Date: 2003-11-15
To: AT Rediscovered
Miles today: 0.0

In the mid 80's, I found a Backpacker Magazine while cleaning a cottage in New Hampshire. It was a special edition about the 3 long trails, AT, CDT, and PCT. The author was comparing them and their special characteristics. I could not put that copy of Backpacker down. I subscribed to the magazine and started looking for books and articles about the AT. By this time a lot of people had completed thru hikes and Ed Garvey had his books available. I found an old copy of Ed's first book on a book rack at AMC Visitor's Center in Pinkham Notch. Ron and I brought a group of high school students there to climb Mount Washington. I brought the book home and read it from cover to cover several times. I tried to convince Ron to do some backpacking with the Outing Club but he was not into camping and convinced me that the liability was too great. So, we did everything else with the outing club but camp and backpack. We did white water rafting, hiking, canoeing, skiing, deep sea fishing, horse back riding and more. As Ron got closer to retirement he began giving me and Arleen Cloutier, a French teacher, more and more control of the club until we enventually shared advisorship.    When Ron retired, Arleen got married and I took over the club alone. Three female students, Kate Mullen, Robyn Hull and Morra Judd, learned of my interest in backpacking and convinced me to take a small group out for a weekend backpack. We left school on a Friday afternoon in November with borrowed gear for a hike on the AT to Glastunberry Mountain in Vermont. We made it to the first shelter about 1 mile from the trail head shortly after the sun set. The next morning we hiked to the Goddard Shelter. I was remembering how tough I was as a kid and tried to carry way too much gear. I had two tents with one weighing 8 lbs. Eventually, the kids took some of my load. We had a great experience. I learned a lot about my limitations. After the hike I did some research and figured out how to cut down on pack weight. Kate, Robyn and Morra pushed me into doing many more backpacks. Our next experience was to hike all of the AT in Connecticut. I loved every minute of that hike especially the disasters. I brought Kate, Robyn and Morra to Ten Mile River camp ground the Saturday before our hike. We practiced lighting our new Whisperlite stoves and cooking meals. We set up and took down our ClipflashLight tents. The next week was April Vacation and I needed these leaders to bring the group to Ten Mile River Campground, set up tents and start dinner while Larry Brown, science department head, and I shuttled cars around and hiked in from the north to meet the group. Well, the kids were so excited about their hike that they didn't notice when the trail veared off of the old logging road it was following. They ended up in New York State. They finally walked into camp using flashlights just as it began to rain. I never allowed that to happen again. Half of the group came down with food poisoning about 4 days into the hike. Kate made chocolate candy for everyone. Those that ate dark chocolate got sick those with white choclate were fine.   Larry was sick, too. So he drove that group back to South Windsor and I continued on. We awoke Saturday morning at Limestone Springs Shelter to a fierce rain storm. We climbed back up onto the ridge and followed the AT into Salisbury where we discovered the area had recieved 7 inches of rain in this one storm. Larry met us in the parking lot. We learned a lot about equipment and what it takes to keep moving in a heavy rainstorm. I loved the hike. Some of the kids would never hike again but most had the hiking bug.