Date: 2016-05-15
From: Hamburg, PA via Blue Mountain Rd

To: Eckville Shelter 
Miles today: 14.5
Weather: few clouds

Slept pretty well again last night, and we all got up around 6:45 to pack stuff up for when Cody was going to meet us for a ride back to the trailhead at 8:30. My pack was a decent weight, but I was a bit more conscientious than for my last "four" day resupply, so it's not nearly as bad as it was out of Fayetteville. We went down to breakfast and waited around a bit and then Cody brought us back to Port Clinton (after a quick run to Wawa). He truly lives right next to the trail, in a field just where the trail turns to the south towards Hamburg. We thanked him and headed in our way. I walked the half mile to PA 61 for the THIRD time and then began up the steep climb to the top of the ridge. The day was glorious, perfect sun and a stiff breeze. I made it up quick to the ridge and climbed along to Pulpit Rock overlook, where there were many day hikers. The weather decided to start getting very bizarre at this point. I thought multiple times that I was hearing raindrops but didn't feel anything wet, and then I realized it was hailing on me. It hailed for about half an hour on and off, sometimes coming down in ridiculous volleys that just made me laugh with all the white ice pellets jumping around like ping pong balls. I made it to a lovely view called the Pinnacle and stopped for a while with a ton of day hikers around (including one man on a handbike who was clearly paralyzed from the waist down, wow). But the main event of the day was the weather. It was colder than its been in weeks, the wind blowing, and it went from sunny to hailing/snowing/raining about 15 times. I made it to the road leading to Eckville shelter around 2 pm. The shelter is just a converted cabin behind a home owned by the local hiking club and maintained by Mick, the caretaker who lives on site. It was very early for me to stop, but as I sat in the cabin, it began to rain again and I didn't feel like moving. There were showers predicted the rest of the day and I didn't feel like getting more wet than I had to. I stuck around inside. White Rabbit showed up soon, then a flip flopper named Ziptie who is celebrating four weeks from Harper's. It's funny how different paces are. It was frickin freezing out and I put on my other shirt and my down jacket while we sat around. We made dinner and talked, Large showed up as well as some more flip floppers named Olive Oil and Popeye who are very kind. Unfortunately, that filled up the bunks in the cabin, and we started having to turn away hikers who were arriving bedraggled out from the blustering rain. There's a big field next door to camp at, but it sucks to have to turn people away. Among them were Odysseus, who ended up zeroing in Hamburg just like us, and much later, Double Dip and Dirtface. I talked with them all for a while and were surprised when the caretaker and his friend arrived back home from the grocery store, and she (her trail name is Daisy Crockett) came out and offered us the smoothest Irish whisky I've ever tasted. It was great talking to her and the whisky was quite a treat! Tomorrow because I didn't go 7 more miles today, I've got 24 to a shelter just before Palmerton. It looks like it's going to be nice weather, but we will be hitting some of the worst rocks in all of Pennsylvania, including one famously treacherous stretch called the Knife's Edge.