Section hiker!!

I am just beginning to realize how much I trash-talked section hikers when I still considered myself a thru hiker. I am officially now a section hiker. I injured my knee near Front Royal, Virginia, and now I am off the trail and am about 90% sure I will not be going back this year. My aunt Karen picked me up from the nearest road I could hobble to and brought me to stay with her in Arlington. I am currently recouperating and exploring my options as far as what to do with my life, up here in DC. I apparently have some severe tendinitis in my left knee. It is starting to feel better but I still can't walk very far without getting a stiff and burning pain sensation and you can forget about inclines, descents, and stairs.

I might write some sort of final post for this blog but I don't want to be too sentimental or belabor the point or anything, and also I don't want to write a final post as if this is the last of my backpacking. I love backpacking and I intend to attempt another thru hike, maybe the AT, maybe another trail. PCT, or Continental Divide.


I hope you have enjoyed reading. Expect to hear more from me in 2012 :)

Manassas Gap shelter

I feel about 100 percent better today :) I walked 23 miles, and my knee hurts a little bit, but I feel like I am already getting back into the groove of the trail. Tomorrow we will resupply in Front Royal and then enter Shenandoah National Park, where every ten miles or something you can stop and get a soda or something. It was a beautiful day today, breezy and perfect. Skittles and Hit Man will be joining us in the shelter tonight and the shelter also has a fabulous water source which may not sound particularly exciting to you but it is for us:)

Just wanted to let you all know, after my Debbie Downer post of despair...

Bears den hostel, VA

Wow talk about a morale low. I was ready to quit the trail today. It was really really sucking. It was hot. There was one viewpoint and it was crappy and plagued with attack bugs. My shoulders are hurting because they are not used to the weight of my pack anymore, and my trail legs are basically gone (though I am still luckily faster than the weekenders). Oh and in case anyone was wondering, if you continue to eat trail food like pop tarts and cream cheese on graham crackers and pbjs as though you are on the trail but you're not, well, you're going to get a little bit FAT. Which naturally is UBER bad for morale.  

 I felt like a failure and now that I am in VA I have lots of family who would probably come and pick me up if I called them crying or something, thus it is logistically now possible for me to quit (no one would have picked me up in Maine or Massachusetts or anything that far north). 

Hit Man, a cool new Sobo I met this evening, said I should call all my family members and tell them that no matter what I say in the future they should not help me quit. Take that option off the table. 

It's true. I need to take the quitting option off of my mind's table. Then I will be content with what I am doing. Only then can I be happy. 

The trail feels lonely now. It is about a tenth as pretty and majestic as the northern section I left (and about a one hundredth as majestic as the mountains out west).  

We really had it good at first, Flora and I. Chip, Walker, and Brookie were some seriously good trail family members.

Well I'm tired of complaining. Goodnight.   

Staunton VA

I am going back to the trail on Friday, in Harpers Ferry. I am very very excited about this. Harpers Ferry is where the Appalachian Trail Conservancy is headquartered and is near the halfway point and thus is considered a psychological halfway point and so basically I have half the trail ahead of me. This is good for me, as far as morale goes. Whatever shenanigans I pulled during the northern half, I will still be able to say I have hiked the southern half of the AT all in one go.

Statistics: 
Hiked 741 miles
Skipped 425 miles
Miles to Georgia:  1,013

I love my Virginia family and I wish I could see them all more often.

I might go back and do the 425 skipped miles next year before June 17th, then it would still be considered a thru hike. I missed some stuff, most notably the half gallon challenge, in Boiling Springs PA, where you eat a half gallon of ice cream in under 30 minutes. I am a Hammond and thus I am genetically predisposed to being able to knock that challenge out of the water, and I was really looking forward to it. Also I missed the lowest elevation on the trail, in a zoo in NY. Also missed the Hudson Bridge. And I'll never know exactly how bad the rocks are in PA. 

I have so much to look forward to!!  

Yes I will be going back..

I just realized that I failed to mention that I will indeed be returning to the Trail, meeting back up with Connor wherever she is and hiking home. Flights back east are cheap on September 11, naturally, so I will be flying to my Aunt Karen's in DC on that day, and she has graciously offered to drive me to where Connor is. I am having a great time out here, but I am also excited to get back to finish the trail!

Yellowstone National Park

I guess I have a fair bit of stuff to write about! 

So NYC was nice, we were able to see Chip and Brookie came to see us also, and the four of us had a nice day/evening galavanting around the city- we went on a ferry to see the statue of liberty, saw the world trade tower site, had some good food, walked around Central Park, and saw Chip's studio and his amazing artwork :) 

Connor and I went shopping with Jessy so we had some normal clothes to wear around. Oh jeans, I missed you:)

Then... I made a (rash) decision to help Brookie drive to Montana. Well, first Wyoming, then Montana. He's moving to Montana from Maine. But first, he was stopping in the Grand Tetons for a much- anticipated climb up Mt. Moran, which is over 12600 feet high, with some AMC friends (former caretakers in the White mountains). 

So, in short, so far on my side trip:

We drove 36 hours straight, between Brookie and I, to Grand Teton National Park. 
I slept by myself in a campground the first night in the park, my first night ever sleeping alone in the woods. Was too tired to be afraid of grizzlies or crazy people. (I was invited to go up to high camp on Moran with the boys, but I was afraid I didn't have warm enough clothes)
Went on a beautiful hike through Cascade Canyon- diappointing to not be hiking on the Tetons (rather just viewing them) but the weather was too bad to go up higher (snow and hail). The hike was still awesome! Saw a moose, ate some raspberries, looked up into the horrible weather at the mountain Brookie and his friends were climbing, Moran, and wondered if they were alive. 

I met back up with the boys, who unfortunately did not make it all the way to the summit. They made it to a high col at about 11,800 feet (humorously) called Drizzlepuss, named by some Germans who first summitted it (in the rain). The weather was too bad to go on safely:/ 

We left the park, and went to stay with some friends of Brookie's in Rawlins, Wyoming, near Split Rock, where I had lots and lots of fun bouldering. I got some impressive battle wounds on one leg from sliding down a rock. I love climbing! I am getting better and better at it.

Now I am in Yellowstone park, sightseeing, hiking, camping, and backpacking. Wherever the wind blows us:) We just watched Old Faithful geyser blow of, among the masses of people eating ice cream:)         

NYC!!!

This morning I was hiking through pouring rain in the middle of nowhere, soaking wet and dirty, eating cookies out of a Tupperware on the side of the trail. Right now I am clean and dry, having eaten tasty Mexican food and ice cream and having watched a romantic comedy, in an apartment two blocks from Time Square. Or is it Times Square? Small world.

Right now I am feeling bombarded with advertisement and I am just getting over the motion sickness I got from the train ride and taxi rides. I know city life is not for me anymore... It is so good to see Jessy though!!

At the moment I am in a motel room with Flora and Skittles, compliments of the Timpones. Flora's Spot unit (gps locator) was acting up, and her parents wanted her to stay in town to call the Spot company and work it out. 

Those of you who are on my Spot list might think my Spot unit is acting up, but don't worry. I am just too forgetful and lazy to dutifully press the button every night. I have six years of age on Flora- I can tell because no one calls me if I don't send a Spot, but if Floras doesn't go through it is the end of the world.

 I do like having the Spot, despite it seeming heavier and heavier every time I pick it up, for its peace of mind value (thanks Dad!). It will signal emergency services to my location in the event that I am alone, about to die for some reason, incapacitated but not incapacitated enough that I can't dig around in my pack and get the spot out, and don't have cell service. Can you envision such a scenario? Can you tell that I have way too much time to think out here? :)

Mostly the Spot serves as a reference point for where to stick the next push pin on the AT map, for those few people keeping track on their office walls:)

So anyway today we will cross into New York! And tomorrow take a train into NYC to stay with Jessy! And the next day have dinner with Chip:) not to mention a bonus visit from Brookie, we will see him one last time on his way across the country:) 

Thank you Meredith for the care package!! Folks let me tell you, she did it well:) four types of homemade cookies, some Walker shortbread, starbursts, earplugs, homemade rice crispy treats:)    

Mike McShane's cabin

So much has happened in the last few days! Right now Flora, Skittles, Butter and I are sitting in the living room of Mike McShane, a 77-year old man we met in McDonalds of Great Barrington, Massachusettes. He invited us all to his cabin (he usually lives in NYC) for showers, laundry, dinner, bed, and breakfast! We are watching the 1996 Braves/Yankees world series game. Mr. McShane is cooking and has welcomed us to his two refrigerators full of beer. 

A few days ago we stayed at a pick- your- own blueberry farm for an afternoon full of blueberry eating and a night out under the meteor shower ( I think I have seen my fair share of shooting stars now having watched them three nights!). While we were there two nobos came up to the farm. One of them looked really familiar and it turned out to be Griz, the guy who helped me figure out some gear choices earlier this year when I hiked up and down Blood Mountain with Mom and then went to Walasi Yi, an outfitter in Neels Gap. I was totally not expecting to see him and he even remembered me so that was random and cool! 

Anyway now I should explain a trail term called pink blazing. Pink blazing (as opposed to white blazing, following the trail as normal) is when a hiker decides to forego his normal hiking schedule in order to follow a girl. Griz and his friend Ice decided to turn around and go south for a day with us, a pretty blatant pink blazing. 

So! We four hiked to Upper Goose Pond cabin, where the caretakers make you pancakes for breakfast for free! We met a lot of people there including some nobo Toast, who we've heard rumors about including that he robbed someone at knife point, and some weekenders, including one guy Joey who humored me with a couple of games of cribbage and some welcome non-trail talk about his acrobatic flying adventures. 

At some point in the evening Griz got drunk and started acting completely inappropriately, which was disappointing but anyway. It was still good to see him. 

In the morning we said goodbye to Griz and Ice and headed south with Skittles and Butter. We came to a rope swing off a tree into Upper Goose Pond. It was super scary but we all did it twice (except Skittles, he only went once). Flora was super elegant, she remained tucked until the perfect point and dropped into the water gracefully with a tiny cute splash. I did not remain tucked and basically faceplanted into the pond, getting water in every orifice of my head, skidding across the water in the rope swing version of a belly flop. Twice I did this. On video. Someday you all will see this hilarity. 

Last night at the lean-to were two young section hikers, one of whom we trail-named Dinner Bell, because he wears a bear bell on his pack. He doesn't have to listen to it because he listens to his iPod. We ran ahead of him in the morning and took super-short breaks because wow those things are annoying. It is not Christmastime! I do not want to hear Santa's sleigh skidding along behind me! 

Skittles, Butter, Flora and I hitched into Great Barrington to resupply. It is difficult to get a hitch for four people. A guy in a car stopped for us but he had his son with him and could only take two, so Skittles and Butter rode with him, valiantly leaving us behind ("you girls get hitches easily, right? See you at the grocery store"). Well we got another ride and met them in town, ate some McDonalds, and met Mr. McShane.

Which brings me to tonight. Mr. McShane is so awesome, he has lots of cool stories. And I am clean:) and my clothes are about to be clean:) and we will be in a new state tomorrow:) and this baseball game is from back when McGriff was on first, Chipper Jones was still cute, and Javy Lopez was still catcher :) 

Meteor shower

Tonight we went to get dinner and then Wolverine and I took the bikes of the house to a monument in town. It was dark, so my perception of the monument's grandeur may be a little exaggerated, but whoa it was huge! I was expecting some dinky little statue of a person on a horse or something, but it looked like the Washington Monument.

There was a big lawn there too and it is a clear night, and Mom had tipped me off about the Perseids meteor shower this week, so we sat on the lawn and watched for shooting stars. I saw several, more than ten. A couple of them were really great, they left visible trails in the sky for a second. How fantastic. We came back and naturally everyone else is sleeping. I am beginning to find that doing things out of the ordinary, even if you miss out on some sleep or something, always pays off.

Bennington hippie house zero day

I am sitting in a chair in the yard of the hippie house with a distinctly specific urge to drink a cider or two and have a bike ride around town. Mayhap, may hap not! 
Dave Matthews is playing on the cd player that we ran all night last night in order to keep skunks from coming into the shed we slept in. I didn't sleep much last night but what could we do? We didn't want to be the first group of thru hikers to be sprayed by the alleged multitude of skunks in the area because we didn't leave the radio running all night to scare them away. You might think this is a joke; I did for awhile last night. But alas no. Well we did not get sprayed by any skunks.
I was awake most of the night having discarded my earplugs weeks ago, and finally at 5:30 got up and went inside to find Arla, the woman of the house, making coffee, and I offered to walk Molly the dog. We went on a nice long walk, but not too long, because I do enough walking thanks, around Bennington and up to a cemetery. It was nice, and made me miss Millie.  
Today I went to a tanning bed (please hold your hems and haws) and also got a haircut, and these things in conjunction with my new purple shirt make me feel like a new person on the outside.
Then we all did a bit of work around the house; I cleaned the bathroom and helped clean out a closet of junk. Then we played Apples to Apples for awhile over some ice cream. I guess this is sort of a typical zero day. Flora and I didn't intend to take a zero but we found out that we can slackpack on Friday and still get to Dalton Massachusettes on Friday night, as originally scheduled even with a zero.
I talked to Jessy Rosa (childhood best friend, still one of my best friends) today, and Connor and I are planning to stay with her in Hoboken New Jersey, right across the river from New York City, in only about ten days or so! The miles are flying by. We will also visit Chip, who lives in the city. Shoutout to Chip! We miss you!    

Bennington Vt

Today we are making an impromptu stop at a house in Bennington. It was so random. Flora and I and Charlie Day and Wolverine had initially planned to stay at the shelter before the road to town and then come to town tomorrow, resupply, and leave the same day. But then we had some extra energy and someone said the words "Bennington Pizza House" and we decided to hike extra, hitch into town, and then hitch back to the trail and camp near the road.

Well we hitched in to the pizza place and then changed our minds about going back to the trail and started calling around to hotels, intending to split a room four ways. Flora found us a pretty good deal while she was chatting with the pizza lady and the owner or something overheard the conversation, so we started walking toward that motel. But then on our way we passed some guy sitting on his porch and he yelled at us to go to the house across the street, motioning that we should go around the back of this really hippie- dippie house. Hikers always go there he said. So we did. And what did we find but a barn with a pool table behind a house where the owners just let you shower and stay for free and use the kitchen and stuff. What luck! And we even found Cant Stop, icing his ankle on a couch. The owners are so nice! The house has all kinds of art and musical instrumets and there is even a nobo from Adelaide, Australia, with whom Wolverine can share stories from home.

It is amazing how things work out sometimes. :)

Story spring shelter

It's a crowded spot tonight. Flora and I, Charlie, Wolverine, about four nobos, a Canadian long trail couple, some random guy, and Skittles the Great just showed up with a friend from home. We saw Skittles on top of Stratton Mountain earlier today and he was previously with his guy friend and also a girl and a Weimaraner. They left the girl and dog at a campsite a few miles back, jerks. She couldn't keep up with them.  
Anyway we didn't hit the trail til 10 am today and still did 21 miles including Stratton. Vermont is rather easy hiking still. I have climbed all of the fire towers on top of the mountains and today's was certainly the sketchiest one yet. Lots of creaking noise, strong winds, rustiness, like I thought my weight would throw the thing off balance, but I made it up alright :) and down alright too. From the top I could see Killington, among other mountains.

Green Mountain Hostel

Well the alpine slide was a bust because it turned out to not be free and also involved more extra hiking than we thought. Still don't know what it was exactly.
Anyway now I am in the cleanest best hostel yet. I have actually been walking around in here barefoot. The ice cream was delicious. I got to relax on an extra clean armchair and watch some Family Guy and also a video some guy made while hiking the PCT, pacific crest trail. There are a lot of cool people here; it is nice to meet so many new people every day.
I shouldn't brag about the weather because I know it is like 95 degrees where most of my readership lives, but WOW. Here in the mountains of Vermont it is sunny, breezy, maybe 75 or 80. Couldn't get any better. Consequently though at night it is cooler than I expected and my 45 degree sleeping bag didn't cut it last night so I got very little sleep, same as a few other nights this week. Today in town I got a liner for it so I should be good now.

Lost pond shelter

I see why they called it Lost Pond- there is no pond to be found here. Last night we stayed in Woodstock VT with the parents of Castle, a thru hiker the Timpones picked up last year at the end of her sobo hike. It was awesome, Mrs Macdonald cooked a fantastic dinner for us and we had reeces puffs and coffee and fruit salad for breakfast and even our own bedrooms. Then she made us sandwiches and cheese blocks and packed us also some dried hommus and then drove us to the Long Trail festival in Rutland which wasn't too exciting and then she drove us and also Charlie Day (it's a trail name) back to our trail head. 

She even took us shopping at TJ Max because I was desperately sick of my blue shirt. They had quite the selection of appropriate shirts and boy did I have a hard time picking out the one I will wear for the next seven weeks or more. I finally decided on an organic-purple one. I mean, not actually organic because it's synthetic, but the color is non-garish. Outfit change!! Woo hoo. If I get the chance I will also buy a new skirt because I have tree sap on the back of mine that I have been dealing with for a few weeks now since I sat on a sappy log one day. 

So today we hiked with Charlie, which is fun because I feel like I am in Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He attempted to make a fire but it was unfortunately weak sauce. Connor made pudding tonight, a special treat :) 

Today in Rutland we said goodbye to Chip, who is leaving the trail :( He misses his art and is just tired of trail life, he said. We will really miss him. Chip is such a kind, introspective person, very observant. We will visit him in New York City when we get there. 

Tomorrow on the docket is an alpine slide from the top of Bromley Mountain. I don't know what it is exactly but we are going to do it. Then into Manchester Center to stay at the hostel where you get free Ben & Jerrys.

Tucker

Tonight we are staying in a shelter half a mile off the AT, on the Long Trail. So far the Long Trail is pretty classy, the shelter has bunk beds and a couple of LT hikers staying here with us offered us boxed wine. 
Today I hiked the 20 miles almost entirely by myself, which I wanted. However Flora and I had a bit of miscommunication whereby I ended up eating ice cream and soda at a state park picnic table a little bit off the trail for two hours, waiting for her to show up, and she skipped the park and powered on to this shelter because she figured I was already here, then arrived here and was confused. Luckily we both had cell service and touched base around 7 pm, and although I was more in the mood to stay at the state park than to hike three miles uphill to the shelter at almost dark, I do fear the wrath of one Mrs Andrea Timpone and powered up to the shelter, iPod running. I think that was the best decision I made today, tied with buying a second ice cream cookie sandwich at the state park. 
It was a cool and breezy beautiful hike, and I think late afternoon and evening is my favorite time to hike, especially hiking solo. I get to relax and be at peace with the day. Plus this shelter is cool.
The rest of the people we have been hiking with lately stayed a few miles back at a lodge. Looks like it will be just Flora and I for a couple days!    

Vermont :)

Today we crossed over into Vermont after spending two zero days in Hanover. What do I like about Vermont so far? 1) ten miles at an easy pace in about four hours. 2) rolling hills with no rocks, carpeted in pine straw. 3) three separate incidences of trail magic today : cookies in front of someones house, watermelon in front of another house, and coldish soda cans next to the trail. 4) a surprise sighting of Walker, who is slackpacking north today. 5) some guy lets hikers stay in his big shed and his yard has practice golf holes and a waterfall( we are staying here tonight). 6) new hiking buddies today: Daytripper, Furnace, and Little Big Wind, a funny crowd. 7) I am lounging in some grass right now.
Even the nobos here have few complaints:)
Hanover was nice, it is where Dartmouth is located and was pretty yuppie but our hosts were very hospitable and also I got a new watch from LL Bean that is nice and simple and Does Not beep every hour on the hour, reminding me to stop enjoying myself and get moving, as my previous watch did.
In Hanover there was a Gap store and I sort of fantasized about just putting on a real outfit, just for a minute. But I might not have been able to take it off. So I thought maybe I could just buy an outfit to wear for the day and pretend I was a preppy college kid in jeans and a tank top, not a dirty thru hiker in thermals and crocs, and mail the outfit home or mail it in the bounce box to pretend the same thing in the next town when we pick up the bounce box. But luckily I resisted the temptation. Then today someone mentioned a bath robe while we were hiking and I remembered my bath robe back home and thought about it for awhile, about how comfy it is. How nice it would be to curl up in it with clean hair and a book and my favorite mug full of peppermint tea. Ahhhhh. I'm going to appreciate stuff more when I am done.
On the other hand it is amazing to be happy without any comforts like that. Maybe... Happier without them?

Trail angels in Hanover

So right now I am about to go to sleep on a futon with Connor In a condo belonging to a friend of this guy Jaffe, who we met in Lincoln. Jaffe and Keith picked us up from the trailhead, we all went grocery shopping, and they made us some absolutely fantastic pizza and salad. Why? No reason. Wow it is really nice to have had some healthy food.
I got stung by a wasp on the trail today. Boo hiss.
Tomorrow we will probably take a zero because we have lots of logistics to settle out and because this is a cool town and we are invited to stay another night here. Oh and guess what? We hiked almost 24 miles today, our highest :)

Firewardens Cabin shelter

Well I have had a bit of a morale low today, hiking 21 miles of rather boring terrain, really. Also there are a lot lot of negative Nancy northbounders around. They have perfected the art of complaining about things they are voluntarily doing. 
It is like a whole new trail, this flat stuff. Well it's not exactly flat of course but flatter and with fewer good above- treeline views. My knees are cool with this change but I miss the old trail. Ah, transitions. We definitely still have the mud and the bog bridges that remind me of a Nintendo game or a circus elephant. I have gotten really really good at slip recovery- that is, I can stay up even after losing my balance on a rock or a slippery log or root. Sometimes I bet it looks like a clown circus stunt, when I slip and dance around until stabilized again.
I should tell the story of Mt Washington. Flora, Brookie, and I all made it up safely to see the foggy views and eat pizza and ice cream and other things at the store at the top, and it began to storm while we were up there so we spent about four hours at the top inside wondering what to do. In that time we came across Cant Stop, Black Eagle, Chipmunk, and Crazy Talk, who had the same dilemma as us, which was that we really didn't want to hike in a thunderstorm on top of the highest mountain in the northeast. Well we couldn't stay at the visitors center. Brookie discussed the radar with a ranger and told us we had an hour window of lighter storminess in which we could book it down the mountain to the Lakes of the Clouds hut, so we all snapped into action, threw our cold rain gear on, and set out as a parade of seven. It was pretty fun I must say. We were getting pelted with rain and for the last ten or fifteen minutes it was really sketchy what with the lightning and all but we made it! All safe and sound, and the volunteer croo at the hut welcomed us with gusto and let us all do work for stay. We were well fed, I played some cribbage, and we slept on the dining room tables. Well I didn't sleep much because there were like fifty teenage girls there that went to the bathroom in giggly groups of five well into the night but anyway. 
In the morning we all did stuff like dishes and blanket folding and sweeping and we really took our time because we could see people outside struggling to walk through the wind and rain. We could hear their pack covers and rain pants flapping violently from inside, it was pretty ridiculous. We did eventually leave, parade style again, and those kinds of days are the ones you remember. The days when your pack straps whip you in the face, it is so windy. The days when you contemplate how bad the weather has to be before you toss your trekking poles aka lightning rods far away and crouch on your pack. 
That day Brookie was leading and I was second. He nimbly hopped over a giant deep puddle and looked back to see me completely perplexed because there was no way to go around or through and he picked up a rock and put it in the puddle so I and the rest of us shorties could make it. Do you see why I might miss Brookie? Not to mention he was always very generous with his peanut butter m&m and reeces pieces mixed bag. Want to make a friend on the trail? Offer someone some food.

Past the Whites

We are at the first shelter after Moosilauke, the last mountain of the whites, Flora, Cant Stop, Black Eagle, and I and also an annoying middle aged section hiker and a nobo. Today after the mountain there were some verdant fields in which we frolicked with delight. Flatness. We could hardly believe it. We did cartwheels and log rolls through the grass. 
I will miss the Whites but my knees sure won't! Flora and I miss Brookie, this was our first day hiking without him in a few weeks :( The Whites were awesome, wow. Now trail life is going to be different- more fast walking, less views, I don't know what else.