Chase's 2011 Appalachian Trail Journal: Trail Update No. 6

After spending two days with Face’s family in Long Island, we hit the trail in Jersey again on May 29. I had been feeling a bit under the weather for a few days already, and during our first two days on the trail that feeling progressed. My primary symptoms were a profound feeling of fatigue (more so than usual) and a loss of appetite for several days (which NEVER happens on the trail). I began fearing Lyme disease, having pulled at least five or six ticks off me every day since northern Pennsylvania, so we did twenty miles into Vernon, New Jersey where I went to the doctor’s office. The doctor felt confident that I had contracted Lyme, so she prescribed me a cycle of Doxycycline to take for four weeks. I began feeling better in less than a day. I’m lucky I caught it early – some of my fellow hikers contracted it with much more severe symptoms.

After our double zero in Long Island, Face, Spam and I were all feeling in a bit of a slump. To give ourselves some extra motivation, we made it our goal to catch some friends that were a few days ahead of us. We left Jersey on June 1^st and booked it through New York; we caught our group of friends (Stormsong, Treebeard, Niners, Pants, Stillwater, Katmandu, and The Corsican) a few days into the push and had a merry reunion complete with pizza and beer at the RPH Shelter. Windscreen joined our group here and hiked with us for the rest of the trail (group of four now: Face, Spam, Windscreen, and me). We spent only four days in New York before crossing into Connecticut, the tenth state on our hike. CT was mostly uneventful, and we spent only three-and-a-half days in the state before crossing into Massachusetts.

Group of hikers at RPH shelter. Top row (L-R): Challenger, Stillwater, Pants, Thru, Niners, Kathmandu, Stormsong, The Corsican, Riverguide, Spam. Bottom row (L-R): Sensei, Treebeard, Windscreen, The Face.

On our third day in Mass., we hiked into the town of Dalton where we met Tom Levardi, a bona fide legend and quite possibly the most angelic of all the trail angels in history. He took us into his home, which is right on the trail, and let us shower, do laundry and stay the night. He also cooked us dinner and drove us to the grocery store to resupply. Spam had gotten sick a few days before and was about fifty miles behind, so we made the not-too-difficult decision to double zero in Dalton while we waited for him to catch up.

Again a group of four (Face, Spam, Windscreen, and me), we tore ourselves away from Tom’s house on June 14 and reluctantly hit the trail in heavy rain. We summited Mt. Greylock (the highest point in Massachusetts) that evening and crossed into Vermont the next day. Although the trail in Vermont is one big muddy, sloppy mess (earning the state the nickname “Vermuck”), it was nevertheless one of my favorite states on the trail. The Green Mountains felt like the first real mountain range we had seen since we left Tennessee, and the change from deciduous to coniferous forests provided a welcome change of scenery. On the 21^st, my camera fell out of my pocket at some point while I was hiking, and I lost all my pictures from New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont.

We crossed into New Hampshire on June 23 and we took a zero in Hanover the following day. We were about to enter the most beautiful stretch of the entire A.T., so I made finding a new camera my first priority. We entered the White Mountains on the 27^th, a hundred-mile stretch considered by many hikers (including me) to be the most difficult part of the entire trail. In the Whites, the trail becomes a steep, slick, rocky mess – indeed, at times it hardly resembles a trail at all. There are no switchbacks in sight, so hikers are directed straight up and straight down every mountain. Elevation changes of over 1,000 feet per-mile are the rule, not the exception. In addition, the A.T. is often well above treeline, and sudden lightning storms are a constant threat. In the mid-Atlantic states we had become used to knocking off twenty miles in six or seven hours of hiking, but in the Whites it became difficult to keep even a two mile-an-hour pace. On most days it took us thirteen hours or more to complete sixteen or seventeen miles. Despite all this – or perhaps because of it – New Hampshire was exceedingly beautiful, and I fell in love with the White Mountains right away.

Face, Spam, and Windscreen on the summit of Mt. Moosilauke, White Mts.

Yikes in white-out on Franconia Ridge, White Mts.

Crawford Notch, White Mts.

Mt. Jefferson, White Mts.

Windscreen nearing summit of Mt. Madison, White Mts.

Mt. Washington from the north, White Mts.

Leaving the Presidential Range, White Mts.

We left the Whites and crossed into Maine – our final state line – on July 6^th. The first fifty miles or so of Maine were just as difficult as the Whites, but they were also just as beautiful. By this point I was hiking in a consistent group of five: Face, Spam, Windscreen, Yikes, and myself. On our second day in Maine we went through Mahoosuc Notch, a one-mile scramble over, under, and around boulders that is often considered to be the most difficult – or at least the slowest – mile of the entire trail. We took our last zero in Rangeley where we enjoyed a beautiful sunny day of kayaking, canoeing, lounging, and drinking good beer. It was there that Spam, Windscreen, and I experienced what was quite possibly the craziest hitch in the history of mankind: it involved two deranged old ladies, one of the most beat up sedans I have ever seen, a forty-minute ride into town that should have taken about five minutes, and a lot more off-roading than anyone should ever attempt in such a beat up old sedan. In fact, it was such a bizarre experience that, were it not for my two companions that also witnessed the event, I might not be entirely sure that it all actually happened. We left Rangeley on July 11^th and knocked off the last of the really difficult terrain we will see before Katahdin. On the 16^th we arrived in Monson, the last town on the trail and the southern end of the “100-mile wilderness”. Only 114 miles to go.