Date: 2016-06-26
From: Great Barrington, MA

To: Beartown Mountain Rd
Miles today: 11.5
Weather: overcast clouds

For the most part it's hard to get lost while hiking the Appalachian Trail. It's marked with painted white blazes in most sections well enough that you'll usually see a blaze every five minutes or so. I've learned from the few times I've walked off the trail to, when in doubt, first look back over my shoulder to perhaps find a Southbound facing blaze. If this doesn't confirm that I'm on the trail I might walk at most another few minutes in hopes of seeing another blaze. If I don't see a trail marking within 3 or 4 minutes then I'll usually turn around and backtrack until I'm able to see a white blaze. In most cases I'm able to quickly determine that yes, I'm on the trail, or see where I inadvertently went astray. Other hikers, or trail maintainers will often place small logs or branches across the "wrong" path to help keep people on the AT. Despite this I've stepped right over such diversions because I was daydreaming or simply not watching closely enough. Gerry Largay stepped off the trail to go to the bathroom in rugged territory in Maine while thru hiking in 2013. She couldn't find her way back to the trail and decided to hike up to higher ground to try and get a cell phone signal. She holed up in her tent awaiting rescue but eventually died after depleting her food supplies. I use an app called Guthook which provides a GPS enabled map for those occasions when a quick backtrack doesn't get me back on the trail. Amazingly it works even without a cell phone signal - showing my position and the route of the nearby trail. So this morning I was hiking along past an overlook where Dr Fixit was making one of his videos when the trail hooked back in the direction I had just come from. I was surprised to see that the trail looped back into the path I had just walked by about 5 minutes earlier. The AT was taking me in a circle! Feeling quite lost, I checked the Guthook app, hiked around the circle another time for good measure, and finally found where the trail went downhill past the viewpoint. So yes, I do admit to getting lost, but only for a short time. This brings me to the most interesting part of today's hike. We had arranged with a shuttle driver to pick us up at the AT trailhead on Beartown Mountain Rd. We'd left the car at the trailhead near Great Barrington when we started hiking this morning. We kept things lightweight by slack packing with just water, a raincoat, and lunch. Well, we made it to Beartown Mountain Rd but our shuttle driver wasn't there. After waiting 15 or 20 minutes Dr fixit hiked back up the hill on the trail to see if he could get a cell phone signal. I checked the guidebook and was surprised to see that there were actually two different places that the AT crosses Beartown Mountain Rd. Our driver was likely at the other crossing which was about 5 trail miles South of us. Dr Fixit connected with our shuttle driver and, because he seemed somewhat confused, gave him turn by turn directions to get to us. It was something like "go straight ahead, turn left on this road, then left again on Beartown Mountain Rd. (It turns out there were actually two separate roads with the same name) I stayed down on the road and Dr Fixit was up on the hill in case the driver tried calling us back. Our driver was about 10 minutes away, but ten minutes came and went. We waited, and waited, and waited. Since we were slack packing we didn't have our tents, sleeping bags, pads, or even dinner with us for that matter. I had a couple protein bars and the Dr had one granola bar. We could have hiked back about a mile and slept in a shelter however the idea of sleeping on the wooden floor of the shelter without a sleeping pad or any covers didn't sound too appealing to either one of us. I could have sat down on a rock but for some reason I chose to stand out in the middle of the road looking forlornly in the direction I expected to see our shuttle driver arriving from. I kept thinking he'd be there any minute but I just kept waiting and waiting. I should have seen that there were two roads with the same name in the guide book. I should have chosen a bigger road rather then the dusty, remote gravel road that I found myself standing on. It was past eight o'clock when I finally heard a vehicle approaching. A shiny new van with an older looking driver pulled up to a stop. He looked over at me with a stupefied grin on his face."I can't believe I made it" the driver said. "It's a miracle!" "I was going to keep driving until dark and then I was going to go home" he said. I hollered for Dr Fixit to come down the hill and started loading my poles and pack into the van. It quickly became apparent that "Joel" was brand new to the shuttle business, didn't know where the trail heads were, nor could he navigate easily or follow the simple directions we had given him. The most amazing thing of all was that he was using - (I'm not making this up) - an AT wall map, the one that shows Georgia to Maine to try and find us on a mountain road. The state of Massachusetts is about 4 inches wide on that map! Dr fixit said jokingly that perhaps he should get Joel a globe to navigate with. We just checked into a Days Inn to try and regain some sense of certainty.