Date: 2004-06-27
From: Ironmaster's Mansion

To: Before Conodoguinet Creek - oops
Miles today: 30.0

The Ironmaster's Mansion was run by International Youth Hostel. It was an old historic mansion. It had a hidden trap door that led to a cellar that was once a part of the underground railroad to free slaves. It had a great kitchen and believe it or not we eventually did want some dinner even after all that ice cream. There was a men's bunk room and a women's bunk room. That seemed a bit silly to shelter dwellers but through hikers were not the only folks here.The bunk rooms were full of steel bunks which seemed fine at first sight. Being the last person to climb in left me with another opinion. They were incredibly noisy and squeaky. That wasn't the worst of the night though. The room was pretty full with about 15 of us. There was one guy on a lower bunk near me with the loudest snore imaginable. No one was sleeping but him. This went on for a long time. Finally a guy on an upper bunk at the other end of the room got down, came over, shook the guy awake and said, ¢You are entirely too loud. Go upstairs and use the couch.¢ This guy was our hero and got lots of quiet thanks.Half Way:Half way on the AT is kind of a vague concept. Every time a switchback is added or the trail is rerouted off a road the overall length of the trail changes. That means the half way point moves. Pine Furnace is really close to the midpoint. A kind of monument/sign post was erected a bit north of the park when that was the midpoint. According to the 2004 Data Book the total length of the trail is 2174.1. Half of that is 1087. That puts the halfway point 0.7 miles south of Pine Furnace State Park and 1.7 miles south of the Midpoint Marker. But honestly, who really cares. When considering the length of the approach trail at Amicalola and the fact that everyone has to get down from Katahdin some how and all the side hikes to shelters and water, the total hike is much longer. This also explains why every sign denoting halfway is in a different place and indicates a different number of miles. It's all a bit silly but the idea of making it halfway was huge for this thru-hiker.It was a gorgeous morning. There was a register outside the camp store that still needed to be signed. The store was a few steps off the trail. There I was getting antsy waiting on the porch for Buick when another hiker told me he had already left. He must have passed me while I was writing. At least this gave me a chanced to satisfy my orange juice craving now that the store was open. There was no choice but to haul to catch him at the Half-way Marker. He, no doubt, thought I was out ahead of him and therefore would be in haul mode too. Great.At the halfway marker I fooed and he called back which made me just keep hiking. Buick asked if I had signed the register at the Marker. ¢What register¢ I replyed. It seemed there was a little one in a little box on the pole. After a bit of hemming and hawing the decision was made to hike the hundred yards back down and sign it.Today we would come to a section of trail that confused us a bit. At about 16 miles there was a notice in the Handbook that reads ¢no camping allowed from Alec Kennedy Shelter north to Darlington Shelter, except at official Backpacker's Campsite.¢ That's a stretch of 18.2 miles. 18.2 plus the 15.5 to get to it today would be a total for the day of 33.7. Hmmmm. That's a long haul. We figured we would stay at the official Backpacker Campsite and call it an 18.5 mile day which didn't make us very happy after just doing a couple of short days. What we didn't get was the why. Why was there no camping for 18 miles and why did the trail cross roads 17 times in those 18 miles. We just figured we'd take it easy today since we didn't have much distance to cover. So we took our time. There were some cool rock sections and that was fun. We got to Alec Kennedy Shelter around 6pm and had dinner because there would be no water at the campsite in the no camping zone where we planned to stay. That's right, the nearest water would be a half mile further along at the ATC Mid-Atlantic Region Office in Boiling Springs.Not much further along the trail, all became clear. The trail was winding down off the mountain when a view opened up giving us a preview but we still didn't get it. The view was of farm fields, very nice indeed in the late afternoon sun. A short while later it hit us as the trail left the woods and made a bee line through the corn field. The great mystery of the "no camping" zone was solved. The next 18.2 miles would be through farm fields. The campsite was in the corn field. This made me think of a particulare Twilight Zone episode. (No Tommy, please don't send me to the corn field.)This presented us with a new consideration. The next 18.2 miles would essentially be flat. Hiking fields in the morning sun would be hot. Hmmm. Maybe we should just go for it. Sure. The decision was made. We hauled right past the campsite and into Boiling Springs.We signed the register on the ATC Porch at 7:45pm. The sun was still shining brightly though low in the sky. We headed across the street to a convenience store to pickup some extra snacks to get us through the next 14.3 miles. We of course also had to get some ice cream at Leo's next door. This was my first taste of Tea-Berry ice cream. Oh that was nice. It brought back memories of picking tea-berries in the Pine Barons of South Jersey as a school lad.And so we began our traverse of the vast farm lands. Now we understood the road-a-mile nature of this section. We were flying and things went great for the next couple of hours. It got dark and the stars came out. It cooled down a bit but it was a good hiking temperature. The moon was waxing, first quarter. Yea, this had been the right decision, at least so far. The trail spent as much time as possible at the edges of fields where there would be a row or swath of trees but some times it would venture straight thru a field. In the shadow of the trees we would use our headlamps and in the fields we would just use moonlight. We were moving very fast and the only trouble came when the trail was a ditch and feet didn't necessarily find the unseen bottom of the ditch. This resulted in some stumbling. Grrr.There was one section of trees that was very disconcerting. As we enter there was a sort of wind sound in the tops of the trees but the night was clear and still. The sound swirled and roared above us. We found ourselves instinctively ducking but for no real reason. That is, until we noticed thing dropping on us. Stuff was landing in our hair and we could hear it hitting our packs but it was small. Oh no. Bats! The trees were full of bats and we were disturbing them and they were dumping on us. Guano, bat pooh. Yuk. That just made us move faster and laugh, kind of nervously. It would be fun to hear a recording of our discussion as we came to these realizations. Finally, after a good 10 minutes of super hauling the trees changed to a different type and the sound stopped. There were no more bats. A person with a fear of bats would have gone nuts. It made me think of the Hitchcock movie, The Birds. We were almost hysterical with nervous laughter and relief. Who would have thought.The night hike continued and we were getting tired. I-81 roared in the near distance. It was around 11pm when we stopped on a style to gorge ourselves on those snacks from Boiling Springs. Buick was on the bottom step and I was on the top. We sat there eating Snickers bars and talking for quite a while and then we just sat some more. We were beat. But that wouldn't stop us. Finally we mounted up and set out only to stop after our first step. Where was the trail? Did it go along the fence? Did it head straight across the field? There was no telling.We found 2 possible paths and took one each. Before too long I found a 4x4 post, a trail marker, and called to Buick. He beat a path across the field and we resumed our haul mode. After a while we came to another style. On the other side of the style there was no indication of a trail. We searched up the fence. We searched down the fence. We searched the field. We found an AT Corridor Boundary marker but that didn't help. If anything the marker just mean that we had strayed from the treadway. We found an irrigation pond, a tarp pitched over a picnic table and a barbecue grill. This looked like the farmer's family picnic ground. We searched around the pond. No luck. It was after midnight. We had come a very long way. We rolled our pads and bags out under the tarp and vowed to get up early before anyone caught us. We were careful to leave no trace as always. We zonked quickly to the roar of the Interstate traffic. It wouldn't have been so bad if we hadn't lolly gagged till dinner time but who knew. In the morning it would become clear that this had been a 30 mile day, and night.