Date: 2017-04-22
From: Unionville, NY

To:  Camping Near Wawayanda Shelter
Miles today: 16.8
Weather: light rain

Happy Earth Day! [Teresa here: I made the mistake of googling ¢crime death injury Appalachian Trail.¢ There have been murders/bodies found on/near the trail and some deaths due to injuries/falls/drowning. I read a NY Times article about the tragic story of Geraldine Largay, 66, who got lost in Maine and died of exposure/starvation in Aug 2013, but her body was not found (by loggers) until 2015. She was 2 miles off the trail and text messages she sent were never received, as there was no cellular service in that area. Her husband had been driving ahead and meeting her in prearranged spots with supplies and sometimes took her to motels for showers and nights indoors. He knew when she didn¢t show up at an arranged meeting point that she was lost and her position eluded expert searchers. Just awful. Anyway, I asked GI Joe via text if he'd heard of any of the murders that have occurred on the AT and related that I probably should not look into these things and invent a Steven King novel scenario in my mind. I did, of course urge him to keep his head up!]Now back to Joe: After texting with Teresa some about some AT tragedies, I told her that I guess it wouldn't be a real adventure without some peril. In Bill Bryson's book A Walk in the Woods he also mentions that in 1996 two women hikers were stabbed to death in the northern part of the Shenandoah National Forest in Virginia. So far in my experience the greatest risks have been ways of falling. In OSHA parlance, it's slips trips and falls. One mitigates risk by identifying hazards and putting appropriate controls in place to reduce it. In climbing, for example, I always try to make sure I have three solid points of contact. That is often more important in the descent than in the ascent. Also, as I¢ve highlighted over the last several days, when it rains the rocks which would otherwise provide excellent traction are often slippery when the thick lichen covering them gets moist. So whereas I would prefer to step on them on a dry day, I have had to avoid them in the last couple days.This morning I woke up around 5:30 am, packed up my campsite and went back to the Horler's grocery store for breakfast. I had two large cups of coffee with whole milk and sugar and a sausage, egg and cheese on a hard roll thingy. The nice lady behind the counter also graciously filled up both of my one liter water bottles for me. I sat on the deck and ate my breakfast and drank coffee while my phone charged. Then I headed back out of town to the trail head. It was only three tenths of a mile but of course it was uphill. I reminded myself that yesterday, after a full day of hiking, that descent into town was a welcomed direction of slope! I got on the actual AT around 7:25. The first several miles this morning were through farm fields and adjacent forests like yesterday, including some buggy swampland through which I had to walk on elevated platforms constructed by AT maintainers - many thanks to them! At one point I had a nice view of low hanging clouds only a couple dozen meters above the fields and houses in the distance - see photo. At about 3.5 miles northbound from Unionville, I came to a wildlife refuge area where I could see and hear a wide variety of birds including: geese, ducks, red-wing blackbirds and others. In the middle of the trail at one point I also saw the bodies of what I believed were a mouse and a mole rat (photo). They looked like they had been locked in some kind of combat which didn't go well for either of them. Not long after I came to the Pochuck Mountain shelter where I stopped for a snack. Attached is a snapshot of the logbook entries there.This evening I am settling into a location near the Wawayanda shelter. There is a group of a dozen or so Boy Scouts from Troop 66 out of Monmouth County, NJ. The boys are setting up tents, but the adult chaperones are already in the shelter. Technically thru hikers have priority in the shelters, but my tarp is wet from being rained on the last two nights, so I wanted to set it up to let it dry anyway. So instead of crowding into the shelter with the three other guys who are already there, I will camp under my tarp.It's comforting having other people around. I ate dinner with some of them while the troop leader took the rest on an expedition to explore nearby mines. The boys came back saying they found a hole in the ground. They were clearly underwhelmed by the experience. After 2 days of being rained on and put away wet my tarp was the heaviest thing in my backpack. And that's saying something because my food bag is full and it's over 5 pounds. There is a chance of rain tonight, but it¢s slight, so I'm hoping it won't rain and my tarp will get to dry out.Well, it¢s about 7 pm and I'm in my sleeping bag already and I want to let my phone charge off the brick before I go to sleep. Goodnight!