Date: 2017-08-08
From: Pawling

To: RPH shelter
Miles today: 19.9
Weather: overcast clouds

How much easier is the trail in northern New York? I took three hours off the AT today to have lunch with a visiting friend but still managed to get in just shy of 20 miles and also eat town food three times.The day revolved around meeting Christine, a former New Yorker who I met in Abu Dhabi after she moved there with her husband, John. Having caught up former sandpit dwellers Jen, Yas, Matt and Tommy in Boston and then Kathryn in Vermont, Christine quipped that catching me on the trail was the 2017 version of the 2016 Pokemon craze.She'd been visiting friends in Manhattan but was heading up to their country home near Egremont, just over the border from Great Barrington in Massachusetts, so I arranged to meet her at midday near Nuclear Lake.The complicating factor in this is I didn't know what the trail will be like in New York. So far, different volunteer groups had been responsible for specific sections of the trail, and the differing philosophies at play produced markedly different kinds of trail, with correspondingly diverse average hiking speeds.My inherent pessimism about potential speeds and a near-pathological hatred of keeping others waiting by being late meant I allocated four hours to do a smidge over eight miles.First of all, though, was a diner breakfast. At 7am, I dragged myself out of bed and walked a few hundred yards down the road from my motel to the nearest deli.This was only just a few miles up the road from Toni's Deli but the difference caused by the trailer park across the road was obvious. Especially from my years reporting from the criminal courts, I always could tell from their faces which people have had hard lives -- whether through hard drugs, alcohol, smoking or just the vicissitudes of life. All of those present in the diner, whether they were staff or customers, had that look.But the welcome was genuine enough, the coffee did the business and the breakfast was the kind of stodge that I knew would power me over the next few miles.Hitchhiking is illegal in New York, I'd been told, but I managed to get a lift down the road easily enough with someone who had previously taken lots of AT hikers and knew where the trail crossing was.Because I'd allowed for a conservative 2mph pace, the trail was -- of course -- like a racetrack.Nuclear Lake was named for the nuclear research facility that was briefly housed in this former private hunting estate, and less happily for the accident in the 1950s that led to the leaking of radioactive material. None of this history was in any way obvious nor explained to the passing AT hiker, although with that knowledge I was happy I didn't need to fill water from any of these seemingly unpolluted streams.The fast trail and my excessive inherent pessimism meant I arrived at the meeting place on Highway 55 a full hour early.That was fine, since the weather was sunny and warm and I thought it would provide the chance to catch on this journal. But instead I ended up chatting with another guy also waiting in the parking area. Tar Heel -- from, of course, North Carolina -- had thru-hiked the AT back in the Mesozoic era of 1979 but now was hoping to catch up with his two stepdaughters, who were hiking it this year. These turned out to be two of the three Goldilocks, from the tramily Three Goldilocks and the Bear. He proved to be an interesting guy, and we compared notes on places like Nepal, for which we'd both organised fundraisers in response to the 2015 earthquakes.After an entertaining half hour, he realised the tramily had already passed this way so he departed in hope of catching them at another road crossing.Soon after that, Christine arrived and we headed across to Karen's Diner in Pawling, where we spent a truly enjoyable hour or so catching up on the events in the nine months or so since I left the middle East. Fortified with both food and details of friends from my old life, she then dropped me back at the Nuclear Lake parking area and, three hours after my arrival, we headed off in our respective directions.Normally a three-hour absence from the trail would have resulted in a daily distance tally in the low teens. But the trail remained equally fast this afternoon for the next eight miles. This took me to Highway 52, where a quarter mile side trail led to Mountain Top deli. This had been my original intended goal for the night, since the deli allowed hikers to pitch their tents in the back garden for free.But I worked out it was early enough that I could head to the deli, stock up on dinner and still make the next shelter before dark. Strictly speaking, RPH shelter didn't require that kind of pre-planning, since it's famous for being one of only a few AT shelters where one can order pizza delivery, but I had my heart set on another deli meal.Late afternoon is one of my favorite times to hike and I used to call it golden hour on the CDT. The incentive to get to the hut before dark was definitely helpful and thanks to yet more nice trail -- amid a couple of solid climbs -- I rocked up to RPH at 8.15pm. There was maybe 15 minutes of walkable light left.I found Three Goldilocks and the Bear already here. They were all laid out in food comas, with the stack of empty pizza boxes telling the rest of the story.It was surprisingly unbuggy so I was able to crash out on a sun lounger just outside the shelter, where I fell asleep after a truly mesmerising display of fireflies in the garden.Life is good.AT fact of the day: One of those I'd been hiking around has had to get off the trail for a week to attend to some unrelated bureaucratic demands. He's a recently retired 30-year Navy veteran, which is known to lead to a certain, um, firmness of thought patterns. So his practical joking former hiking partner has arranged to send him some packing tape via some nobos. "After his years in the military," the former hiking buddy told me, "he's going to see this, not understand why I sent him the tape and it's going to drive him crazy!" I extended my compliments: "You clearly understand the institutionalised mind..."