Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, April 16 -17, 2016 — Flip flops are not going to be the recommended hiking boot anytime soon. Certainly they have merit. After all they’d tread lightly on the environment – with no cleats to rearrange the dirt. They’re cool and airy which might help limit athletes foot. Certainly they’d dry quickly. Alas, they’re just not practical.
Flip flops are a type of Appalachian Trail thru hike. Rather than hike in a single straight line direction from one terminus to the other, flip floppers are hiker jazz artists, jumping ahead or starting somewhere between the two ends and working outward. They still hike all 2,200 miles within 12 consecutive months, they just don’t book a linear itinerary.
The ATC is trying to encourage flip flop hiking in an attempt to alleviate some of the spring season overcrowding on the southern 500 miles of the trail.
Enter the flip flop Festival, an attempt to increase awareness of and participation in nontraditional AT thru hikes.
More than a hundred aspiring thru hikers and hundreds of hikers attended the many seminars on hiking-related subjects including trail etiquette, hygiene, basic hiking, trail issues and long distance backpacking. I offered the latter. My slides are here: Eating the Elephant
The festival featured vendors, displays and even a food truck. The cannon is located in the exact same spot as one that appears in a civil war era photograph.
Sunday morning we sent those starting their hikes off in style following a tasty pancake breakfast hosted by the Harpers Ferry Odd Fellows Club which was chartered in 1833! It’s building is graced with (rather poorly) repaired cannonball holes from the civil war. Talk about history!
Later that afternoon we were hiking up the southern shoulder of South Mountain (Maryland), just outside Harpers Ferry, leading the second of Sunday’s day hikes up to a nice viewpoint overlooking the Potomac River called Weverton Cliff.
The conga line of hikers winding up the switchbacks reminded me of a big city rush hour traffic jam. People were stepping all over each other.
Why would anyone do this, I thought. I like to share scenery and the outdoor experience with a few friends or people that I like in small doses. That’s when I realized that above all, one word describes why I like to be on the trail where ever that trail may be. Solitude… and that’s no flip flop on my part.
After a early evening rain shower at Annapolis Rock
Annapolis Rock, Maryland, April 1-2, 2016 — Spring has sprung loose the usual Pandora’s box that is the hiking public. The weather is improving and they are on the march. Time for the ridgerunners to ride again and help the challenged to do the right thing.
This year’s class is interesting. We were funded for six vs. five last year. The extra one goes to Shenandoah National Park where we’ll now have two veteran ridgerunners to cover 105 miles of the Appalachian Trail there. I’ll introduce or reintroduce everyone as they come aboard.
First things first. Maryland funds two ridgerunners because its 42 miles of trail is among the most heavily used anywhere. After all, millions of people who live in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. areas are within two hours travel time and easy access to relatively gentle hiking. The trail candy, e.g. the sites, vistas, civil war, and monuments, are attractive incentives.
Consequently the state wants a caretaker at Annapolis Rock (AR or the Rock) from April one through Oct. 31. All the rest, with one exception, work from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day – peak season so to speak. That exception launches in Shenandoah next week.
The easy access, gorgeous views, romantic sunsets, and excellent rock climbing, not to mention being named one of Washingtonian Magazine’s top 10 hikes, make the Rock a prize to to which people flock in droves. Three hundred people on a pleasant weekend day is not uncommon. Someone’s gotta help and guide them or the vegetation would be trampled and the trash would obscure the rocks.
Enter Kyle. He’s a jocular former Marine and 2014 AT thru hiker. He’s also a recent graduate of the National Park Service Park Ranger Academy.
Ridgerunning is not glamorous. First thing is moving into the rustic apartment provided by the Maryland Park Service. Then the AR overseeer helps you find the wood chips that help the two composing privies at the AR campground work. Taking care of poop by tending the privies is a big part of every ridgerunner’s job! That’s the ironic part of this dream job.
Q: Guess what the shovel’s for? A: It falls into the privies.
Next you have to put up the tent in which you or the summer ridgerunner will be sleeping in for the next several months.
It was fun trucking that stuff up the mountain – not. Thanks to Rush, the AR overseer for schlepping it up.
We got the rain tarp flying over the picnic table just before the rain hit. The rain was a nice complement to April Fool’s Day.
After the first band of showers, we went up on the rock to enjoy the scenery and that last “golden hour” of sunlight.
Overnight showers snare-drummed the fly of my hammock all night long. Me, I was hanging high and dry, my ears stuffed with ear phones listening to old “Lone Ranger” radio shows. Rain drops or hoof beats. I couldn’t tell.
They sky cleared this morning and it was time to haul up the first bail of wood chips for the privies. The first day in the glamorous life of a ridgerunner.
Kensington, MD, March 2, 2016 — It’s that time of year again when the call of the wild echos through the ether. This is when we plan, pack, lace ’em up and get it on.
The year starts in Georgia on the AT. For one, I’m anxious to see if all the planning we have done to manage the early crowds actually is beneficial. All I know is that a lot of time and energy have gone into the improvements.
Next it’s the National Park Service’s centennial. Shenandoah has challenged folks to celebrate by hiking a hundred miles in the park in return for a free patch. My friend and first hiking partner Mary and her son Ben will be hiking there on a 600 mile-long AT section hike in mid-April. I plan to tag along for all 105 of Shenandoah’s miles.
From there it gets fuzzier. I have my ridgerunner hikes and trail crew week – only one this year. I’m signed up for a Leave No Trace master educator course and a talk on backpacking at Sky Meadows State Park, Va. for National Trails Day.
We’ve hired two returning ridgerunners and four new folks for this season. More on them at another time.
There’s an opportunity to hike the northern half (Oregon and Washington) of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and/or the Colorado Trail. Lastly, once school is back in session, finishing the Long Trail in Vermont is carved in stone after having to miss it last year.
I’m learning not to predict too much. Plans do not survive contact with reality, and this year reality is holding a lot of face cards. I’ve taken on some executive responsibility with my trail club that’s going to eat time, and have been nominated for a professional lifetime career honor that, if selected, I will accept in person come hell or high water.
Top of the first inning is the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail on Springer Mountain, Georgia. I’ve noted and written about my friend Denise’s plan to thru hike this year. Well, she gets dropped off at the trailhead around noon on March 9. I’ve made the arrangements to be there like a beacon to cheer her on and hike the first 80 miles of the AT with her. She will nail her hike to the wall.
The weather in Georgia has been all over the map. Hey, it’s in the south you say; it’s bound to be warm. Well considering that the entire AT in Georgia is above 4,000 ft., cold weather, sleet and snow are factors throughout March.
I’m packing now. My pack is going to weigh much more than normal. For one, I’m carrying my food in a bear-proof container, not so much for the bears, but to set an example to others who don’t take bears seriously.
As for which sleeping bag, jackets and other clothing, I figured I’d split the difference between zero degrees F and 70F.
Harpers Ferry, WV, July 7, 2015 — I was privileged to see a sneak preview of “A Walk in the Woods,” a knockabout comedy staring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte. The show opens in 1,800 theaters on Sept. 2.
Redford. Slapstick. No way!!! Indeed, it’s true. The movie was a delightful midnight snack adding a light touch to Redford’s rich acting career. If you recall, Redford and Paul Newman always had a comedic touch.
To my delight, the humor was practically nonstop. The jokes kept coming. Anyone would get them, but there was enough hiker and AT double entandre to evoke knowing nods and smiles from the audience.
Potty humor on the trail isn’t new and this movie doesn’t disappoint. The ubiquitous and sometimes maligned potty trowel makes more than a cameo appearance.
Redford with toilet paper in hand may have been added for shock value, but more likely, the potty trowel scenes are subliminal Leave No Trace messages using a subject not much discussed in polite, read the non-hiking, society.
Yup. Bears aren’t the only ones who do it in the woods and wanna be’s need to know that and prepare to pull their pants down around that and other deeply personal subjects in advance.
To recap for the unfamiliar, author Bill Bryson penned a best-seller in the late 1990s entitled, A Walk in the Woods. It was a semi-fictional and somewhat autobiographical story based on chunks of the Appalachian Trail that Bryson sampled in preparation to write his story. His sidekick, Steven Katz – played by Nolte in the movie – is the foil and comedic counterpoint as their adventures unfold.
This New York Times best seller is credited with driving up the number of AT thru hike attempts by logarithmic factors since.
The screenplay differs a fair amount from Bryson’s original story, but the essence is there. Two old comrades with diametrically opposite personalities reunite after decades of estrangement for one last adventure.
Neither this film, nor the recent movie “Wild” (based on Cheryl Strayed’s best selling memoir) are about hiking per se. In each, hiking is the means to the end. In this case, Bryson confronts career burnout and the remedy is a romp in the woods with his old buddy Katz. Our treat is to go along for the ride and enjoy the laughs.
Kristen Schaal.
The cast is fantastic, especially Longmont, Colorado’s own Kristen Schaal who is brilliant. Her character plays off a classic AT stereotype and the reappearance of her character could have been a hilarious punctuation point near the end of the movie when Bryson and Katz have to be rescued. In stead, the dynamic duo are saved by other stereotypes they first hate but come to love. In reality, it doesn’t happen that way on the AT. No spoiler alert here.
As with any movie about subjects we know intimately and love dearly, this movie has its share of nits to pick and quibble about. Among them, in the movie: Gooch Gap comes after Neels Gap. McAfee Knob appears after Shenandoah National Park. The duo has trekking poles strapped to their obviously empty packs, but never use them. The social aspects of the AT experience are mostly AWOL. The bears that steal Bryson and Katz’s food are grizzlies, not black bears. (We know bears will do almost anything for food, but hitchhike from Montana? That’s a bit much.) Much of the movie was not shot on the AT. That’s dramatic license. So what?
The $64 dollar question is how “A Walk in the Woods” will affect the number of hikers in the future. History is clear. Major media events drive numbers up.
Given that most Millennials barely know who Redford and Nolte are, it may not have much effect on that demographic. Large numbers of Boomers, on the other hand, missed out when they were in their 20s. Like me, they had to wait until retirement to find the time. Could be that this will remind them to get off the bench and out in the woods.
More likely, we may expect the number of weekenders and short-distance backpackers to increase along the trail. After all, Bryson himself didn’t hike the whole thing. For those without the where with all or inclination to thru hike, sampling chunks of the trail is a viable alternative.
Hordes of uninitiated hikers can have a disproportionate impact on the environment. That’s why the potty trowel metaphor is an effective vehicle to communicate the larger Leave No Trace message. It creates awareness and opens the door to a broader discussion of appropriate behavior and practices.
Viewers come to movies like this with a truck load of preconceptions. They’ve read the book, tramped around on the AT or other trails, and have their own inventory of intrepid experiences. Hikers want a hiking movie with which they can self-identify and reinforce the attributes of the hiking experience as they understand it.
In other words, hikers will tend to want a certain label and vintage of fine red wine, e.g. perfection. For some, this won’t that movie, and I’ll submit that there’ll never be one. So, this flick may not be what you hope for, but it will still make you laugh because if you haven’t been there and done that, at least you’ve seen it.
As a feature film, this treat is tasty, but definitely lo-cal. It never intended or tried to be an opulent double Dutch chocolate delight. In other words, here’s little to satiate the uncontrollable urge known as hiker hunger in “A Walk in the Woods” the movie, and unfortunately the lack of high caloric content may be unfulfilling to a few of the usual suspects out there in hiker land who never seem to be satisfied anyway.
By its end, “A Walk in the Woods” is a light comedy based on our favorite pass time with a sprig of deeply personal revitalization for the two main characters garnishing the end. They all lived happily ever after.
When you think about it, isn’t that a big chunk of why any of us lace ’em up and grab our trekking poles?
Harpers Ferry, WV, May 26, 2015 –There I was doing my best Captain Kirk impression as I sat in the command chair behind the counter of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) visitors center when the door opens and I hear a cheery, “Hi Sisu!” (Sisu is my trail name.)
To my delight, in walks Emily Leonard. At least that’s who she was when I camped next to her and her husband on Springer Mountain, GA in early March. Now she is “Black Bear,” an awesome thru hiker who remembered me promising that I would take her ‘half-way photo’ if she reached ATC HQ on a Tuesday, my volunteer day. Well, she did and there I was wearing a giant smile in salute to her presence and accomplishment.
Emily is a former teacher and soccer coach who lives in Maine. She sounded and looked strong. After the formalities, I treated her to a healthy, read leafy green-colored, lunch at a quirky local restaurant. Our conversation quickly established that she’s having a wonderful time walking in the woods. You can follow her blog at: http://happyhiking.bangordailynews.com/category/home/ I really hope that Black Bear goes — ALL THE WAY!
By way of additional insight, I wrote about Emily anonymously in one of my blogs from Georgia. She was a hiker with the ultra light Cuban fiber tent pitched with so much slack that I worried might blow away in a strong wind. After staying the first night, her husband returned home to Maine and work while Emily hiked on. That wasn’t the first time I learned to never judge a pack by its cover.
Of note: It turns out she ditched that tent for a range of reasons and is using the one her husband had. So much for hi tech.
Separately, a hiker named “Bonafide” aka “Winter Walker” phoned me from Bears Den hostel last night. I first met him in Tennessee in December 2013 during my thru hike. That year his doctor told him to lose some weight, so he walked from his home state of Vermont to Tennessee and back to Harpers Ferry. This year he decided to thru hike and I met him plowing through the north Georgia snow back in February.
Sisu and Winter Walker in Mount Rogers Outfitters, Damascus, VA in Dec. 2013
His call was to check in being that he was nearby. When I mentioned that the movie, “A Walk in the Woods” would be out in September, he unleashed a tirade about hikers who mess up the woods and don’t follow Leave No Trace principles. It was instructive to say the least. It seems like time and distance don’t weed out all the bad apples.
The “Walk in the Woods” trigger was this: The Bill Bryson book features many scenes like the ones I reported from Georgia with people tossing trash and worse all over the trail.
He asked me what I thought the answer might be. My response was one word: Babysitters. That’s what you get when you act like a child.
Here’s the trailer for “A Walk in the Woods:” It promises to be a fun movie.
Gene from Brooklyn gets a “Trail Karma” award for picking up other people’s trash.
Appalachian Trail, Sunday May 10, 2015 — People are loving our national hiking trails to death. The Appalachian Trail (AT) alone is estimated to see up to three million visitors per year.
Looking at it one way, that’s enough boots on the ground to bruise the rocks rather than the rocks having the opposite effect on the hikers’ feet. It’s sort of like hammer vs. nail in role reversal isn’t it?
The collective environmental impact generated by all these people is enormous. They generate human waste, leave trash, trample vegetation, erode trails and mark their passage in many other unwelcome ways. There are many means to mitigate this impact, but before we talk about that, here’s the back story.
Most people experience our national parks and forests in what is known as front country. Front country is civilized, distinguished by infrastructure such as roads, picnic tables, flush toilets, trash cans, concessions and parking.
You know about more about front country than you may think. That’s where Yogi, Boo boo and Mr. Ranger did their Jellystone schtick. You get the idea.
The back country is a very different animal. In contrast to front country, about the only evidence of civilization are the marked hiking trails. The AT’s primitive shelters and privies are a notable exception. Otherwise it’s supposed to be a “wilderness” experience. (Not to be confused with designated wilderness areas. That’s a separate matter.)
Most people never see the back country and hardly realize it’s even there. The primary reason may be that a lot of muscle power is usually required to get into the back country. In other words, you have to sweat.
Been to the mall lately? Observations suggest that fewer and fewer Americans are up for back country excursions. Supersize soft drinks aside, nevertheless there’s no shortage of back country hikers.
The problem comes when people show up in the back country and don’t know how to limit their impact. Within my experience, they fall into two primary groups.
One group fancies themselves as romantic throwbacks applying their survival skills and living off the land in ways promoted by Jack London, the Boy Scout Handbooks prior to the 1970s, or the Bear Grylls TV series today.
If everyone behaved this way in the back country, it wouldn’t be long before they’d turn paradise into a denuded moonscape. When you spy someone with a axe, hatchet, machete or (the very heavy) Bear Grylls brand gear on a national hiking trail, you might be looking at one of these folks.
Machete damage. Green wood doesn’t burn by the way.
The other group is simply clueless. Finding no back country trash cans, they just drop their garbage where they stand because they don’t come prepared to carry it out. They befoul water sources with human waste. They trample vegetation. Overall, their practices put the back country environment at risk.
Ignorant people leave their trash in fire pits. It doesn’t burn completely.
Unburnt trash.
When the backpacking craze developed as boomers came of age in the late 1960s, it threatened to overwhelm the environment. Minimal impact techniques emerged as ways to mitigate the damage generated by the hiking hoards of that era.***
In time, minimum impact morphed into the Leave No Trace ethic. Leave No Trace is based on seven principles designed to help not only to minimize human impact, but also to maintain the highest quality wilderness experience possible.
Principles were developed for both the front and back country. Much more at: https://lnt.org/ These are the back country principles:
Plan Ahead and Prepare: Poorly prepared people, when presented with unexpected situations, often resort to high-impact solutions that degrade the outdoors or put themselves at risk. Proper planning leads to less impact.
Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces: Damage to land occurs when surface vegetation or communities of organisms are trampled beyond repair. The resulting barren area leads to unusable trails, campsites and soil erosion.
Dispose of Waste Properly: Though most trash and litter in the backcountry is not significant in terms of the long term ecological health of an area, it does rank high as a problem in the minds of many backcountry visitors. Trash and litter are primarily social impacts which can greatly detract from the naturalness of an area.[5] Further, backcountry users create body waste and waste water which requires proper disposal according to Leave No Trace.
Leave What You Find: Leave No Trace directs people to minimize site alterations, such as digging tent trenches, hammering nails into trees, permanently clearing an area of rocks or twigs, and removing items.
Minimize Campfire Impacts: Because the naturalness of many areas has been degraded by overuse of fires, Leave No Trace teaches to seek alternatives to fires or use low-impact fires.
Respect Wildlife: Minimizing impact on wildlife and ecosystems.
Be Considerate of Other Visitors: Following hiking etiquette and maintaining quiet allows visitors to go through the wilderness with minimal impact on other users. (Wikipedia)
Leave No Trace plastic tag at bottom right. (Click on any photo to enlarge.)
Fortunately most hikers are aware of Leave No Trace. It’s promoted everywhere. Unfortunately these principles are practiced selectively and conveniently. In other words, hikers reason their one insignificant transgression won’t have any harmful effect.
The reality is the opposite. The impact of small Leave No Trace lapses grows exponentially when “everybody” does it.
Now back to the reason for this story.
Too many younger hikers were not following Leave No Trace ethics, yet hikers 18-24 make up the majority of AT thru hikers. More challenging, the traditional messages and delivery means were not working with this group.
Trail Karma awards and promotional stickers.
Enter Trail Karma as a new outreach program: http://www.trailkarma.com. It is a website targeting younger hikers. The Trail Karma awards component of this program allows ridgerunners and trail ambassadors to reward good behavior on the trail when it happens in real time.
The Trail Karma Award is a nice AT medallion with a serial number on the back. Hikers can register the award on the Trail Karma website and even pass it along when another good turn is observed.
The idea is to reinforce the positive. I thought the two Trail Karma Awards I was able to present during my time in Georgia had a positive impact, both on the hikers who received them and those who observed the presentation.
Yesterday’s mail brought a CARE package of new Trail Karma awards and promotional stickers. I can’t wait to find good behavior to reward.
***The trails weren’t pristine before the boomers showed up. In the earlier era, hikers and campers built lean-tos, cut pine bows to make beds, chopped tent stakes every night, disposed of food cans willy nilly and practiced a multitude of other sins. Their smaller numbers helped limit the damage which was was eventually cleared up.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, February 20, 2015 — I’ve spent the past week gettin’ ready for love. Oh, not THAT kind. I’ve been with a group of people training to assist hikers on the Appalachian Trail this year. We love the trail and the people who hike on it.
Our base camp is a modern style house from the late 50s or early 60s owned by the National Park Service. During the summer it is basecamp for the trail crews that work in the park.
Our mission is to educate hikers primarily on “Leave No Trace”™ principles, encourage them and help them in practical ways.
An estimated three million people walk at least some distance on the Appalachian Trail each year, so Leave No Trace is a big deal. The national scenic trails, of which the AT is only one albeit the most famous, are being “loved to death. The number of users continues to increase at a high rate. Therefore, the impact on the environment from human footsteps alone is enormous. Add their feces and urine, toothpaste, dishwater, dropped litter, abandoned gear, fires, animal disturbance and all the rest together and the sum is enormous.
Unfortunately, individual hikers fail to appreciate that their impact is additive to all the others. That’s why Leave No Trace is more than Pack it in. Pack it out. Hikers are expected to plan and prepare for everything they might encounter on their hike. Understanding how and where to camp prevents erosion and unsightly scars. Knowing how to dispose of human waste properly is critical to preventing water contamination and disease. Respecting wildlife, fellow hikers and campers, leaving what you find undisturbed and generally being considerate round it out.
Here I’m demonstrating how to hang a food bag in a way that is not tied to any tree. Bears have learned to break ropes tied off to trees and feast on what falls to the ground!
Human food kills bears. Once they become unafraid of humans, bears have to be trapped and moved, or worse, destroyed. They are magnificent animals. Being thoughtless has sad consequences. The AT-wide bear statistics weren’t encouraging. Bear territory is shrinking and the animals are only trying to find food.
Had a small bear encounter at the outfitter in Gatlinburg, TN.
During the week, the Forest Service taught us a lot about hiker/camper psychology and methods to be persuasive without confrontation. Nobody wants to hear that they are a screw-up. Above all, we learned to count small victories.
Then there’s the weather. Minus 23 at altitude in the Smokies! Holy frostbite Batman!!! My gear will get me to -15F at best with a miserable night. I’ve experienced and slept outside in -50F in Alaska and northern Minnesota. I can’t carry that kind of gear over these mountains. Best to stay in town when the weather forecast looks like this.
Today I drove to Hiawassee in north Georgia to visit a couple of hostels and assess trail and weather conditions. There weren’t that many hikers around. Several had been driven back to or into town by the subzero temperatures. They said the snow wasn’t a big deal, but that there were a lot of downed trees to impede progress.
Ridgerunners/trail ambassadors carry large pruning saws to attack blowdown up to about a foot in diameter. At a minimum, we can trim away the branches from a large trunk. The going will be slow next week. Can’t wait.
Tuesday the Georgia crew meets with the Forest Service and the local trail club for coordination. Let the games begin!
Harrison’s Pierce Pond Camps , AT NOBO mile 2030.5, Thursday July 24, 2014 — Today reminded me that Maine has more mud than Vermont and more rocks than Pennsylvania in spite of it’s glorious splendor. Yesterday’s rain dumped a lot of water on the Maine landscape with predictable results. It did what water does.
The mud was deep and black as onyx. It would make pretty good glue I suspect. I’ve written enough about slippery rocks that the eponymously named college probably owes me something for the ads. We had it all, in spades.
None of that nuisance stuff interfered with what was a watercolor day of storybook ponds and classic Maine scenery. I even crossed a road with a congratulatory 2,000 mile sign painted on it. Must be depressing for the southbounders. Some of them look so fresh and innocent. They have no idea what they’re marching into. None of us did.
Maine is dotted as thick as a Monet painting with rustic, and I mean rudimentary, cabins that people own or rent for fishing and hunting.
Built in the early ’30s, and not much changed, Harrison’s is a classic. Franklin Roosevelt once fished here. Tim, the owner and former actuary, is a good guy who treats hikers with extra kindness.
The actual reason I pulled in here was for the giant breakfast and the HOT shower. The mud and warm temperatures this week have taken their toll. Laundry can wait until tomorrow in Caratunk where I have to go to the post office anyway.
It’s a three-mile hike in the morning to catch the canoe that ferries hikers across the Kennebec River. The ferry was initiated after a hiker drowned and several others had close calls several years ago. The danger lies in a dam upstream that releases water without warning. The icy cold temp can’t be a favorable factor either.
Green Mountain House Hostel, Manchester Center, Vt. AT NOBO mile 1,647.2, Monday June 2, 2014 — Plunk yourself down in a living room just like your own and turn the TV to the Red Sox game. What could be better than that?
Well, for one you could be cooking up a juicy steak with a tossed salad in a sparkling fully equipped kitchen. Did I mention the Cherry Garcia ice cream in the fridge?
About now you’d be thinking the hiker life is good, and so do I. If only the Sox were ahead of the Indians… Oh well, they ARE the Red Sox.
Last night at Stratton Pond was fascinating. We shared the shelter with two middle age couples who were on their maiden camping trips. It’s safe to say it was a humorous night.
Here are a couple of highlights. Nobody could believe we hiked the same distance in three hours that took them all day. One of the women refused to use the privy. It was too gross. Neither couple brought sleeping pads or air mattresses.
Needless to say, sans insulation they suffered an uncomfortable and icy cold night in spite if their adequate sleeping bags. Little did they know, as we explained when everyone got up, that insulation underneath is more important than what’s up top.
At least these folks were out there learning the same lessons we’ve all learned. I mean, who am I to talk. I’m the idiot who forwarded his sleeping bag ahead to Hanover, NH. Bo May know baseball. I know cold. 🙁 The over night temps haven’t been above 40 F since I put that sucker in the mail.
We reached town around noon and worked our way through the usual town chores after a trail magic ride from a local emergency room nurse who takes care of two shelters and some trail. Thanks Marge for all you do!
Tomorrow in light of heavy rain in the forecast, Jeff, the owner of Green Mountain House, is going to slack pack us 18 miles forward. We’ll hike southbound back to town and spend the night here. It’s safer on the slippery rocks and in the mud to walk with lighter loads – snacks and first aid kits.
There’s another reason. Green Mountain House has the best hot water on the trail! Can’t get enough of that. P
Leroy A. Smith Shelter, Penn., AT NOBO mile 1,269.4, Sunday May 4, 2014 — Zinc smelter in Palmerton operated from 1898 – 1980. The resulting pollution killed the vegetation on the ridge above town and contaminated the water.
Palmerton is a very hiker-friendly town but notable for having an inordinate number of lawyers, numerous medical facilities of various types and two funeral homes on main street alone. I know the rules about correlation and causation, but I’m just sayin’.
During our short visit we heard talk about cancer clusters. Sadly we saw evidence of obviously neurologically damaged people in town.
BUS (Big Ugly and Slow) is a mining engineer with a degree from the Colorado School of Mines. His observations were fascinating. He noted that the plant is operating albeit with new air scrubbers.
The climb up the Lehigh Gap was the biggest one in a long time, but pro forma after more than 1,200 miles.
