, one turned out to be Cindy Lopper! I haven't seen her since before Shenandoah! She says she had a bad aqua blaze experiment that cost her time in Shenandoah and has been poking along. Her husband is flying out to meet her in Ft Montgomery from Houston, how nice for her!
No comments:
Post a Comment