Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Day 88, Wednesday May 26, 2021

 

Esther / Job

Pine Grove Furnace campsite to Alec Kennedy Shelter 14.0 miles hiked today- 1120.1 total AT miles hiked to date.

Today was a tale of two trails.  The morning hike and the afternoon hike were night and day.  I packed up my (now dry) tent and was on the trail by 7 am.  The trail was gently rising and falling throughout the morning, with relatively few rocks to contend with.  I stopped at the Pole Steeple cliffs for a nice valley view, undisturbed by any other hikers that early in the day.  A little further down the trail, I stopped at the James Fry shelter where I discovered that I had 5G service on my phone, so I made some family FaceTime calls, and caught up on email.  I was surprised to find a real patio chair there, and relaxed in it for a while.  I also received a text from Rick that we were stopping at the Green Mountain General store for lunch, just minutes from the trail.














I arrived at the store a little before Rick, and ordered a meatball sandwich and fries from the grill.  Better than the PBJ I’d planned to eat.  Also picked up a new style of tuna pouch, this one with rice and beans included. I planned on trying that one out for dinner.

After lunch, we headed on, and that’s where the trail started featuring much more difficult conditions.  Suddenly we were faced with large sections of technicals, boulder fields that required climbing hand over fist.  Several times I had to throw my hiking poles either up or down ahead of me to allow me to negotiate a particularly difficult section.  The last four miles of the day took me over three hours to complete.  




As I made it through the boulders and neared the shelter where I planned to camp, the sky darkened and I had to dash the last few hundred yards up the trail as the sky prepared to unleash torrents of rain.  Rick and Pinot were already at the shelter as I ducked in just ahead of the rain.  Although I try to avoid sleeping in shelters as much as possible (only twice in the past three months), I decided to forgo my aversion and keep everything dry by taking a spot.  Fortunately there were a couple of individual bunks, so I don’t have to sleep on the community floor with the other hikers here, bumping elbows and knees all night long.We’ll see how it goes. I ate my new tuna packet for dinner (delicious!), and the settled into my bunk for the night.

Tomorrow we hike into Boiling Springs and will be staying at Lisa’s Hostel.  Starting Friday I will be taking 5 days off of the trail, while Rick travels home for a week.  Carolyn will be joining me as we spend 5 days on a hikers vacation.  I’ll be back on the trail next Wednesday June 1st.  Tomorrow will be my last post until then.

Until next time…


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