Week Sixteen – Finishing New York and Connecticut

Hey everyone! We had another great week on the Appalachian Trail. Here’s what’s been going on!

Day 106, Monday July 3: Nick and I woke up in the Airbnb and quickly packed up our stuff. We finished off the doughnuts we bought the previous day, and headed to Harrisburg to pick up Meadow and Margo. We had a wonderful breakfast (thank you so much Corsettis for the cake!!) and the four of us drove over four hours to the end point for backpacking for the week. Our friend Ben from Pittsburgh met us there, and we shuttled to the beginning point, where Meadow and I had left off five days before. Meadow and me, plus Margo, Nick, and Ben were planning on hiking together for a few days! Since it was already after 4pm when we were close to our starting point, we decided to stop at a nearby pizzeria and gelateria for dinner before starting our hike. Corrados’ pizza did not disappoint, and the guy behind the counter offered to let us camp behind the restaurant as he does for all Thru-Hikers which is very generous! We didn’t take him up on it but another Thru-Hiker named Lightning did. After we got into the restaurant it started pouring rain, which reinforced our decision to stop for dinner to be the right one. After ordering the pizza we also saw a familiar face at the restaurant, although it wasn’t so familiar since we didn’t recognize him at first: Dapper Dan! We hadn’t seen him in almost a thousand miles on the trail, and he looked very different: aside from his new ridiculous, bushy mustache, Dapper Dan had also lost a significant amount of weight. He called our trail names and I had to stare at him for a few seconds before realizing who it was. We caught up about how our hikes had been going since we saw each other last, including how many days we had off-trail which is what allowed Dan to catch up to us. Dan said that he had spent a few days visiting his wife while he was passing through New Jersey, and that it had been hard for him to get back on the trail ever since. His spark to keep hiking was fading as the hiking grew more difficult, but he was committed to seeing the hike through to the end. It was great to see Dan again and enjoy some pizza and gelato, and when we had finished eating the rain miraculously stopped. We piled back in the car and headed up to the trailhead.

We had only planned on hiking about four miles that evening, which turned out to be about what we could fit in before the sun set. We walked through an open meadow and some humid forest, noting that whichever trail maintenance club took care of eastern New York was obsessed with blazes. I could typically see four to six blazes on trees at any given time on the trail, which seemed a bit excessive. When we reached the shelter the humidity was still extremely high, and the air temperature was still sweltering even though it was after 7pm. There was only one person staying in the shelter, and he seemed like a local hiker (not a Thru-Hiker) based on his gear. He commented on how late we had gotten in, which wasn’t actually that late, and the five of us set up our sleeping gear in the shelter. Hanging the bear bags was a challenge because one of our ropes wasn’t long enough to do the PCT Hang, and so we had to hang five bags off of two ropes. Ben was the only one able to pull the three-bag rope up to the tree, but we managed! With all the evening chores done, we headed to bed…which is where the nightmare began. It began to drizzle again as soon as we got into the shelter, and while the mosquitoes had been present throughout the evening they executed a coordinated attack once we were all vulnerable and trying to sleep. The mosquitoes were unbelievably bad in the shelter, and we all felt like we were being sucked dry by the little demons. It was extremely hot and humid, so we had to choose between hiding from the flying vampires under our sleeping bags while roasting to death, or unzipping our sleeping bags to cool off but risking bleeding to death via mosquito bites. We all had trouble sleeping, but after pulling my lightweight sleeping bag liner over my head I was able to drift off. At 11:30pm Meadow and Margo gave up the fight and left the shelter to set up their tent in the pouring rain.

Day 107, Tuesday July 4: At 5am Margo’s cell phone alarm went off in the shelter, and since she was in the tent the rest of us rooted around in her bag to find the offending telephone. After silencing it, a disheartened Ben said that he had just managed to fall asleep. He later told us that between the heat, humidity, and relentless mosquitoes, he had seriously contemplated running back to his car (which was about forty miles away–did I mention that Ben is a talented ultra-marathoner, a professional sufferer?) to sleep in a hotel. I wouldn’t blame anyone for running forty miles through the rain at night to get away from the mosquitoes. The sleeping conditions overnight were seriously horrible! We were able to fall back to “sleep” until about 7am, but the mosquitoes didn’t stop when the sun rose; if anything they just continued their coordinated attack. “What do they eat when they can’t get Hiker?!?” I put my very stupid-looking hat on, complete with bug net, and we all doused ourselves in bug spray which seemed to do nothing. Hot and exhausted before we even began the day, we started hiking around 8am. The heat and humidity continued all day, but we mostly still enjoyed it! We passed by Nuclear Lake, so named for a plutonium research facility that was built nearby and eventually decommissioned. A few folks were fishing for catch-and-release while we checked out the lake, and they caught a few sunfish. We also passed the Dover Oak, a 300-year old oak tree that is supposedly the largest oak tree on the AT. Measuring in at a hulking 20-foot circumference (or more), it truly was a sight to behold!

In the afternoon the sky finally seemed to have given up threatening rain, and just as the blazing sun came out we departed the first and hit a short boardwalk through a flooded wetland area. We stopped mid-boardwalk to filter some water from a clear, flowing section of the wetland. Margo jumped into the stream once we were finished collecting water to splash around and escape from the heat and humidity, as she had already done in all of the streams we had crossed that day. We began suggesting trail names like Splash, Little Dipper, and Spritz, but none of them seemed to stick. We rounded out our break time by sharing a bag of Haribo gummies before heading to the other side of the wetland. We saw the only train station that lies right on the AT, where Hikers can utilize a very limited schedule of pickups to go to New York City. We hiked on through the afternoon until we reached the Wiley Shelter around 6:30pm after a 16-mile day. We were all exhausted after the hiking day and little sleep the night before, Thru-Hiker and Day-Hikers alike! We all knew that sleeping in the shelter again was not an option due to the mosquitoes, so we set up our tents before hanging our bear ropes. I finally got to set up my tent for the first time–I never even set up the tent that I purchased before I left for the trail, and since Meadow and I had been sharing her tent I never had a need on the trail! My NEMO tent went up very easy, but it’s footprint was noticeably smaller than Meadow’s Big Agnes tent. Nick’s head and feet both touched the walls of the tent, but it was still better than being eaten alive my mosquitoes in the shelter! We cooked dinner and hung out at the picnic table while a large group of young teenagers set up their camp in the spaces around us. The only adult in their group left in the evening, and he apologized in advance on the kids’ behalf on his way past us to hike out to his car. “They’re only fourteen so they will probably be louder than they should be, so I’m sorry for that. They’re all excited to be out in the woods!” He asked us about our Thru-Hike and wished us luck before disappearing up the trail, leaving the feral kids to their own devices. They seemed to know the basics of backpacking and they did their best, and to be honest I didn’t mind hearing them late into the night. Their bear bag hangs were hilariously bad though, and we had a few chuckles when we woke up and saw them the next morning.

Day 108, Wednesday July 5: Happy Birthday Ben! We started the day with a rousing round of singing happy birthday, but not too loud so we didn’t disturb the slumbering teenagers. The morning was sunny and we saw some blue sky, which was the clearest morning we had on trail in two weeks. We cooked breakfast at the shelter before starting the days’ hike, and so didn’t get moving until a tad later than usual. It was extremely hot and humid all day–what a shock! Early in the day we departed New York and entered Connecticut, which meant we had finished our ninth state of the fourteen along the AT. We had officially made it to New England…Wow!! The terrain in Connecticut seemed similar to that of New York, but different at the same time. There were still areas of gentle slopes or flatness punctuated by steep, sharp climbs, but we started to see more deciduous trees with mossy rocks that just “felt” more like New England.The rains from a few days before had refilled all of the streams and rivers, and we crossed the Housatonic River on a sturdy foot ridge while it raged below us.

We had a few several-hundred-foot ascents to climb, and we all felt the heat and additional weight from our packs. We took many more breaks in the afternoon to drink and filter water. After a thirteen mile day, we finally made it to the shelter and set up our little tent village. There was no need to hang bear bags because there was a bear box, which is always a gift. The shelter privy was amazing with a cute little paint job, and it was the open-style construction which I vastly prefer over the closed-in outhouse types because they are better ventilated and stay much cleaner. There was also a gloriously cold stream rushing down a rocky bed just adjacent to the shelter, so we had as much water as we wanted. I soaked my feet to ice my perpetually-swollen heels, and we chatted with some of he other shelter-dwellers at the stream which looked like a Roman bath at that point. A hiker named Captain Nemo was also at the “Bath” and we chatted about travel and other things. When we asked for his idea of a trail name for Margo, he suggested “Little Dipper” right off the bat, which sealed the deal since it had already been tossed around. We also decided on “Strapless” for Ben since he didn’t have a hip belt on his backpack, and since it wasn’t refuted immediately it was too late. Nick had already been named Tenderfoot on a previous trip due to his propensity to get blisters…welcome to the Tramily, Little Dipper, Strapless, and Tenderfoot!!

As we finished setting up camp, three familiar faces sauntered into camp behind us: it was POTUS, Marathon Man, and Brakes! We hadn’t seen them in 1,500 miles or so, and I chatted with them as they set up their hammocks. I quickly remembered POTUS’s sleep apnea, and internally rejoiced that we weren’t sharing the shelter again (joking!). It was great to catch up with them as the area surrounding the shelter casually filled up with tents and hammocks. I wouldn’t say that it was crowded, but there were a lot more people in the area than we had gotten used to seeing before our time off the previous week. We also met Captain Nemo’s daughter Little Fruity, who we talked to while we cooked dinner outside the shelter. Captain Nemo said he was an engineer for Johns Hopkins, and his daughter had to leave her part-time job due to some personal difficulties. They are Thru-Hiking together, and are doing an amazing job: they started on April 15th! I got the sense that Captain Nemo was worried about his daughter doing the trail by herself, and he joined her in this adventure to keep an eye on her and help her along the way. As we talked about the reasons we were on the trail, Nick brought up my dad and Little Fruity asked if doing the trail was a way to honor and be close to him. I briefly mentioned how that factored into the experience, and that I was happy for Captain Nemo and Little Fruity that they could share in this experience together. Captain Nemo started to tear up around the same time I did. We continued chatting about the trail and what we all did outside the trail. Meadow had sneakily brought five freeze-dried ice cream sandwiches for Ben’s birthday (sorry, STRAPLESS’s birthday!), which we shared with Nemo and Fruity along with some more Haribo gummies. We all sang Happy Birthday again, much to Ben’s dismay. It was great to talk to them, and both Captain Nemo and Little Fruity were appreciative of being included in the birthday celebration. We spent the evening chatting and swatting away more mosquitoes before sleeping bag o’clock hit around 9pm.

Day 109, Thursday July 6: Woke up at the shelter to another beautiful sunny morning, which was already hot and humid (why wouldn’t it be?). As we packed up camp, my Tramily sang happy birthday to me. (For those of you who are wondering: yep, I turned 30 again!). We packed up our tents and ate a quick breakfast of bars. With a kind smile Captain Nemo apologized for making me cry on the trail, and we chatted for a bit before he headed out ahead of Little Fruity who still had to pack up her backpack. She had gone “full yard sale,” and all of her belongings were scattered around the shelter. We crossed the Roman bath stream one more time before heading back onto the trail. We had about six miles or hike before making it back to Strapless’ car. We crossed a wide, flat stream valley on raised gravel beds before hiking up and over another ridgetop. The rocks were beginning to increase in sizes and we passed several huge rock outcroppings big enough to be small cliffs. Definitely starting to look more like New England! At the top of the ridge we took a break at St. John’s Ledges to admire the view and rest before starting the descent, which we had heard was rocky and treacherous. Fun fact, the descent was rocky and treacherous. Our three companions flew down the large, uneven rock faces much faster than Meadow and I did, as we were both being cautious beyond measure to make sure we didn’t fall. Even with our slow pace, Meadow nearly slid forward off a large rock step, which raised both of our blood pressures and caused us to slow down even more. When we were nearly at the bottom, we met a day hiker coming up the Trail with a large plastic bag full of cold drinks. I took a small bottle of ginger ale and Meadow selected a frozen water, which we thanked him for profusely. When I opened the bottle of ginger ale it fizzed over and went everywhere; the Trail Angel apologized but I just laughed and said it was a champagne toast for being at the bottom of the descent. We hiked maybe a quarter of a mile before getting back to Ben’s car, although the tiny parking lot now looked a little different. There were a few tables laden with food and more than a dozen chairs set up around some familiar faces who had come to the Trail to surprise me for my birthday! My mom and friend Kyle has come from the west, and one of my best and longest friends Alisa and her husband Gifford had come from the east. Alisa, who is the best baker and cook I know (we both know it!), had made me a raspberry chocolate ganache cake which was unbelievably delicious. We spent a few hours visiting and sitting in real chairs, catching up, being told that we smell bad (thanks, Kyle!), and offering cake and other goodies to other hikers. POTUS, Marathon Man, Brakes, Robin Hood, and a few others passed through as we feasted and laughed, and they were able to enjoy cold drinks and food as well. Tenderfoot had rented an Airbnb for two nights so we could spend some more time slackpacking in the area, and the plan was for all who could to meet there for dinner after Meadow and I had hiked a few more miles. Little Dipper and Strapless headed out with Tenderfoot to go pick up the car we had left at the beginning of the week, and they would then head back to eastern Pennsylvania. It was SO FUN to hike with both of you this week–I’m so glad you could come along! And sorry about the bugs. As we cleaned up the tables before heading out ourselves, another long lost trail partner Rod (trail name Mudder) crashed the party! We had lost Rod near the Partnership Shelter in southern Virginia, so we hadn’t seen him in around 1,000 miles! He was hiking more daily miles than us and was therefore ahead of us until he had a knee injury take him off the trail for about three weeks until he got a cortisone shot and could get back on on the Trail. I couldn’t believe it when he walked into the parking area! We gave him some water and a Gatorade, and we said we should try to get lunch or dinner the next day. We made plans to finalize the plans via text that night, and he started up the trail.

Our group scattered, and Meadow and I headed back onto the AT to finish another six mile section. The AT must have known it was my birthday, because we had the most deliciously flat miles to hike. We hiked along the Housatonic River for about four miles, and through some flat pasture land. We finally caught up with Rod and we hiked with him for about 1.7 miles before reaching our road extraction point. Rod is much faster than us (we’ll blame it on his longer legs since he’s over six feet tall!), and Meadow and I almost passed out trying to keep up with him as we climbed up and over a small ridge. We talked about our hikes so far, and Rod asked us what our plans for mileage were. He hopes to do twenty or more miles a day so he can finish “with enough time to enjoy the summer,” which Meadow amyd I had decided is too many miles a day for us. We could do twenty or more per day, but at this point we are being intentional about enjoying the AT experience for everything it can be. Just because we can do twenty-plus miles a day, doesn’t mean we should! Almost dead from keeping Rod’s pace over a mountain ascent and descent, we said goodbye to Rod as he wanted to get a few more miles in.

Alisa and Gifford picked us up and drove us to the Airbnb only 7 minutes away (score!), and we had pizza for dinner. They had made chamomile ginger Arnold Palmers (which were amazing) and we sat by the river eating and chatting. Friends from Pittsburgh Kevin and Liang also drove up with their moms, all on their way to a rhododendron festival in Connecticut which sounded lovely. We sat in a semicircle of chairs and watched the river run past as we visited into the evening, until eventually everyone except Tenderfoot had to go home. Getting to eat lunch and dinner with some of my favorite people on the planet, while hiking the Appalachian Trail and sharing the experience with other Thru-Hikers, was a fantastic experience. Best birthday I’ve ever had! Thank you to everyone who made eot so special.

Day 110, Friday July 7: We slept in until after 7am and ate a quick breakfast in the Airbnb before Tenderfoot drove us to the trail where we had left off the day before. We wore our small “slackpacking” packs, and so the climbs we did right off the bat were actually enjoyable exertion rather than just plain exhausting. We saw some weird mushrooms and crossed a few streams in the first few miles of the day. We heard a large animal crashing through the underbrush, and I turned to see a large black bear running away from us at a rapid pace. Phew! About a half hour later, we were walking along the trail and chatting, when we heard an open-mouthed, gutteral, roar-lile growl coming from a stream valley maybe twenty to thirty feet ahead of us. I couldn’t see anything but it could only have been a bear! The only other time I have heard a bear was backpacking with Tenderfoot several years ago, but we had just heard the investigative, curious “humph” of a bear…this sounded much more like a very startled or angry “rawr”. Meadow and I quickly walked back up the way we had come maybe forty feet or so and listened, and heard nothing. We started chatting very loudly and proceeded slowly up the trail, banging our trekking poles together every few feet to make even more noise. We didn’t hear any other threatening bear noises, so after about fifteen minutes we went back to talking at a normal volume. Phew again! We hiked on for another mile or so, a little jittery, and were picked up by Tenderfoot to drive a few miles ahead to meet Rod for lunch at 11:30am at the Mountainside Cafe. Turns out there were several other Thru-Hikers who arrived at the restaurant around the same time, so we all sat together! Having lunch with the group was an absolute blast. We exchanged stories about huge bear encounters, mutual hiking friends we had seen at various times, trail romances, and other stories. The food was amazing too; I had a coffee milkshake and a veggie burger with sweet potato fries. Rod picked up the tab for Meadow, me, Tenderfoot, and Robin Hood, which was extremely generous! Having lunch with the crew will absolutely stand out as a highlight of the trail. In the photo below from left to right are Meadow and me (duh!), POTUS, Marathon Man, Mudder (Rod), Robin Hood, and Tenderfoot.

Eventually we tore ourselves away from the air-conditioned cafe and we all went our separate ways: the other hikers continued up the trail, and Tenderfoot drove us back to the trailheas where we had left off a few miles before. The afternoon hiking was a little more difficult as we were now several food-pounds heavier, but we were able to hike about ten more miles to take our total up to over fifteen for the day. We could hear the Limerock Speedway racetrack for pretty much the entire afternoon, the upshifting and downshifting of the tiny racecars audible for miles since there was no wind to rustle the trees. We eventually spied the racetrack through a break in the trees, confirming that I wasn’t just confusing the motor sounds for really strange thunder. We also saw a tiny snapping turtle on the trail way up on a ridgetop, its shell only about two inches long.

Once we descended from the ridgetop, we had several miles of relatively flat hiking, another gift! There was about a mile of trail that was maintained to be wheelchair accessible by the Connecticut Appalachian Mountain Club, which was pretty neat. We passed by a tiny group of sticks on the side of the road that told us that we had hiked 1,500 miles–what?!? After the usual photos we proceeded on, just as a few drops of rain fell. Shockingly, the rain held off for the most part.

We only had another mile or so to hike through the tiny borough of Amesville, the “Never-Incorporated Hamlet of Salisbury” as an overly-articulate sign informed us. We met Tenderfoot at a large waterfall adjacent to the parking lot where we were being picked up. After heading back to the Airbnb we did some wading in the Housatonic River before eating dinner and getting organized to head back to the trail the next day. We stayed up way too late talking and eating, until after 11:30pm.

Day 111, Saturday July 8: We had originally planned on leaving the Airbnb by 7:30am, but after we woke up our plans were quickly pushed back. We still had a few things to organize and clean up, and none of us felt like moving very fast! We didn’t hit the trail until almost 9:30am, and had decided that if we could hike at least five miles for the day it would still be a Win. Saying goodbye to Tenderfoot was harder than usual since we had gotten to spend over a week together. It was a rough start to the day, and the first few miles were tough. For some reason, we just had a hard time getting going!

But what we lacked in energy, we made up in consistency. We put one foot in front of the other for several hours, and before we knew it we had hiked eight miles. The next two came easier, and the next two after that. We hiked up Mount Prospect and the Lions Head without batting an eye, although we did stop to spray enough DEET on ourselves to kill a few brain cells since the mosquitoes were once again relentless.

By the time we had hit the base of Bear Mountain, we were mentally and physically ready for the climb…which we did in a very short amount of time with a very small amount of effort. The climb up to the tallest peak in Connecticut was much easier than we had expected, and the view (and actual sunshine!) did not disappoint. The rocks leading up to the summit were much easier to clamber up than the rocks in Pennsylvania, which was a huge relief. The climb down the other side of Bear Mountain was much more strenuous as we had to expend effort to ensure we didn’t fall down the rocks and die, but it was well worth it: shortly after the Trail leveled out, we had hit the Connecticut-Massachusetts border. We had just finished our tenth state!

As soon as we hit Massachusetts, we walked through a section of trail that instantly jumped to my top five favorites. For almost a mile, the trail follows along Sawmill Brook through the old-growth hemlock forest of Sages Ravine. As we descended into the ravine the air temperature dropped by about ten degrees, and the brook tumbled over large and small waterfalls in the gorge as we walked along the rocky trail alongside it. The air smelled of hemlocks and pine, and we couldn’t keep ourselves from taking a break in the gorge just to take it all in. After a while we finished another mile and a half along the Trail to hit a campsite where we set up camp. We had access to a cold-flowing stream and a bear box at the site, which meant a night of heavy drinking (re-hydrating) and no need to hang bear ropes. After a slow start to the morning, we had still managed to complete a 15.6-mile day and so many great things had happened! After we cooked dinner Meadow actually had to put her fleece on since the air wasn’t hot enough to burn us alive, which was a nice change of pace. Sleeping bag o’clock came around 9pm, and we went to sleep to the sound of a very light breeze shaking the trees and some fireworks in the distance.

Day 112, Sunday July 9: The morning was foggy and humid, but at least it wasn’t raining yet! The fog was thick at all elevations, and we hiked through it all morning. The evergreen trees dropped their carpet of pine needles, and we hiked over mossy-bouldered streams. We spent several miles in the morning hiking along a ridgetop before summiting Mount Everett, with spectacular views of nothing but fog. Visibility was pretty low, but the Trail in this area was lined with blueberry bushes and spirea steeplebush, and the rocks, grasses, and scrubby pine trees stood out in sharp relief against the fog.

As we began the descent down the other side of Mount Everett in the early afternoon, the rain started and–spoiler alert–it did not stop raining for the rest of the day. We were quickly soaked through, and the last eleven miles of the day were hiked with wet feet and dampened (but not extinguished) spirits. The mosquitoes were unbelievably bad despite the steady rain, and we douses ourselves with DEET and had to continue swatting them away anyway. We hiked through dim coniferous forest with straight and skyscraper-tall trunks, over trickling drainage ditches, and through a few open hay fields. The lightning struck quite close to us as we walked through one such field, prompting Meadow to jog with her pack until reaching the safety of the forest once again. The thunder and lightning faded in the evening but the rain still kept coming until we finally hit the shelter around 6:30pm after a 19-mile day. Mercifully there was actually room in the shelter, and we set up our stuff and hung up our dripping clothes and socks as best we could. Juno and Poop Spoon were already there, but with room for 10 people the shelter still had space to spare. Of course I had to ask Poop Spoon how he got his name…apparently in the first week of his Thru-Hike, he had forgotten his eating utensil and so he decided to use his cathole-digger to eat with. YIKES. We cooked dinner under cover of the shelter roof, collected some orange-tinted water from the nearby stream, and put our food bags in the bear box before heading to bed before 9pm. The day seemed extremely long and difficult, but we celebrated another day well done with a few Oreos! There were a few leaks in the shelter roof, but thankfully none of them seemed to be hitting any of the bunks.

The plans for next week include doing our best to stay dry (and sane) during the many days of expected rainfall. We’ll continue to make our way through Massachusetts, which has a total of 90 miles of the AT in it. Onward!