Today was a fantastic weather day for hiking. We started the morning off by hiking through a mile or so of swamp that has a legit boardwalk on it. This was pretty unique and cool. We saw a beaver in a creek just outside the swamp, but it swam away too quickly for me to paparazzi it.

Jersey boardwalk. Where's the beach though? I couldn't find it.

We then had a stop at a little deli right off the trail and destroyed a large blueberry danish for a brunch snack. The amenities of the north are plentiful and always tempting. It seems like there are towns and stores every 5 miles or so here.

Next up was a climb up Wawayanda Mountain. It was steep, but short as is the case in the Mid-Atlantic States.

We then said farewell to New Jersey, home of the New Jersey Jets (go Tim Tebow and Mark Sanchez!) and crossed over into New York. There were numerous tricky rock scrambles to navigate. They are fun, but tiring. The one part has a ladder. I guess it was too dangerous to scramble through otherwise.

Scrambling

We had some really nice views down to Greenwood Lake from a couple of the rocky ridges and scrambles.

Greenwood Lake

We stealth camped very near the shelter trail off on a side trail. Tomorrow we have another full day of hiking and then we are taking a nearo day on Saturday in Fort Montgomery, NY.

Vital stats :
Milestone – finished New Jersey, now in New York. 8 states done, 6 to go.
Miles hiked today – 21.3
Mood – back in the groove
Physical state – tired from the scrambles, but good
Smell – hell on earth
Song stuck in my head – New York, New York by Ryan Adams

We had some heavy rain overnight again, but stayed nice and dry. The skies were threatening again in the morning, but it blew out and it turned into a great day for hiking. The trail was a bit easier and less rocky today also, so that was a nice change of pace. That combination of positive factors and also a few days of getting back into the groove made today just a lot nicer overall.

In the morning, we went past High Point in Jersey.

High Point Monument

We hiked through a lot of low lying swamp areas, also. A lot of it had boards over it to protect the swamp.

Swamp hiking

The trail made its way up to the NJ / NY border and headed east. We went into Unionville, NY to grab maildrop #9 and some lunch. The pizza was pretty good. I have to say pizza in the north is way better than in the south. It’s just an indisputable and proven scientific fact.

After lunch, we made our way back out. We traversed through a protected bird area called the Wallkill preserve. It was reedy and swampy. I had a few glimpses of herons I think, but they were too far away to get a good picture.

Then we climbed up Pochuck Mountain, a short but steep climb.

View from Pochuck. The preserve is visible in the valley and High Point is in the background on the mountain range.

We camped about a mile or two from Pochuck near a little stream. There is some kind of youth camp pretty near here making a racket. Quiet down, you damn kids!!

Vital stats :
Miles hiked today – 19
Mood – improved
Physical state – good, not pushing as hard before Duncannon
Smell – worse than Bon Jovi’s armpits after a double encore of Dead Or Alive and Living On A Prayer
Song stuck in my head – I’m Free by The Rolling Stones

We stayed dry last night through a few minor storms. That was definitely one of the nicer camp spots we have had.

Most of the day was very warm and humid, rocky, buggy, and sweaty. Everything is wet, including all the rocks, so it was slippery and slow hiking. Jersey is pretty similar to PA in terms of hiking, but perhaps a little more challenging because it seems to constantly go through minor elevation changes. We might have had a few nice views, but it was so dreary that it was hard to tell. We had one view of Culver Lake in the morning.

Culver Lake

We also hiked past a little coffee shop, which provided a morning snack attack.

Sweet treats

We hiked over Rattlesnake Mountain (didn’t see any) and Sunrise Mountain (didn’t see any sun) today. Otherwise, it was pretty uneventful. We somewhat followed the rules of High Point State Park in that we camped kind of near the shelter. I think they wanted us to camp right by it, but I think a quarter mile is close enough. Whatevs.

Tomorrow we are hiking a half mile off trail to Unionville to get maildrop #9 and some pizza for lunch. After that, we will continue on through Jersey. Looking forward to some hopefully drier weather.

Vital stats :
Miles hiked today – 19.2
Mood – pushing onwards
Physical state – good
Smell – Jersey swamp filled with diapers
Song stuck in my head – When You Were Young by The Killers

Today we got a lift to back to New Jersey from Mom and Dad Hnatow. I’d like to say many thanks are in order to Mom and Dad Hnatow and Heiser (and Becca). They were all super hospitable, flexible, generous, and just amazing during our slackpack and zero days in eastern PA over the last two weeks. You guys are all awesome.

As far as the hike today, this is still one of my favorite areas on the AT that I’ve experienced thus far. There is a gentle climb up to Sunfish Pond, which is so cool and peaceful.

Sunfish Pond

The trail winds along a narrow ridge and provides some nice views.

Kittatinny Mountain view off towards PA

We also crossed by a neat pond swamp thing that some beavers had gone crazy on. Unfortunately we didn’t see any beavers.

Pond thing with beaver dam in the very bottom / foreground

On the negative side of things, it was (is) really hard mentally to be hiking away from friends and family. For the last 3 months the focus was always to get home to PA for the big wedding picnic and ride the excitement of being able to see everyone when we got home. Now that it’s over, it’s tough to refocus and stay motivated since it’ll be another 2 months or so until the end of the hike.

To make things more fun today, we got hammered with a downpour in the early afternoon. It was just one of those situations that almost comically sucks and that you have to try to laugh at and keep trucking along.

We ended up camping at a neat spot a couple hundred yards off the trail. Hopefully it stays dryish tonight. Tomorrow we continue trekking through the stormy weather here.

Vital stats :
Milestone – 1300 miles
Miles hiked today – 19.6
Mood – hanging in there. Had a few moments I was wishing I was back chilling in the atrium at work instead of hiking though.
Smell – like a Jersey swamp
Song stuck in my head – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart by Elton John and Kiki Dee (some other thru-hiker dude was horribly and hilariously belting this out in the rain while he was hiking)

We spent the zero weekend tweaking maildrops, fixing gear, and hanging out with friends and family. It was awesome to see a lot of you, but it went way too quick.

Tomorrow morning we say goodbye again to PA (only for a couple months, I promise!) and head northbound into Jersey. It’s going to be tough to get back into the groove I think. However, Katahdin is out there waiting and we are coming.

We finished up our slack packing adventures in PA over the last 2 days. This section is (PA SPOILER ALERT) pretty stinkin’ rocky! We hiked north on day 86 (Thursday July 10) from Little Gap to 33. This section starts with a small rocky climb up Little Gap and then flattens out. For the most part, it’s easy hiking under the canopy.

Green trail near Little Gap

On day 87 (Friday July 11), we started out in NJ and hiked south towards 33 for the first time on our thru-hike. This was a pretty cool change, as we saw a whole bunch of north-bound thru-hikers, including some friends we hadn’t seen since back in Virginia. Additionally, the weather was quite nice for hiking. There are a couple of nice views out by the Delaware Water Gap area.

Delaware River and I-80

The rest of the hike was fairly uneventful and easy. Wolf rocks provides a few views to the Poconos in the north.

Views from Wolf Rocks

We are now done with all of PA after this completing this stretch. This was cause for much celebration.

We are now taking the weekend off to rest up, hang out with friends and family, and to re-jigger our mail drops. We’ve learned a good bit from our rookie mistakes about the logistics on how to re-supply from the first half of the trip, so it’s really nice and convenient to have the opportunity to do this.

We are heading back to Jersey on Monday morning to resume “real” backpacking. It’s going to take some readjustment to get used to carrying full pack weight and being stinky again after having the luxury of showers over the past few weeks!

Vital stats : 
Milestone – finished PA (7 states done, 7 to go), less than 900 miles left to Katahdin
Miles hiked – 32.3 over the 2 days
Mood – psyched to be done with PA, but bummed to have to start hiking away from everyone for the next ~2 months on Monday.
Smell – still showering on a daily basis while I can
Song stuck in my head – Sleep Better by Pete Yorn

Today we finished the trail section up to Port Clinton. No critter sightings today. The trail is fairly rocky and obnoxious through this area. We also got about 5 minutes of rain during the hike, which made all the vegetation wet and the rocks nice and slippery. PA is so much fun sometimes (just a tiny bit of sarcasm there)!

Here is what a lot of the trail looks like in this area in spots.

Brushy rocky wet trail

The descent down to Port Clinton is short but wicked steep by any standard.

Tomorrow we are heading to Little Gap near Blue Mountain Ski Area to continue the last section before New Jersey. Continue reading →

Today we slack packed again. This section was very rocky, buggy, and muggy. Not exactly ideal or fun conditions for hiking. It was a bit of a slog at times.

We did have a nice overlook right before crossing PA 501 at the Kimmel Lookout. This is a cool spot that’s super easy to get to from 501.

Kimmel Lookout

The rest of the trail from 501 almost all the way through to PA route 183 (over 9 miles) is insanely rocky. It ranged from large boulders down to many thousands of small foot destroyers. My feet hurt. My toes hurt. My toenails hurt. Ugh!

OK, OK, I’ll stop whining about rocks! Here’s the snake of the day!

Big black snake hanging on the trail today

On the positive side of things, Trippy seems to be just about back to 100%.

Tomorrow we have about 15 miles to finish up the section of trail up to Port Clinton. After that, we only need to hike the last 30 miles or so from Little Gap to the Delaware Water Gap / NJ border to finish up with PA. We’ve done the other sections either earlier in the week or earlier in March/April. Woohoo!

Vital stats:
Miles hiked today –  22.1
Mood – whiny from all the rocks, but good
Physical state – good
Smell – still fresh, still clean
Song stuck in my head – I Love Rocks ‘n Roll by Joan Jett and The Blackhearts

Today we resumed hiking outside of Duncannon, where we got off the trail last week when Trippy got hit by the Lyme truck. We took the Shikellimy Trail back up to the trail from off of PA 325. Pretty much within a mile or two of getting on the trail, we saw a fairly large black bear. I couldn’t get any good pictures unfortunately, but it wasn’t overly afraid of us and just kind of moseyed along. That was the first one we’ve seen on the AT in PA.

This section is definitely one of our favorite sections in PA. It’s not as rocky as a lot of other nearby sections and it has a lot of nice forests to amble through. We section hiked this area last year.

It also has some delicious PA water…

mmm, fresh cold orange spring water (Is this from mining? Clay? Residual tears of Flyers fans?)

We also had a number of snake sightings today. The first was a large rattlesnake that was straight chilling by the trail. It did not give a flying crap about us or my papparazzi actions.

Rattlesnake chillin’

The next interesting encounter was a fairly large black snake. It was also chilling on the trail, but decided that the safest place away from obnoxious hikers was up the nearby pine tree.

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This was pretty cool to watch it climb. I’ve seen them and their skins in trees, but have never actually seen one climb up one. It was pretty fast.

The rest of the day included some pretty easy hiking and a few minor climbs. Tomorrow we continue hiking through this section towards Port Clinton. Thanks to Ma and Pa Heiser for providing slackpack shuttle services! It’s a lot nicer to eat some pizza at the end of a long hike instead of our normal dehydrated gruel.

Vital stats:
Miles hiked today – 18.6 (plus a bonus .9 on the Shikellimy Trail)
Mood – good
Physical state – good
Smell – wonderful
Song stuck in my head – Dammit by Blink 182

We took another zero on day 81 (July 5) to let Trippy recover further from the effects of the Lyme.

On day 82 (July 6), we did a relatively short stretch (~9 miles) that we needed to finish between Bake Oven Knob Road and PA 248 at Lehigh Gap. We hiked up to Bake Oven Knob with Packy and Tapey, aka Ma and Pa Hnatow.

Packy and Tapey at Bake Oven Knob

Thanks again for the lift, guys!

The rest of the hike was uneventful and went fast. It was warm, but it was nice to not hike in 95% humidity.

The next few days the plan is to slackpack through the roughly 55 miles we have left between Duncannon and Port Clinton.