Date: 2017-05-03
From: Salisbury, CT

To: The Days Inn, Great Barrington, MA
Miles today: 21.3
Weather: clear sky

This morning I got up around 5:30 and made breakfast in Maria's kitchen according to her instructions. She had said we could have eggs, toast, orange juice, bananas, etc. but we had to cook ourselves because she didn't get up until 9 o'clock. I enjoyed chatting with Jag Happy over breakfast and afterwards I signed Maria's log book thanking her for her hospitality and kindness. I was on the way back to the trail shortly after 7 and on the trail Itself by 7:30. It's not always obvious how the trail meshes with the streets and roads in towns. I walked an extra half mile or so finding its actual path as had also been the case two other times: when I left Boiling Springs, PA and when I had arrived in Bear Mountain State Park, NY.At about 8:30, while hiking on a beautiful section of the AT north of Bunker Hill, still in Connecticut, I met southbound section hiker Jeff. He doesn't have a trail name yet. He had stayed at the riga shelter last night and said it was a a beautiful morning from up there. And that he planned to stay at the filters Shelter tonight. I remember passing that yesterday, though I did not stop there to sign the log book just for the sake of it as I sometimes have done. Jeff and I talked about hiking and I asked him about the shoes he was wearing. I explained these were my second set of Oboz and that the first had basically fallen apart already and REI promised to refund them. I said I like the way the boots felt generally speaking but that I still have sore feet at the end of every day.  Most of the over-50 hikers I've met say the same and that's just part of the deal. Jeff was wearing a pair of ankle-high LA Sportiva shoes. Not quite boots but not quite Trail Runners either. He said he had replaced the cinch-up lacing system that came with them with regular laces after he found that the original laces didn't stay tight during an entire day of hiking. He said he had also gotten them at REI. We wished each other have a good day and good luck on our hikes and moved on.A short while later I met southbound section hiker Joe. At first I mistook him for a trail maintainer because of his  Appalachian Trail hat  and the hiking clothes he was wearing looked like a uniform. He said no he was just Joe from New Jersey. He had been hiking from Great Barrington to Hoyt Road at the CT-NY border. This would extend for him the section of the AT that he had been working on for some time- from Northern Virginia through the CT-MA border. Basically, he's hiking the same section of the trail that I've hiked this year. We talked about a Trail name he explained that he had never been on the trail long enough to get one. As a warning about the trail ahead, he told me that the hike down the north side of the Connecticut Bear Mountain would be difficult. It had been very hard for him going up. At one point he had temporarily become disoriented and had to climb a very steep section at which point after almost knocking himself off the mountain with his backpack. So he took off his pack and climbed 10 yards or so and used his bear bag line to pull his backpack up to his new location. Having sighted a northbound hiker coming down, he watched which way she went for a while and told her she was a special kind of Trail Angel letting him know which way the course went. He discovered that the part he had just finished was in fact a place where he had gone right when the trail had gone left and he had essentially missed a switchback and climbed up the steep, rocky section between two graded portions of the trail. In talking about this with him, I figured out that the hiker he had watched coming down was Snickers.  Momentarily the big forest again felt like a small world. I also asked Joe about the Spot emergency communications beaconing device he was wearing. He said that it had excellent battery life and that it was very comforting for his family members while he was solo hiking. As we wished each other good luck and told each other to be safe and enjoy the trail, he bid me farewell as GI Joe. I did the same calling him Joe from New Jersey and he laughed and said yes GI Joe and Jersey Joe haha.A short while later, after a brief climb I reached the Lion's Head and took some photos of an amazing view to the east. A little while later I reached the Riga shelter. There I found three chaperones and a group of about 30 High School kids. I introduced myself to a guy in hiking pants and a blue sweatshirt with a logo reading "Leaders" and a woman wearing a NY Yankees hat. They explained that they were from the Leaders School in Brooklyn and they had the kids out to try to get them the hiking bug. They also warned me what shelter they were heading to on the other side of Race Mountain and that they would likely be loud and disturbing to other campers there. I wished them a good day, happy hike and I went up to the Riga shelter where I signed the register and had a snack and the remainder of half a bag of gorp I had started that morning.Sometime after 10 o'clock I reached Bear Mountain Road, which in my book is a sort of demarcation between the Lion's Head terrain feature to the South and the highest point in Connecticut, Bear Mountain itself to the north. Climbing slowly, it took me about an hour but eventually I got to the top of Bear Mountain itself. I took some pictures of The Rock Tower Monument and I climbed to the very highest point to take pictures of the land to the east - some really amazing views. On my way up Bear Mountain, I was reminded of several places I've been in the Adirondacks and places where I've skied in Vermont such as Smugglers Notch. Places that seem to want to be but aren't quite above the treeline.  It seems the only things growing are short bushes and bent and twisted evergreens that grow only in the direction the weather and prevailing winds allow. I'm sure in the winter, with snow and ice weighing them down, the wind breaks off any branches trying to violate this direction. Bear Mountain at 2314 feet or so is not so high as far as mountains go, but it is the biggest thing around and it feels pretty cool to stand on top of it.I carefully descended the north side of Bear Mountain, CT and took a picture of one of the steeper sections, thinking the degree of difficulty was overstated by the hikers I had seen here earlier today and yesterday. Not that it wasn't difficult - at one time I took hold of a rock or a tree to step down backwards and then maneuver 180 degrees in order to face forward and continue. I never felt unsafe and I really don't think it was as difficult as the descent some section hikers called Agonies Grind back in New York or New Jersey I can't remember. The descent down Bear Mountain was also not as long as I anticipated, and fairly soon I was walking through a section known as Sage's Ravine. This was absolutely beautiful steep slopes on both sides of a mountain stream flowing over several sets of falls forming natural swimming holes in several locations. Had I not stayed in Salisbury yesterday or if it had been later in summer and hotter out, I certainly would have stopped to go for a swim. The Sage's Ravine section of the trail actually runs from west to east and then turns north. After it turns north across is the Little River, there's a sign that says Welcome to Massachusetts. I took a picture of that but I also noted the guidebook indicates that this sign is misplaced - that I had crossed the actual CT-MA border on the AT a mile or so earlier. I then begin the ascent of Race Mountain which hed several beautiful views off to the east like I had seen earlier today from Bear Mountain. I also passed several southbound day hikers on this half mile section of the trail enroute to the top.As I mentioned before, the difficulty of the Bear Mountain descent has probably been overstated. However, what surprises me is that no one had even mentioned the ascent of Grace Mountain and its exposed eastern side. This was about a half mile of trail on the rocky edge of a very steep drop (almost a cliff) several hundred feet high. Due to the absence of vegetation on the rocks, you could see a great distance over an arc of more than 180 degrees. I took several pictures here. During the descent of the north side of Race Mountain, I learned another lesson about the hazard of slipperiness. Rocks were dry since it had been maybe 24 hours since any significant rain had fallen. However, as there had been a significant quantity of it yesterday, some rain water still lingered, pooled and and puddled between the rocks and on the trail. It was impossible to walk without occasionally stepping in some of these shallow muddy puddles and subsequently having wet boots. While I knew to tread more cautiously over wet rocks, today I experienced how wet boots on dry rocks pose a significant hazard, too.  Mine had become wet enough to reduce their traction on what would have otherwise been a good rock surface. At the bottom of a short section of downhill climb as I stepped on the bottom edge of the bottom rock, my right foot slipped away and I fell backwards and caught myself with my right hand. My hand struck a rough exposed pine tree root and I got a minor scrape and bruise on my right wrist. Nothing to really worry about, but surprising enough to remind me to be a little more cautious.Sometime between 2:30 and 3 p.m. I got to the bottom of Race Mountain and the Race Brook Falls campsite. I realized that since it had been relatively cold and windy today, there had been a complete lack of insects and I hadn't needed to use insect repellent at all. I also had not felt anywhere near as hot and sweaty as I had on previous days, but nevertheless, I'd not been drinking enough water so I downed the remainder of a liter water bottle and refilled it from the stream and treated it with aquamira and then I moved on.It was now time to climb Mount Everett. This would be an approximately one mile section of trail going from 800 to about 2600 foot elevation. That makes it taller than Bear Mountain which I had climbed this morning, the highest peak in Connecticut. The first several hundred meters of the climb were a relatively easy scramble up a slanted piece of granite which then evolved into a few hundred meters' climb on broken chunks of granite and other metamorphic rocks. That continued to be the trend for the remainder of the trail to the top of Mount Everett. It didn't take long and I reached the peak about 3:30. I think this was due to the fact that although steep, the trail is relatively straight and therefore shorter.  It's evidently not steep enough to require switchbacks because there weren't any. I took another picture from the top of Mount Everett. Looking out over the valley I could see the moving shadows of the mostly cloudy sky.Somewhere near the top of Mount Everett I saw a small Red-headed Woodpecker and took a picture.  Not long after that I finally actually spotted one of the birds whose call I had been hearing the entire hike - a sort of two toned whistle like 'wheee, whoooo.' It was a little bird about the size of a canary, white with a black head and some other colors on it that I didn't make out before it flew away and before I could get a picture. Now I realize that it was the third bird I had seen today, after just yesterday commenting on the fact that I had heard so many but had not seen them. So, I'm going to go back and re-title today's journal entry "this is for the birds." Haha.While climbing down Mount Everett I realized my fingers were starting to get numb so I decided it was probably about time to put my shirt back on! Haha. I had been hiking without it to try to get some of the "partly sunny" on my shoulders to make up for the elbow level tan I'd been getting out here. Shortly thereafter I also decided it was time to put my Gore-Tex on. With the windchill probably in the thirties, it was just a little too chilly for tanning even for someone raised in the North country.Sometime after 4 I saw a sign for the Glen Brook shelter and realized I must have already passed the Hemlocks shelter, the destination I'd set out to reach this morning. But looking at my terrain profile in the guidebook, there was nothing more significant than a couple of 200 foot climbs between there and Great Barrington. So I decided just to continue walking as long as my feet felt good. Which they did. Probably because for most of the day today I have just been going pretty slowly and taking it easy on them. So I'll change the destination for today's destination.Well, in addition to the couple of 200 foot climbs, there was also the descent of Mount Bushnell which I had evidently walked onto when proceeding north from the base of Mount Everett. Mount Bushnell was another long ridgeline and I took pictures at a couple of different spots with a view to the east-northeast. The climb down was about 1,000 feet and in my opinion more difficult than the climb down the rorth end of Bear Mountain earlier today. When I got to the bottom the trail went basically horizontal for about four and a half miles through forests and Farmer's fields until crossing over Route 41 and eventually US 7. Along the way it passes the monument to the Shays Rebellion of 1787 when several thousand protesters rose up against the government of Massachusetts. I put a greater explanation and excerpt from Wikipedia's article on this in the caption of the photo I took at that location. Route 7 is the same road across which and parallel to which I have been walking a couple days ago in Connecticut. While I was approaching Route 7, I called and made a reservation at the Days Inn in Great Barrington which is about 3 miles from the point at which the trail crosses Route 7. Original plan had been to go from Salisbury to the Hemlock Shelter which was less than 14 miles. But since I've been feeling pretty good this was relatively easily extended to over 20 miles. However, I thought that was far enough and for the feeling of accomplishment from today's hike and climbs, I was happy do a second night in a row in an actual bed and all that comes with that. So, at 8:13 pm I am waiting for my first Uber ride ever. Great Barrington, MA is not a large city, but it's big enough to have Uber and the driver I contacted by text should be here in 10 minutes.  Goodnight!