Date: 2005-06-14
From: Veron Church Hostel

To: Wildcat Shelter
Miles today: 17.3
Weather: scattered clouds

A short time line for part of the day:6:00 AM Woke up and organized gear for packing.6:10 Woke Doc for breakfast, he decided to go to Burger King.6:15 Walked over to Mixing Bowl Restaurant for breakfast6:45 Back to hostel and packed, set ground cloth outside to dry.7:15 Church member brought donuts. Ate and talked with Search, Doc, church member and Wing It while waiting for shuttle to trail head.7:40 Load gear into shuttle, he runs me by A&P for Tuna. Head to trail head.7:56 Dropped off at trail head, clean clothes on, showered from night before, feel fresh and clean.8:05 Start up trail towards first climb of the day.8:13 Reach start of first climb.8:23 10 minutes into climb soaking wet, no longer feeling fresh and clean.8:24 So it goes. It doesn't take long in this weather to go from clean to dirty. The funny thing is you don't really know the difference since you are that way all the time along with everyone else.The good news for the day is I've now gone through my 8th state. I should be out of NY in 4 more days. The next two states after that are Connecticut & Massachusetts.Early in the climb Wing It and Doc both passed me as usual. After climbing for an hour I reach the top and start going along the ridge. As I walk along the ridge I can hear someone hitting something. It sounded like a wood pole being banged against objects. Up ahead I can see Wing It walking slow and looking around while hitting things with her wooden walking stick. I was close enough so I asked if she was trying to scare the bears. She said yes and that she saw one just off the trail. I was just a few minutes too late or I would have seen it. When I caught up with Doc he mentioned he also saw it and took three picture of it. One side of me wants to see a bear but the other doesn't. Wing It provided some entertainment for the day. While we waited for her she soon showed up. When she got there she asked if we had anything for a bee sting. We said no and asked if she needed us to look at the sting. She explained that she got stung while visiting the woods and had hit a small hive while standing up. The bee sting was on her backside. She also got stung on the back. She said it looked kind of funny as she was running thru the woods trying to pull up her shorts and get away from the bees. When we got to the shelter the bugs were so bad that we decided to pitch our tents in the shelter. There was only the three of us and there was room to do it. Before we pitched the tents two cadets from West Point showed up. It seemed funny to see two girls carrying combat boots on their packs. They are both in there second year and wanted to get some practice carrying the packs and breaking in the boots before they had to do it in Army exercises.Again there is an overall lack of water for this section of the trail. There is a spring here but very little water was flowing from it. A trail angel that lives nearby carried up a cold gallon of water and it went fast between the five of us. If it wasn't for trail angels leaving water at many of the road crossings you would be running out quickly.