Hiking the AT in VA, day 3

May 20, 2008 –  12 miles traveled

Awoke to cloudy skies, but no rain. I was out of the tent first, where I was immediately hobbling around. My calves were tight, sore, and protesting.   Right, this is what would happen , after leaping right onto the AT with the Speedy Sisters and downing 16 miles yesterday?
I retrieved our food bags from a tree limb and successfully fired up my little paint can wood stove. I like screwing around with the idea of carrying no fuel, and gathering up twigs and shreds of fallen birch bark and cooking on the little fires I make in the stove. In the morning , I love a hot cup of fresh brewed joe, and use Rock City ( Rockland, Maine) coffees exclusively. I have a small MSR drip/ screened funnel ,that takes the three spoons full of ground coffee that I place in my Orikaso folding cup. Gotta have it! My standard trail breakfast is a packet of 2 PopTarts, usually tallying about 420 calories right off the bat.
V8 was up and cooking in her own single Rainbow Tarptent. Auntie Mame was soon up and at it as well.

We were on the trail by 8 am. We soon passed by the campsite/ spring to the left of Symmes Meadow, a real attractive place, and one where I would have preferred to spend last night. But V8 did the right thing, encouraging us to get off the ridge to a lower elevation, as there were thunderstorms predicted for the night that thankfully never materialized.
At mid morning we veered left to visit at the Rice Field shelter, where Auntie Mame and V8 were pleased to reconnect with some thru-hikers they knew.   There was a young man there who was planning to replace his boots with a pair of Merrills. He was telling everyone that Merrills were great, but that was not the experience of the people I knew who hiked in them last year.   I heard many complaints about the poor customer service from Merrill, and did not want to get into it with him, so I kept quiet and let him “ Hike his own hike.”
Another young man told me he had cut off the straps from his Leki poles “for safety”. I shut up about that too, and permitted him to hike his own hike as well.

From Rice Field shelter, the trail stayed on the 3500 foot ridge for another 3 miles of glorious hiking conditions when it started its descent down into the industrial waste hole that you have to pass through to get to Pearisburg.
Reluctantly, I remembered this stint well , even though I came through it from the other direction last year. You first see the chemical plant from the top of a field, and it looks close but no. The Trail swerves over a landfill, then the entrance to the dump, and goes up and over two hills that were humid, slimy, and slippery underfoot. As we approached the highway, a train was thundering in front of us, there was the whine of the traffic on the highway, and there was a lot of industrial noise and smoke emitting from the chemical plant. It was pretty funny. I laughed to stifle the negative reaction welling up from inside me.
We then walked through the property of the chemical plant, went under the highway, and then walked our way back to our car at the Rendezvous motel, which was booked solid. Brenda, the owner, found us a reservation back up at the Plaza Motel, where we settled in for a stint in the “shower world”.
I was in awe at the amount of packing, unpacking, repacking, cataloguing, and fretting about food and gear that the twins were handling. They are big on resupply, and bounce boxes, and this is all part of that deal. I started my thru-hike with a bounce box, but eventually gave it up after I realized that I was the only one of MEGATEX who had subscribed to the practice.
It was somewhere around here last year that I remember General Lee asking me , “Why?” regarding the bounce box deal. He said , “Just buy what you need when you get to a place that sells stuff”. No more worries about delayed deliveries, or the extra work dealing with the packing and unpacking.
“ Fugget aboud it! “ worked fine for me.

So tomorrow I drive the twins back to Rocky Gap and fly back to Maine, where I get two days off and then continue hiking on the AT, this time in western Maine with Rangoon and General Tso.
I love this retirement deal. Some one has to do it.

Hiking in Virginia, day 1

6.5 miles , campsite site at 4,000 feet near spring.

( hiking on 5/18 )

Walking the AT in Virginia with a full backpack after moving through here one year ago is quite a beautiful experience. I am walking here for about a 24 hour period over three days ( one whole day, two half days). Checking my daily journal of my AT thru-hike last year, I see that I was walking through here in May, almost exactly to the day. This year, I am walking with my wife, Auntie Mame, and her twin sister V8, two women who are walking strong. I am walking south, after the three of us were shuttled 35 miles up the Trail as we head back to my rental car , sitting in the lot of the Rendezvous Motel in Pearisburg, VA.
I experienced considerable concern about whether I could be able to keep up with the “ Speedy Sisters”, after 6 months off the Trail. I saw enough “ friend/family failures” to know that it generally doesn’t work for a thru-hiker to accommodate a backpacking visit from family member or friend. Even in cases where the visitor is in strong physical shape, the sheer mileages ( 15-20 miles a day) that a thru-hiker can crank out at this stage of the hike generally affects the feet of the visitor in a dramatic way. Leaves them blistered, raw, or painful. This was my concern, especially since my feet are still screwed up from my own 5.5 months on the Trail last year. I still experience numbness, some pain, and occasional cramping of both forefeet.
The good news is my Inov8 Rocklite 295’s, with wider forefoot, increased cushion, and lighter weight than the three pairs of Inov8 Terr-Roc 330’s that I found best for me last year. This time, I switched out the stock inner foot pads with custom orthotics I was fitted with in November ’07. I am very pleased to report that the orthotics helped. I ended up covering some relatively big miles with no blisters, or additional forefoot pain . I highly recommend that potential thru-hikers pay a visit to a respected sports podiatrist to check out their feet before thru- hiking.
We started at 1 PM on Sunday, May 18th, heading south from the 601/ Rocky Gap trail crossing. There was a 30 % chance of rain, but things looked bright at the start of the walk. I started hiking at the back, content to just walk along this beautiful, springlike path again. It was very surprising to me to see how quickly the twins moved along. I have been hiking with them off and on for , well, I guess it has been 36 years now! However, they were moving twice as fast as they ever had before, and were steady and deliberate on the uphills as well. It was a most amazing experience to witness their transformation from weekend hikers to human hiking machines.
We moved through countryside that was at first appeared new to me. But soon memories came back. Last year I just forded Stony Creek, but this year the twins wanted to take the road walk and avoid wading, so that is what we did.
Our trio completed a relatively fast 6 miles, stopping for a break at the Warspur shelter around 3.
We moved on. Then the precipitation cycle went like this : First, sprinkling. Then winds. Then rain. I told myself, “ No big deal, at least it isn’t that cold” Then I noticed these little balls of ice bouncing along the trail at my feet. Hail. Somewhere in the above progression I started to get cold, so I put on my rain jacket. I think it was too late, as it took me hours to regain a decent core temperature.
We eventually reached peak elevation at about 4,000 feet, where we found a site that had a fire ring, and a piped spring nearby. We were in for the night.

By this time, it had stopped raining, but the temperature had now dropped into the 40’s. I had with me a new pair of Pearl Izumi Windstopper gloves, but they weren’t warm enough. My hands were cold for hours. We could see our breath. It felt like the low temps reached the high 30’s. Mame said that they hadn’t had a night that cold in weeks.
Our home for the night was Tarptent’s Double Rainbow, which I used last year and had willed over to Auntie Mame. It fits two, and Mame and I unzipped my 40 degree Western Mountaineering down bag that we mated to the new under sheet. We slid into that “ We’ve got to work out a compromise” place right away where I was cold and wanted to pull the drawstring around my shoulders, but she didn’t, as she would have felt smothered with the drawstring pulled taught.
We didn’t sleep too well. My first day back on the AT day put me though a wide range of emotions, from true appreciation for the beauty of the Trail to downright suffering, with hours of ice cold hands, and colder temps prevailing that definitely outpaced the limits of our summer gear.

Snow walk week: Day 2, 2008

Feb. 20, 2008 .
I was never so cold as this morning, when I was laying out my gear on my toboggan, with the wind blowing, ice underfoot, and huge logging trucks flying by us as we were readying for the put-in at Penobscot Brook.

I tore open the two chemical hand warmers and shoved them into my over sized mittens, hoping they would reactivate my already frozen fingers.  I took brief stints at securing my load with an array of bungee cords after wrapping boxes and duffles in a tarp. The rest of the guys were doing the same.

The drop to the stream was too great right at the bridge, so Tony and Deke had to bushwhack a snowshoe trail through some overgrown evergreens and alders to get down there.  We all assisted each other in pushing and grunting the 7 loaded toboggans through the pucker brush, all the while pivoting on my toes to keep the big ash/ gut snow shoes on my feet, as the branches we were walking over were trying to pull them off. It was already worth it, as we found solid ice underfoot, as we proceeded to move through the narrow waterway, which was about twenty feet wide at this point.

The day went slowly, as we soon encountered open water leads that required caution and good route finding skills to avoid getting our feet wet. Bob was frequently out in front, slowly moving forward , testing the thickness of the shelf ice with his axe. It we had 3 inches or so of solid ice, we went. If he hit slush under an inch or so if ice, we didn’t. Didn’t meant leaving the river bed proper, and hugging the shore where we could. You had to be careful to watch the rear end of your toboggan, to be sure it didn’t slide into the rushing waters so visible and bracing nearby. Guys were dipping their cups into the stream and gulping down water without filtering or purifying. Mt must have been OK, as no one got sick on or after the trip. So much for the common giardia panic.
We found a spot on the shore and out of the wind for lunch, where Deke laid out a couple of dry dish cloths on the snow and proceeded to heap all kinds of high calorie, quick-to-eat foods: salami, cheese, peanut and almond butters, blueberry jam, crackers, chocolate bars, hard candies, and Fig Newtons. He and Bob sprung two 1 quart thermoses on us, one filled with hot black, the other with herb tea. This lunch ritual and the same foods were to be the plan for the next three days. The great thing about winter camping with lots of snow around is that you easily get to sit for lunch. Here’s the routine: find a spot you like close to the ” table”, slide out of your snow shoes, lay them behind you to stand on so you don’t sink to your crotch, then jump forward and let your legs sink way down into the snow and sit on your snow shoes. Your feet will stay warm, as they are way down there where they can be insulated by snow.
We walked for a couple of more hours after lunch until it was three o’clock or so, time to start scouting for a good camp site.

What you are looking for here are three elements: close proximity to a water source, a sheltered spot from the wind, and a decent amount of standing dead spruce that is not too big around. After all, we aren’t carrying chain saws and fuel out here. We have just axes and bow saws. Finding the big three elements isn’t as easy as it seems. It usually requires the boys funneling out into likely spots above the water way and threading through the dense woods, in snow shoes. People call to each other, ” Check this out, this looks good, etc” until there is a sort of democratically aligned mutual agreement. Sometimes we fail to achieve and have to move on after 15 minutes of scouting around.
When we find a spot, we locate three platforms: the garage ( where the toboggans are hauled to) , and two separate tent sites. After dropping off our toboggans,  guys then stomp down the snow into flat areas for each platform. Then the work begins;  approximately two hours of real work. We chop down standing dry dead spruce that is not too punky and not too big in diameter.

 

Then those tree length poles get hauled near the tents into a wood rendering area, where a team of guys saws the wood into 12″ lengths, and one or two take axes and split the wood into small pieces, the better to cook with.

We need a lot of wood. While the wood team is on it, there is a team that is involved in setting up the two tents. This is usually spearheaded by the two tent owners, Roger and Tony. Not only do the tents need to be set up, by there is the fine tuning of guy lines, and digging out a pit in the inside of the tent to site the stove, and establishing a strong support for the stove pipe itself, which passes out of the tents through a firproof thimble sewn into the sidewalls of each unit. Tarps are laid in the back space of each tent, where sleeping pads, bags, and personal duffels are thrown in, awaiting activation. When there is enough wood, and someone has gone down to the river to chip through however many of feet of ice are there to reach water, and things are either leaned up or hung in trees to locate easier in the morning, is the titanium box stove loaded with wood and touched off. If you are good at starting a fire in a stove, things are soon popping, and smoke is billowing from the end of the pipe outside, and the inside of the tent is getting warm, rapidly. Just about everyone is really skilled at starting fires out here. The ultimate firestarter is standing dead cedar that is split down to pencil-thick kindling that is further shaved into curls with a sharp knife.
Each of us is handling a meal, and night one belongs to Bob . He has a great stew for us, some Jack Daniel’s ( if I remember correctly), and warm salted peanuts for an appetizer. I can’t remember what we had for dessert.
I was in a tent with Bad Influence and Rangoon. Roger, Deke, and Bob were in the other. Tony did his usual thing and slept outside , by himself, some distance from “snore camp”. He’s tough. He also has some claustrophobic problems if he gets too enclosed around his head in the sleeping bag, which might cause some problems when it gets down to 15 below zero , like it did on this first night. So far, so good.

I was also able to make a new friend out here this afternoon while scouting for firewood. He’s a friendly Canada Jay :

Siting here in Dogtrot cabin

Sitting here in Dogtrot cabin at Tanglewood 4-H camp in my home town of Lincolnville, ME. I am here with six men who have been rendezvousing here for a weekend each winter, as we have done for the past 15 years or so. I came in alone last night. I rigged up one of my plastic sleds and bungeed on my duffle bag and cardboard box full of food, topped off with cross country skis, poles, and
snow shoes. It is now Saturday , and we’ re settled snugly while another snowstorm
is raging outside. Should dump another eight to ten inches on top on the two feet that is still on the ground. We’re mostly laying around, drinking coffee and espressos, eating sausages and waffles, reading, and sharing tales and ruthlessly ribbing each other. It’s a guy thing.
Dave had to bail today. It is his wedding anniversary tomorrow, and his wife is going to be traveling on business for two weeks, so he had to leave. He left us with the bulk of two home made pies,one apple and the other cherry. Most of us accompanied him to the
parking lot, about a mile and a half away. I tried to use my fish- scale bottom skis, but the snow was so sticky that it was clumping up under the skis, so I abandoned them and and walked in my ski boots. There was about 8 inches of fresh snow and it was tough slogging.
It was just right for me to be out just walking through the woods. Last year at this time I was here, and sleeping in my hammock at 15 degrees, testing insulating pads. This year I am still closely connected to the AT, awaiting word about my wife’s first steps on her own six month odyssey.
I continue to be deeply satisfied at what being in the woods does for my outlook. It is settling to gather wood and build a fire. We sure need it here tonight. Running water will be a major miracle. So will folks like Gene, who is probably out today, faithfully plowing out my driveway, as he has done for the past 30 years.

Looking to hit just one clean note.

At least I am camping for a few days.
I’m here in Florida at Disneyworld sleeping in a tent at the edge of a creek. I scored a round trip flight from Portland, ME . Cheap for $164.26.  I am a staying at a campsite with my oldest friend in the whole world, Edward, and his wife Jane . Edward and I grew up next door to each other. We have been hanging out since we were babies.
I try to walk 3- 4 hours a day down here, but so far, I have not been able to find an actual natural surfaced trail anywhere. What trails they used to have here are now concrete walkways, easier to keep clean. So what we have here are walkways that used to be covered with pine needles, gravel, and sand that are now concrete surfaced. To frame this even more strangely, recently there was a big renovation in the Fort Wilderness campground where they took out all the tile floors in the wash houses and the replaced them with actual field stone floors to make the facilities more rustic. Whaaa?

I think a lot about being back on the AT while relaxing here.

As of 10:49 am, some 4 days after I arrived, I have only spent $5.15 cents since I left home. Coffee is a 1 minute walk away at the Meadows Trading Post, and Edward has a raft of insulated Disney mugs that allow for unlimited free coffee or tea, and we have not bought any meals out. Jane has a  kitchen set up in a screen house where she cooks natural meals and makes huge salads for both lunch and supper. We did drive out to Sam’s Club for groceries, but Edward wouldn’t allow me to pay anything for my share, nor do they allow me to pay for any of their daily camping fees. They have been down here since November.
n   I was also the recipient of a couple of free day passes that allowed me into Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and Disney’s Hollywood Studio, thanks to Eddie’s friend Wayne, who is a Disney employee.
So, no trail here, but it is fun to be camping in warm, shirtsleeves weather again.  I saw that it got down to 26 degrees below zero in Allagash, ME  last night, a place very close to where I will be winter camping in February.

Edward has a spare REI dome tent he set up for me with some blankets and a pillow. I didn’t bring much of my gear except my Petzl head lamp and my Big Agnes Air Core mattress. When I went to take a shower the first day, I realized that I forgot my towel. Rather than borrow one from Edward, I decided to pull some extra paper towels off the roll in the wash house and that has been it.

Since the Trail, I am much better at just sitting around enjoying looking at trees, cloud patterns in the sky, and water, which is much of what we do. Being a farmer who is away from the fields, Eddie is a master at it, and he likes to talk. A lot. He is famous for it. He is also an amateur expert at making martinis, and has some real martini cocktail glassess. I have been enjoying chocolate martinis as well as my favorite, the Dirty martini.

Edward has two mandolins and a guitar here, and we make time to play a few hours a day.

Today, Edward said that if we actually had to pay for legs instead of getting them as part of being a human,  people would have a whole different perpective on what a life this is that we have been gifted. I love these fresh glimpses of life, these off beat thoughts that bring laughter and richness to our day.

My friend Petro Wigleymon has Christmas-gifted Marcia and I  a subscription to The Sun , and here is blurb about it:

“The Sun has been selected to receive the 2007 Utne Independent Press Award for Best Writing. For nearly twenty years Utne magazine has honored the best of the independent media: publications that offer perspectives not found in mass-market magazines and newspapers. This is the fifth Independent Press Award The Sun has received.   In its announcement, Utne describes The Sun as “an intimate forum where some of the finest contemporary writers share their most polished, provocative prose, and then everyone else is invited to join in. . . . In Readers Write, one of our favorite sections of the magazine, readers are invited to contribute short pieces on a broad range of topics, such as Airports or Nine To Five, resulting in a lively, nationwide dialogue.”

The Sun is awesome. I read it from cover to cover. The last inner page, is where they put Sunbeams, a themed collection of quotes. Here is one that is perfect for what I was feeling when Edward was talking about legs:

“This body that we have, this very body that’s sitting here right now in this room, this very body that perhaps aches, and this mind that we have at this very moment, are exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, and fully alive. Furthermore, the emotions that we have right now, the negativity and the positivity, are what we actually need. It is just as if we looked around to find out what would be the greatest wealth that we could possibly possess in order to lead to a decent, good, completely fulfilling, energetic, inspired life, and found it right here”.
Pema Chödrön

Rodney Yee is Kicking my Butt

A couple of weeks ago, I met up with my friend Frank, who he asked me if I wanted to join him on a hike up to the top of Mt. Battie in Camden Hills State Park . It’s a three mile walk with an elevation gain of 600’ that has frequent ocean views, particularly this time of year when the leaves are off the hardwoods. The road is closed to cars in the winter, but even so, a lot of people go up, so the trail was packed into the snow. We had a good walk and talk, and in no time were at the summit, where we walked up the stone tower and enjoyed the “ commanding view of Penobscot Bay below and the ocean stretching out to the horizon”.
Frank has a black belt in Kempo and is always talking about different activities he is involved in , be it mountain biking, or hiking around. He encouraged me to get a hold of a DVD entitled Yoga Burn, by Rodney Yee, subtitled “ Challenge your body and mind like never before”. It is different than classic yoga poses in that the moves are done slowly, in a continuous manner, and the sequence emphasizes three “ reps” of most of the poses, in order to build strength as well as flexibility.
My wife Marcia, finally tracked down the DVD for me in Augusta and the first time I did it, I was pretty discouraged. It was freaking’ hard, 54 minutes of hard! I did like what Mr. Yee was trying to get me do, and could see that I really needed to be much more flexible and get strong in this manner, not by just standing at attention and curling an old school barbell. My second session was surprisingly better, I was more familiar with the moves, and even was able to complete one that was impossible for me the first time. I plan to do another session tomorrow.

I felt I was in shape this fall, coming off my AT thru- hike, but I am doing all I can to keep things that way, so that when I start hiking again for longer periods of time, I may not have to suffer so much in the initial stages of the season.

What I do now is walk outside still, try and get in at least 5 miles on the road out here. I go to the YMCA, where I favor the Stairmaster, and ramp it up for half hour sessions and try to keep my hands off the bar and let the full weight go to my legs. Most folks on the machine are hunched way over, actually holding up body weight to make the leg work easier. It is hard to do with no hands, and requires really fast stepping. I think keeping my hands off actually helps my balance too.

The one other program I favor is the Core Performance materials, which is Mark Verstegen’s work. I now subscribe to the program on the web site, which is http://www.coreperformance.com/ . I can download my workouts, which I print out and take to the gym with me. I like the variety, and again, I particularly need to be strong in a more flexible manner, which is what is emphasized in the program. The web site is pretty overwhelming, it has so much on it you might not know were to start. The easiest way to get into it is to read one of his books, and the one I think is a good one to start out with is Core Performance Essentials.

I am headed down to Florida in two days to hang out and camp and play music and walk a lot. I should have time there to write some more entries into this web log of mine. I have some ideas that I want to ramble about.