Date: 2016-07-02
From: Allentown Hiking Club Shelter

To: Bake Over Knob Shelter
Miles today: 10.0
Weather: overcast clouds

I know I always complain about the rocks and I'm sure you guys are tired of hearing it. BUT OH MY LORD THE ROCKS!!!Discussing upcoming water sources in camp this morning (water is starting to be an issue), and we realized that there was a restaurant 4.1 miles up the trail that is hiker friendly! I got out of camp at 8:30 and the trail was so nice I made it in 1.5 hours! I waited for Criw at the road crossing for about 15 minutes then we headed to the Blue Mountain Summit Restaurant and B&B. The website said they opened at 11, so we spent an hour hanging around their beautiful back lawn and Skibo, Tree and a few others showed up. Then, when the doors didn't open we noticed their posted hours had them opening at noon! So we waited around another hour. Salad, burger, fries, and lots of coke and I was a happy camper! Onward!The trail got and stayed pretty rocky, but I'm getting darn good at the boulder hopping and it's starting to be fun. I was glad for all of the recent practice I've had when I got to Knife's Edge. No way would I have done that traverse in bad weather!! It was pretty ridiculous at some points, and I highly recommend the butt slide technique for a couple of spots! But it was neat and the views were spectacular!Again the trail stayed rocky for a while, eventually giving way to about a mile of relative smoothness right before Bake Oven Knob Road. The holiday weekend brought out all of the day hikers, and Bake Oven Knob is popular because it offers great views a half mile and only a 160ft climb from the parking lot. Most of the people I ran into were nice. A few were obnoxious. But you can really tell the places that are easily accessible to the masses because of all the trash and often times graffiti. It's sad really. Hiking down from Bake Oven Knob got super, butt sliding rocky again. I have deemed one section there as "Little Knife's Edge". Louise, my trekking pole, literally saved my ass on Little Knife's Edge. I was teetering along the precarious traverse, and I lost my balance!! As I was falling back into the jumble of sharply angled rock slabs (fortunately I wasn't falling the other way into nothingness!) Louise was wedged between a couple of rocks and slowed my crash. My butt landed on a protruding slab corner. It was quite uncomfortable and rather painful, but not nearly as bad as it would have been had Louise not slowed my fall. As I'm sitting on this sharp rock corner trying to figure out the least painful way of dealing with this situation I look over and Louise is bent over like a bow, still holding me up. I managed to free myself and release some of that potential energy in my trekking pole. She straightened back almost fully, but does have a noticible curve to her. I'm a little worried about how effective she will continue to be in such a state, and I highly doubt I will be able to collapse her again. Maybe I can bend out the bow. At that point I was done with the rocks and just ready to get to the shelter!When I arrived at the shelter Sojo and Pirate were here alone with a couple of people just stopping in. Two guys came up the blue blaze and said they had gone at least .8 down the ridge and never did find the spring. I have been dreading this steep long climb down to get water. They gave up and pressed on. I was chatting with Pirate and he said a day hiker had just been in and confirmed it was a long, steep trail, but he came out with water. Pirate asked me how much water I needed to get to the next source. 2 liters. He motioned for my bottles and became my favorite person!!While he was getting water, a couple of LASHers finishing up the trail came in, Regina and Thomas. They stopped in to make dinner and decided to do without upping their water, but Pirate brought back a little extra that would get them through comfortably. In talking Regina and I learned that we were both members of the Appalachain Trail Women's Group on Facebook, so we took and posted a pic of the two of us. They headed out after dinner and it's just Pirate and I in the shelter tonight. I was going to hang, but there really isn't a good spot. There's not much tent space either, so I'm glad there's no crowd tonight. There are two other guys tenting with Sojo. The shelter is cool in that it is an original, so was constucted when or before the AT was completed in 1937. There's a great little clearing in from with a picnic table, fire pit, and bench. That's about all it has going for it... Small tent clearing, no hammock space, difficult water source, and no privy! But I plan to sleep well here tonight! A comment on the Guthook AT app informed us of a bear poking around about a month ago, so we have our bear bags hung, though I always hang mine.Tomorrow I will go on to the next shelter, then probably past it and try to get a room in town. I don't want to do the steep, bouldering climb out of Lehigh Gap at the end of the day. But we'll see how things go. The next shelter is supposed to be the last water source for about 20 miles. Will have to conserve. :-(