Date: 2012-10-17
From: High Point Shelter 

To: Brink Road Shelter 
Miles today: 19.6
Weather: clear sky

(In which I build a frame for my pack and chat with RV at lunch) -Currently sitting at the picnic table in front of the shelter before sunset-Another picnic table and another early arrival at the shelter. Things are looking up! Tomorrow it's long miles to Delaware Water Gap with a stop at the Mohican Outdoor Center, but the terrain looks flat and downhill - hooray!Last night, since I had time before I went to bed, I decided to try to fix an ongoing problem with my pack. My pack is frameless, so it's extremely lightweight, but because of that the shoulder straps slowly put more and more weight on my shoulders over the course of an hour or two of hiking. When the pack weight is low, it's less of a problem, but over the past few weeks its been getting worse and worse. At some points I'll have the waist belt synched all the way and still have half the weight of the pack on my shoulders. I tried rearranging the contents of the pack to make the sleeping bag work like a frame, but it's not very effective. Other hikers use their sleeping pad as a pseudo frame but I have an inflatable sleeping pad - so no help there. Last night I found a stick of the right diameter and cut out two sticks of the same length to fit into the slot of the pack where the foam backing used to be (removed the foam when I eventually deemed it useless). I rounded the edges of the sticks so they don't poke through the fabric and I have them arranged in an X pattern for lateral stability. I thought I'd have trouble today with the sticks irritating my back, but it worked great. The pack never scrunched down on me and my shoulders feel much better than they have at the end of each day. I'm going to plane down the sticks tonight for a smaller profile and whittle away at them where the two contact. The only trouble I foresee is the sticks poking through the fabric under heavy loads. Only time will tell...Since my day was short I took a long lunch break at Gren Anderson Shelter. There I met a day hiker who tried thru hiking a few years ago but didn't like it. Despite that, this fella (trail name RV) knew more details about the AT than anyone else I've met out here. I'd say something like "Back in Hanover, I can't remember how many miles that was,..." and he'd say "oh, about 425 or 430, roughly." He did this a few times - pretty remarkable. Anyway, we chatted about how you see people on the trail that you never expect to, and it reminded me about a story I should have written about yesterday. When I was about 2 miles shy of Unionville yesterday, I crossed paths with a fella hiking north who looked like a day hiker. He stopped me and told me that he went northbound this year and summited about a month ago. He was finishing a stretch in NJ that he had skipped earlier in the year. He proceeded to explain in excruciating detail the way to get around in Unionville (it's only one street for crying out loud) and where all of the businesses were (all 4 of them). During his explanation of the town it occurred to me that I met him about a month ago in Maine, although I couldn't remember at which shelter. It was the shelter where someone had left trail magic of boxed wine and brownies and I must have written about it. I'm not about to go looking through the journal right now though, my battery is running low. While eating my brownie and sipping wine during a lunch break, this fella went about explaining to me every restaurant and hostel I needed to stop at on the entire trail. He also went on to describe Hanover in better detail than I bet the mayor of Hanover could. It took at least 40 minutes. Once I recognized him yesterday (he had shaved and his clothes were clean this time) I thanked him for his information and emphasized that I was in a hurry... you never know who you'll meet again out here.Today's post is brought to you by frames, because an internal pack just isn't a pack without one.