Date: 2013-06-24
From: Jail House Hostel, Palmertown

To: Little Gap
Miles today: 4.7
Weather: clear sky

We got up this morning thinking we had everything under control because we had hired a waitress from the Palmerton Hotel to drive us out to the trailhead. She didn't get up as early as we would liked to have left so we agreed on 9:00 at Bert's where we would have a leisurely breakfast. By 9:15 she hadn't arrived and her cell phone was turned off so we were debating hitching when a man who was walking into Bert's offered us a ride when he finished his breakfast if we were still there. The only glitch was that he was going the opposite direction so we suggested he leave us at Little Gap which is where we planned to finish this section of the hike. Todd, the Danielsville postman was so sweet to go out of his way for us and we just flipped our plans and took advantage of the opportunity to suggest to everyone we met that they were going the wrong way. BB's face was stunned and we had to reassure her that we were just teasing. The consequences of starting so late is that we were walking on a very exposed trail on the hottest day of the year so far and stopped wherever there was a bit of shade to cool down. This is the superfund cleanup site caused by the operations of a zinc processing plant now closed for many years. My last trip through here resulted in photos that looked like duplicates when, in reality, I was turning to the compass points and photographing the stark black trunks of trees, shrubs and the ground surface. Everything was dead. In the intervening years the superfund has relocated the trail lower on the ridge along a road planted with wildflowers, grasses and quick-growing shrubs and is now working on the higher areas. It was lovely, but we didn't eat any of the blueberries, just in case! This is DirtDog's hike and he has been in charge of our hike plans. Today he decided that we would take the blue-blazed winter trail off the mountain rather than risk going down the rock pile that this area is infamous for. I'm sorry we missed such an interesting feature, but it is much easier to climb up than descend and it certainly isn't worth getting hurt. It was a decision that kept us from the encounter I had here in 2004 when I grabbed onto a rockhold to pull myself up and found myself nose to nose with a young copperhead. We decided to ignore each other and I went on my way. The trail down was exposed and steep, but not really difficult. We called Kathy, the owner of Filberts and let her know of our change of plans and she was there to pick us up in 2 minutes (she had been picking up Liferaft who has a stress fracture and needed to be shuttled up to where Tugboat would be tonight. She is such a nice girl and we wish her luck in grad school this fall at Raleigh. Wow! We can't say enough about the Filbert and the way Kathy spoiled us, starting with a pitcher of cold lemonade. We relaxed and watched a movie, took a walk, played cards and napped as Kathy couldn't return us to our car until tomorrow. She also had an older couple as guests who were slacking northbound and we made plans to order with them from the pizza joint that would deliver, but they didn't come and it got really late so we ordered and ate our calzonnes by ourselves. Kathy and a friend went to Wolf Gap to wait and learned that they still had more than 3 miles to go and it was already 7:00. So they went into town and bought hiking shoes and flashlights and went up the mountain to get them. Just then Shade and Shadow came down so all turned out well, but who would do such a caring thing as go searching for her guests?!