Total Weekly Mileage: 190.2
“Bastard Stole My Oreos”
I was happy to have my old shoes from previous trips to use. Kind of nostalgic in a way, but I’d never worn them on the East Coast for hiking—and they definitely turned out to be a mistake. The soles weren’t Vibram, and those are the best; everyone knows it. With the slippery rocks and boulders of New York, I was slipping and falling all over the place.
The trail design of the AT in New York is funny. It will lead you up and over a boulder field with no views, only to bring you back down into the woods where the easier part of the trail had been before. A cruel joke, no doubt. It does make for cool hiking, but when it’s wet out, it’s very sketchy.
After a couple of nights of cold drizzle and fog, I decided to end early one night at the RPH shelter. This one had four walls and a front door. It was open when I got there, so I just left it open. I woke up two hours later to see a huge black bear two feet from my bunk, trying to get into my pack and at my food bag. I yelled, and it took off. The next morning, my Oreos were empty next to a tree outside.
With stiff new shoes and constant rain (almost every other day, it seemed), my feet were sliding inside my shoes, almost creating a sandpaper-like friction on the bottoms. The wet soles really started to feel messed up. I was caught in a downpour near Greenwood, NY, and after making it through and feeling my feet, I had to stop. A quaint little motel and a shower felt great after the rainstorm to warm up my bones, but my feet were so waterlogged and beat that I needed to get off them and let them dry out. I did this while watching stupid television.
Back on trail the next morning, I realized I had made the right decision. Sure, I could have hiked on the day before, but the following days would have been filled with significant pain, risking ruining my feet. I took the 15-mile loss and was happy about it.
The next day at noon, I made it to New Jersey—a cruiser section of easy terrain, which I really needed. In just over 60 miles, I made short work of it in a day and a half, arriving at a sketchy-looking horror hotel at 11 p.m. But the room was decent, and the shower pressure was exquisite.
The next morning, I had crushed pumpkin cake at the bakery and was off. I arrived in Wind Gap at noon, resupplied, and was out by 2. After the big climb out, I realized I had never filled up my water bottles—and this was going to be a problem.
