Date: 2003-08-14
From: Wildcat Shelter

To: Somewhere on Surebridge Mt.
Miles today: 13.6

My tent, packed wet at Wawayanda two days ago, dried out well overnight. Just as darkness fell, I was joined by another northbounder from the Vernon hostel - 'Bog Bridge Tester'. I lit a candle at the shelter while cooking supper and he said it helped guide him in, for this is a gloomy part of the forest even in normal daylight. He is aiming to put in 20 miles today to reach the Willian Brien shelter, so he was off by 7.30 this morning. Out of my range I'm afraid. This morning's walk was straightforward for the most part. The main exception was Fitzgerald Falls which I reached in the first hour. Working my way along the creek from below to a large pool of clear water at its foot, the falls were a spectacular sight, a ribbon of white water caught by the sunlight cascading over a ledge sixty feet up. It was about now I noticed that the white blaze marks led right to the vertical wall of rock by the falls. Surely not. I was going to die. The secret was a fissure in the rock face impossible to see when you looked at it head on from the creek. From that position, if anyone had watched me making the climb, they would have thought I had magically disappeared into the rock face.Although it was a fine sunny morning, I was totally down in the dumps. But as the day progressed I became more concerned with the rising heat and humidity, the bugs and the need for water. A trail angel left gallon containers of fresh water at the East and West Mombasha Road trailheads and they were invaluable as I struggled over a succession of PUD's. Like Prospect Mt. yesterday, each of these were toughest near the summit, where steep rock outcrops force you to lay poles aside and pull yourself up from one position to the next. Thank goodness it was dry. The climbs and descents were each between 500-700 feet and by late afternoon I was very tired.The last guaranteed water source of the day was an outlet from Island Pond, and I decided to cook there. I needed the energy boost from a good meal, and I knew there was no certainty of water at Fingerboard shelter, my destination for tonight.On my way again about 6.00pm, it wasn't long before I came to an unusual rock formation called The Lemon Squeezer. A formidable rock face this, it had an opening at the bottom just large to squeeze through. I ducked through that easily enough only to be confronted by the real squeeze, a fissure no more than 18 inches wide in a large mass of rock about 20 feet high and maybe 40 feet to the far end. Without a backpack the obvious approach would be to go into it sideways and lever yourself along. With a back pack, that wouldn't work. After careful thought, I came up with no intelligent or elegant solution whatsoever, and so just went into the crevice head on. Somehow that worked. Levering myself with elbows, calves and thighs, and lubricating the sides with a generous amount of profanity, I popped out the other end out of breath and with a heap of scratches and grazes.The walking from here was very pleasant and I startled six or seven deer, usually in pairs, often a doe with an adolescent, in the space of about ten minutes. as I came to the fringes of Surebridge Mt., the forest floor widened out, the tall trees were spaced more thinly, and there was little undergrowth. In other words, promising camping terrain. Finally, at a point where I could hear a creek running fast somewhere downhill, I set up my tent on a good flat area. The water, as it turns out, doesn't look great for drinking, but it was fine for a refreshing hiker bath. I'm feeling a good deal happier tonight than I did this morning. I should be within a mile of Fingerboard Shelter.