I ate lunch at a convenience store where the trail crosses NY9; they have a grill that makes sandwiches fresh from Boars Head brand meats. Yummy corned beef!
I came across hikers Pockets, Taser and another German hiker named Tonrag. As we stopped at roughly the ten mile point to filter water, the first storm broke. Not bad, just enough to wet us down. Some thunder too but not close. So I waited most of it out for about ten minutes under a thick spot in the canopy then hiked on.
We got to NY301 and I found that the Fahnestock SP campsites are one mile north of the trail intersection. So I elected to hike the trail rather than do a road walk. I still have to do a nearly one mile hike back to the trail tomorrow morning, but I'll end up nearly two miles closer to tomorrow's shelter this way.
A note on a post at NY301 advised hikers to stop by campsite 11 for Trail Magic. While I was setting up my tent, hiker 4B and Spyglass showed up. I hadn't seen them since Wawayanda shelter, a week ago. I finally straggled over to site 11 and got a hotdog and a soda. Joe says he does this for fun every other weekend through hiker season and has been at it for over eight years!
The water at Fahnestock is loaded with minerals, and is not potable. The park has a specific drinking water tap on the side of the restroom building, but the water still tastes funny.
It's been pouring rain and fairly close lightning since about eight tonight. My tent is doing a decent job, there's some splash wetness on one side but nothing inside the tent. I just hope it stops for a bit tomorrow morning so I can pack in relative dryness.
7/27/15 - Morgan Stewart shelter
It was still very damp this morning at Fahnestock and nothing had dried, so I pulled on my soaking clothes, bundled up my wet tent and headed North. Rocks were slick but the soil is sandier so it was fairly solid.
I slept very poorly last night. The thunder didn't let up until around ten, and the Taconic Parkway is very close to the campground and road noise was quite loud. So between the two I was pretty tired today.
It's always something out here, and this morning it was horseflies. Lots of them! I was down in the trees and expecting mosquitoes but I got big nasty biting horseflies. I managed to kill over a dozen before 8am!
About four miles after Fahnestock, I stopped at Shenandoah Tent site. It's a clearing around a boarded up building that is mowed for tents. There's a hand pumped well, so I drew and filtered a couple of liters of cold, good tasting water and dumped the crap water I'd been carrying. Took a break and had a snack, too.
A little further along was the RPH (Ralph's Peak Hikers') shelter. It's a cinder block building with most of the back wall removed and an awning added over the back. There are bunks inside and it is possible to have pizza or Chinese food delivered to the shelter. I stopped to rest and tried to dry my socks. The caretaker showed up and said the cinder block building had actually been part of an older wooden home. When the ATC acquired the property, the wooden portion was falling down, so it was destroyed, leaving the cinder block room as the 'new' shelter. The hand pumped well tastes of rust.
I walked the thirty or so yards to the road and, Trail Magic! Courtesy of Sidetracked, who I last saw doing Trail Magic back at PA183 on the 7th. He's still slack packing his wife and doing Trail Magic waiting for her.
The humidity is rising, and so is the temp, so I stayed wet all day. I had to hustle a bit due to more storms building and it did rain a little before I could get here. Fortunately the storms moved off and I was able to set up my wet tent and let it air out while cooking supper. Since I didn't get to cook last night, which probably added to my fatigue today, I ate the food I had for both nights this evening. I'm feeling full tonight!
This shelter has a hand pumped well, good cold water. It is in the trees and there are a lot of mosquitoes.
There's a hiker here, Pink Hat, who started in Duncannon. She's only doing about seven miles a day, so she won't get to Katahdin but she's having fun. Spyglass and 4B got here about 6pm.
7/28/15 - Wiley shelter
I slept well last night and was on trail by seven. The humidity was so high that the air was misty. It really saps your energy. I had packed out two liters of water because the conditions have been dry but I made it to NY22 by eleven without quite running out. The garden center there allows hikers to get cold water from their spigot and even has a shower rigged up but there's no stall, just the pipe on the wall. Which faces the train tracks about thirty yards away. So bathers can be seen by passengers on the hourly commuter trains! I had to cross a marsh by way of a boardwalk before crossing the rails and up to the road; it was very hot and the marsh reeds blocked the tiny breeze. I ended up resting under the gazebo at the garden center until two thirty.
It's a bit less than five miles from NY22 to Wiley shelter but the first mile is across open farmers fields and slightly uphill. It was scorching. Inside the tree line the trail goes up 500ft over a couple of miles, but there's a hidden
roller coaster in the elevation.
Wiley shelter is the first place I've used a wooden tent platform. It's about 12ft square with eye hooks spaced every two feet around it and double eye hooks in each corner. I had to partially chop up my bear bag rope to set up my tent. I'll need to refine the rope system, platforms are the only option up in the Whites I hear.
Yeti and Amish caught up to me at NY22, but they caught a ride into Spawling to grab the train to NYC. When I was setting up here, Joker, one of the Wild Boys (the other had to go home for college), and several other hikers came through headed for the next shelter; they were all just back from NYC! I thought I'd be camping alone but Spyglass showed up a bit ago.
Tomorrow is 13 miles to the CT341 crossing where I'll go into Kent, CT. It's going to be even hotter than today. Joy.
7/29/15 - Kent, CT
I left camp just as Warren Doyle showed up and started writing in the Wiley shelter journal. This is his 17th AT thruhike. This year's guided group with him expects to make the trip in 140 days. It will take me more than 200 days. I said Hi and moved on out. At seven the relative humidity was 97%, and the air was misty. Not in the cloud misty but an ethereal blurring of details. I started sweating immediately.
About a mile out, I crossed into Connecticut. Hard to believe I'm starting state 10 of 14. Only two months left of my hike. Of course, the last four states will be the toughest.
The trail crosses the Ten Mile River and I stopped for water at the shelter of the same name. Lots of good tenting spots under the conifer trees around an open but tall grass meadow. The shelter is old, and a design I've not seen before. It's supposedly porcupine proof. I suppose that only means the sleeping platform as the shelter itself is of log construction. It has a front wall some three feet tall with steps. The sleeping platform is retracted about two feet from the front wall, so if a critter can't jump, it falls into the gap and is three feet under the bottom of the shelter floor. Or if a sleepy human doesn't watch their step in the middle of the night, they hurt themselves falling into the same gap!
I got passed by Jokes, Hollywood, Lost Boy, Wild Boy, Home Fry and met some Southbounders. They called themselves The Highwaymen; yes, Cash, Waylon, Kris and Willie were the individual names they were using. I also met an older Southbounder named Platon.
I caught Wild Boy, who had a wide eyed look to him for once. He stated there had been a large bear right where I was standing just a couple minutes earlier! I had wondered what made a racket at the top of the hill as I came down. About fifteen minutes later, Home Fry caught us and asked had we seen 'that bear back there'? It apparently came back down right after we moved on.
The heat all day, coupled with the humidity sapped my strength and energy. The thirteen miles to town felt like eighteen. I'm so glad I decided to zero tomorrow.
7/30/15 - Kent Zero Day
I woke up at 3am with a painful tingle in my right big toe. Took a couple of Advils and went back to sleep until five. Finally gave up and went looking for breakfast about six, only to find that Kent doesn't wake up until seven! So breakfast was milk and a Danish from the gas station. Boo! I made sure to buy stuff for tomorrow morning when I did resupply today. I stopped by Sundog Shies and what do you know, they had a pair of my hiking shoes in stock. So I get to hike out tomorrow in new shoes. It's a bit early to change them, but the current pair is pretty beat up. I'll probably change again somewhere in New Hampshire or early Maine.
Co-Ed called, he's going out to the Grand Canyon and other parks for a couple weeks with Wolfpack. He ended up stopping by here and we caught up over supper tonigh. As we finished, Cindy Lopper came in; her visit with her husband ended the other day and she's back on trail.
It rained like Noah this afternoon but it's still foggy on the ridges around town. Weather station says we have more possible until late tonight, then it's supposed to dry out before daybreak. A dry front is coming through. So my hike to VT should be a little more bearable.
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