go hike a mountain

May 25, 2008

I woke up at around 4am on this morning and still felt exhausted, so I went back to sleep until the alarm started ringing. 5:15am. I slept for 10 hours! Well, there was a little bit of tossing and turning and a little bit of battling mosquitoes, but it was pretty much all sleep. I took this picture before climbing out of my sleeping bag.

Again, Jesse slept a little later than me, but not much.

It looks like our sleeping bags are right on the forest floor…but we had a tent footprint separating us from the leaves. Notice the sun rising through the trees in the background.

After making some breakfast and repacking our bags, we began hiking and felt pretty good considering we were dragging our feet the last few miles the night before. We crossed Rt. 165 and were hoping to be able to get some water from a church at this crossing, but no one was inside. It was still a bit early for Sunday services, I guess, but they also didn’t have any spigots. The next section of our hike followed a river for a while and we decided we should find a good spot to collect some water that we could purify if we needed to use it.

There were a lot of muddy areas on this part of the hike, but with the aid of some carefully placed stones, we were able to skip across them without getting too dirty. All this rock-hopping was a little tiring, though. When we made it to this bridge, we found a good spot to collect water.

This is a view of the stream from the bridge.

Jesse hopped out on a large rock and dipped one of the platypus reservoirs in to fill it. Notice how green the water is.

And when he went to hop back off of the rock, he slipped, landed on his butt, and dipped his foot in the water. I didn’t see it happen because I was crossing the bridge and making my way over to him.

He removed his shorts so he could clean them off a little and decided he would just have to hike with a wet shoe.

We took a long break at this area while he cleaned himself up. I took a look at the time and started getting worried about our pace and evaluated the rest of the day’s hike. We had only come about 7 miles and were already feeling pain in our feet and shoulders. Jesse told me flat-out that he didn’t think we’d make it to the end. Nonetheless, we decided to gather up our things and press on. We’d walk a few more miles and consider, again, whether or not we could finish.

When coming back out of the woods and into a large abandoned parking area, I found this strange ‘cotton’ tree that was lying across the path.

Walking up this old dirt road left us out of the shade and exposed to the heat in the middle of the day.

The blisters on my left foot were making me feel like I had frozen peas rolling around in my shoe. Jesse complained a little about his knee. We were getting tired already, after 9 miles, with another 17 miles to finish the day. After this dirt road, we turned out onto a paved street called Hazard Road that the trail description said would last 4 miles. Our pace slowed some more and I was really beginning to feel discouraged.

Shortly after joining up with this road, though, we saw a man working on his yard and stopped to ask if he knew whether there were any stores nearby. He shook his head and asked if we needed water. A savior.

He led us up his driveway and disappeared inside while we unpacked our reservoirs. When he returned he had a pitcher of water and several granola bars. He walked back down his driveway with us and after some chit chat, Jesse discovered the Celtics had won a game the night before. We thanked him for his help and my spirit was lifted. I was sure I could continue walking a while.

About 2 miles into this 4-mile section we took a break on the side of the road. I gobbled up one of the granola bars and decided to finally take a look at my feet. It wasn’t good. I had a blister inside of a blister on my little toe and another on the outer edge closer to my heel. I knew that my feet hurt while I was walking, but I was trying to ignore it. I would say I made a mistake by ever looking at my foot, because I probably could have gone another 10 miles or so with the pain, but I’m glad I looked because I realized then that I wasn’t prepared for the hike.

I had only worn running shoes and very thin below-the-ankle Smartwool socks. There simply wasn’t enough padding for my feet. I wish I had the insight to buy some insoles before the hike or had at least brought socks with more cushion. I put moleskin patches on the blisters and changed my socks and put my shoes back on, but after trying to get up and walk a short distance again, I couldn’t stop focusing on the pain.

Jesse and I looked at each other and realized this was the end of our hike. We knew we had a very short window for extraction from the trail because his father had to catch a flight the next day. It was about 11:30am when we called him with our location.

We thought it would be smart to keep walking in the direction we were going with the hopes that we might hit the 40-mile mark. I think we might have walked about 1/2 a mile this way until we realized the paved street turned into a dirt road. We turned around and headed back about 1.5 miles to a part of the road with two intersections, hoping it would make it easier to find us. There were two cemeteries at one of the intersections and we rested on the stone walls while waiting for Jesse’s father to find us. I had taken off my shoes and was plodding around in the dirt and grass with just my socks on.

Eric had made it to us in just about an hour. From here, we had to drive into Connecticut to find a highway that would take us north to our car. The car was just where we had left it and had no broken windows.

In summation, we didn’t hike the length of the trail as planned, but did half of it and plan to finish the rest at a later date. We severely underestimate the trail. I think that if we had given ourselves 4 days to hike the length instead of 3, we probably could have finished, even with the gear issues we were having. We were just forced to walk at such a fast pace without stopping for many breaks in order to be able to finish on time.

We learned many lessons, however, which we will be applying to future overnighters. I think I’ll try not to focus so much on ultralight hiking and will stick with my trusty hiking boots. I’m also going to take a pack with some sort of frame when the hike is 15 miles or longer. Jesse also doesn’t want to sleep so exposed in the future, so we’re looking into lighter-weight tents than what we have now (which is technically not that heavy at 5 pounds, but was more than we wanted to make space for on this trip). Also, some sort of bug deterrent will be packed (I thought it was still too cold for bugs. Gee, was I wrong.).

Thankfully enough, I didn’t have any issues with my clothes. I had packed some lightweight thermal bottoms and a long-sleeve midlayer which I never used, but might have needed if the temperatures were about 5-10 degrees cooler. Jesse used his extra layers in the mornings, but I think it’s harder for him to warm up than me.

All in all, we’re happy with how much we actually hiked. This trip was mostly an experiment - Jesse had never hiked multiple days and camped on the trail and I had never hiked over that many days being committed to one pair of underwear. It was a great experience and I’m glad we got so much support from all of our friends. Thanks for reading!