Date: 2003-07-05
From: Brassie Brook Lean-To

To: East Mountain Retreat Center
Miles today: 25.1

Mileage 25.1 from the Brassie Brook Lean-To to the Retreat Center on Buell Road. The big test right now isn¢t the heat or the steeps ascents and descents that we¢re all the sudden getting hit with in Connecticut and Massachusetts but it appears that the osteoarthritis has gotten to both my knees and my right ankle. They are both swollen.   Or the fact that it¢s going to be a lonely trip. There aren¢t many thru hikers. The hiker line has gotten pretty thin. It¢s very rare that you come across anyone that you meet anymore. Or the fact that you just don¢t have the kind of support atmosphere up here that you do down in the south. The real test right now is the bugs. They are just killing me. They have been for going on two weeks and I haven¢t complained much about it. They were bad last night so I cuddled up in the sleeping bag and put the head net over my head so I didn¢t have a problem all night. But within seconds of getting out of the bag this morning I was attacked. I don¢t mean just a couple of bites. I haven¢t seen mosquitoes swarm like this since I was a kid living in the Everglades in Florida. Within 30 seconds I had dozens of them biting on my face, my neck, my hands and even through the clothes that I had on. I had on two layers of clothes to try to keep from getting bitten up too much. First thing I ended up doing was getting into my raincoat and my shoes and gaiters to try and keep covered all the exposed areas or possible places that I could get bit. So, I got into my raincoat (this was at 5:30 in the morning) and pulled the elastic up tight on the hood so that at this point only my hands and the front part of my face was exposed. Regardless of that I had to keep moving my hands all the time and swatting my face because if I put my hands down for a few seconds there would be six or eight of them on top of my hands just biting away. Also I found out that my filter was clogged and failed. I had put some water to drip last night and it was going really slow. I woke up this morning and it had stopped completely. So, I had a total of 1 liter of water to do me. I tried to back flush the liter through the filter and managed to get it dripping again but just barely. So, I had some Captain Crunch and made up some milk with the little bit of water that I had and tried to save some for the hike. I was hoping I could find a spickett or someplace to get water along the way. I ate that while I packed up and tried to keep moving to keep the mosquitoes from landing on my hands and my face. I hiked the heck out of there. I was practically running by 6:20 in the morning to try and keep the mosquitoes from catching up to me. The hike from Brassie Brook Lean-To north was actually very beautiful. Lots of, I believe, rhododendrons with the big leaves. All rhododendrons with lots of flowers. A forest of them completely in full bloom. Really magnificent. Then it¢s a climb up in the really hot sun to Race Mountain which had some spectacular ridge walking. You¢re walking across the bare, exposed rock face of the mountain at the very peak with the east side of the trail dropping very steeply. The right side of the trail drops very steeply. 1000¢s of feet. So, you were walking on something that¢s very close to the cliff edge to get there and find a fantastic panorama of the valley below. I don¢t know what it was but I¢ll check on that later. The bad thing was that most of it was covered in a haze of pollution. You could tell it wasn¢t fog. You could tell it was just a haze of smoke and soot. That dropped down into Sage¢s Ravine which was equally spectacular in a different way. It was a deep gorge cut by a little brook I guess. I don¢t know if the brook was incidental but everything on both sides was covered in sage. I guess that¢s why it¢s called Sage¢s Ravine. All of the rocks were covered in moss. Just really lush and green. The whole valley area of that. It was like a mile and a half walk through it. It would have been a much more enjoyable walk through there if it weren¢t for the fact that the rain the from the night before was still covering the rocks. They were all wet. Every step that you took was just playing with fire and falling down and breaking your legs. Really nasty walk from that aspect. That section. It was in Sage¢s Ravine that you physically crossed the Massachusetts/Connecticut line. At one point you walk across the rocks in the creek and one side says welcome to Massachusetts section of the AT and the other side says welcome to the Connecticut section of the AT. From there you get a slight breather but very, very quickly you start climbing very steeply again up to the top of Mount Everett which I think tops out at like 2600 feet or so. The walk up was a pretty walk. It was an enjoyable hike usually. I enjoyed it actually. A lot of it was some stone steps. A lot of it were these big exposed rock faces highly striated and turned vertical so that you were walking along the layers that were facing straight up. By the time I got to the top it was late morning. It was about 10:30 or 11:00. The sun had been shining very hotly and it was just radiating off the rocks. There was a tremendous amount of heat and a tremendous amount of humidity. I was glad to go down the other side which was just as steep as going up.   On the way going down the north side of Everett I ran into a day hiker who I talked to for a few minutes. I told him about the mosquitoes and he gave me a bottle of Skin So Soft. He had two bottles and one was almost empty so he gave me that one which was very wonderful because I was still getting torn apart. I had to stop very early this morning and take off the raincoat because I was overheating. I dealt with the mosquitoes by swatting them when they bit me and trying to walk fast enough and outrun them. It was a real luxury. I got down to the bottom of Everett and just soaked myself in it. I was able to sit down and eat lunch for a few minutes and try to get the water filter working again which it did not work very well. I sat there for 12 hour and finally gave up. I packed up and started running like heck again. At this point I was totally screwed. I still had a long way to go to get to Lake Buell Road and the hostel which I figured I would hit about 5:00 sometime. I had no water and no way of getting water. I figured that at the worst I would soak up some of the crappy water that was laying around and put some iodine in it as an emergency. I don¢t feel good about that but I figured that¢s what I was going to do. I kept hiking like heck for about 3 hours. I popped out at US 7. Actually there was a slight detour because there was a sign on the trail that said ¢Don¢t go this way. Take the road walk because the bog up ahead is under water¢. So that added a little bit of time going around. Anyway, I got down to US 7 and walked down a little way and got to the Corn Crib which was a plant nursery and I guess a farm as well. They had a bunch of plants for sale and they had fruit and they had cold drinks. I had a number of different things. I had a Snapple, a Coke, and an orange juice. I sat there for a few minutes drinking them all and deciding what I was going to do next. I had about 18 miles to go to get to Tyringham which is my next mail drop and today is Saturday. I couldn¢t get my mail drop until Monday so I figured what the heck. I would just get into Great Barrington and get a hotel room and spend the night there. I could relax and get a shower. It¢s been awhile since I¢ve had a shower. Do some laundry.   I would just go ahead and skip the hostel idea. So, I called a taxi service and they said they would be here in thirty or thirty five minutes so I sat down with my drinks and waited for them. I waited and waited.   Apparently they weren¢t going to show up. Some gentleman comes up with a young guy who makes some joke about where I was going and I said ¢I¢m a thru hiker. I¢m just sitting here waiting for the taxi to get here because I¢m going to have him take me into town to get to a restaurant and to get a hotel room for the night¢. He said ¢Screw the taxi. Jump in my truck. I¢ll drop you off in town¢ which I thought was very cool. His name was Ike. I threw my stuff in the back of his red truck and we got in the front and talked along the way. He said he likes picking up thru hikers and carrying them around. He asked me what I wanted and I said mainly to get in somewhere where I could have a steak and a beer maybe. He said he knew the perfect place. It was called the Brewery Restaurant. It was actually a brewery as well as a restaurant. So, he drove me there and I told him to come on in I¢d buy him a beer for the ride which he did. He came inside and we ordered a round of beers. I looked at the menu and decided I was going to order a cheeseburger. I had a provolone cheeseburger. Ike and the young guy left after I thanked them profusely for the ride. I sat there and had my beer and my burger. It was good timing to be there because as I was sitting there eating a terrible thunderstorm came through with really high winds. I was under a roof for a change when that happened. I pulled out my cell phone and called the Mountain View Motel. It¢s one of the motels listed in the Appalachian Trial Companion. I asked them for a rate quote. Now the trail companion says it¢s $45.00 but when I asked him he asked if I was a hiker. I said yes and he said ok it¢s gonna be $100.00 for the night. It¢s highly possible that because it¢s 4th of July weekend and this is kind of a tourist town ( the Great Barrington is) that the price is jacked up because of the holiday. But there are instances, many instances in New England, I¢ve heard a lot about it, that they jack the prices up on hikers because they don¢t want them in the hotels. Anyway, I went to the Brewery Restaurant and walked down the street and there were a number of motels there. I stopped at several of them and all of them wanted ridiculous prices. $150.00 for a night. $120.00 for a night. $100.00 for a night. I finally figured out that I was not going to get a hotel room. The last motel that I stopped at told me that I could go up to the hostel, Mountainside Hostel, if I wanted to and it was only $10.00 there. To which I replied that I thought that the hostel was quite a distance away. He replied that it was only a three mile walk up the hill. So, that¢s what I did. I walked up the hill to the hostel. I walked around the back and there was Spiderman sitting inside. Ranger Rick and another hiker was there too and a girl named Mousebait who had thru hiked most of the trail last year and was finishing up this year. They all had pizza sitting there. You could order pizza from some place downtown. So, I grabbed the phone and ordered a pizza as well. I was in really good spirits by that time because now I could take a shower and get plenty of water to drink and I could do my laundry. I proceeded to do all those while I was waiting for the pizza to show up. We all sat around eating pizza and talking for awhile and checking each others head for deer ticks. Then we went to bed.