Date: 2003-07-12
From: Palmerton, PA

To: Leroy Smith Shelter
Miles today: 15.8
Weather: few clouds

Ooh, it's so hard to leave town sometimes! Especially a nice place like Palmerton, PA. We had breakfast at Bert's, a great little restaurant right across the street from the "jailhouse" and headed out. Sean-O and Oop left before us since no one would be likely to pick up 5 hitchhiking hikers! Bump, Mountain Butterfly and I stuck together and got a lift from the very first car that came by. The kind lady driver took us up to the trailhead and promptly got a flat tire trying to get us up the dirt access road! Bump was going to change it for her, but the lug wrench was the wrong size. Fortunately she had a cellphone and called a friend who came right up.    Meanwhile, we discovered Gizmo was there! He is the ridgerunner we all met back at Springer Mountain on our very first day (oh, so long ago). It was wonderful to see him and to be able to ask his advice before starting our first big rock climb. I was pretty scared and had psyched myself out about the climb. He assured me it was okay and "do-able". (I was still scared, though.) We asked about water on the mountain and he cautioned against drinking it. If you remember, this area was contaminated by zinc smelting operations. He suggested we get to it before it got too hot up there since the ridge is almost completely exposed. Up we went. And up. And then up some more. It ended up being a way cool climb, although there were some parts where I certainly didn't look down!    Then we were at the top. The views were incredible-we could see for miles. The landscape was something else though. It reminded us of the devastation around Mt. St. Helens after the volcano erupted. There were dead, bare tree trunks sticking out of the rocks with virtually no top soil left in big patches. Some places have begun to recover and had small sassafras trees, blueberry bushes (we didn't eat any today), and some pretty pink flowers growing. Hopefully, in time, the earth will heal itself and the mountain will be green again.   After we had crossed the contaminated area, the trail got very pretty again and we even saw a porcupine. He was so cute! We also saw 2 deer and a tiny ring neck(?) snake that Butterfly caught.   The campsite here next to the shelter is beautiful. There is lush green grass growing between the trees. I built a campfire to help keep the bugs at bay while Bump and Sean went for water. There is a nice group of thru hikers here tonight. Besides Sean-O, Oopala, and Mountain Butterfly, there is Starbuck, Siesta, Field, Pace, and Phoenix. In the shelter are The Happy Hiker (from Israel) and the section-hiking father and son team, Paramedic Paul and Iceman, with whom we've been hiking since Harpers Ferry. Everyone ate together around the campfire. Butterfly had carried a shoo-fly pie from town and shared it with all of us for dessert!    As we were cleaning up and going to our tents, Gizmo and John Stempa, the Mechanical Man showed up. Gizmo was doing his ridgerunner job, checking the area and gave us some advice and pep-talk stuff about the mental aspect of staying on the trail now. Did he read my mind or just see it on our weary faces?   Anyway, 13 miles of rocks tomorrow and then just one more day in PA!