Date: 2016-05-31
From: Guilder Pond

To: MA 23
Miles today: 16.8
Weather: few clouds

Yesterday we took a zero at Bearded Woods. I think that¢s our first zero in over a month and it felt great. I can¢t think of a better place to zero, we slept in late, had a lunch in Salisbury, and generally relaxed all afternoon. I really needed to catch up on rest and take a break from hiking. We haven¢t been doing as many miles per day as we did the past two years, but we haven¢t been taking zeros - so we¢ve been steadily moving forward at about the same pace as in the past. We¢re getting ready to make another big adjustment in our hiking schedule later this week. The next 2 or 3 days we¢ll continue to hike up through Massachusetts, Then we¢re going to jump forward to Hanover, NH. We have an opportunity to join forces with One More, a hiker that we met last year at Bearded Woods. He is in the process of doing the last piece of an AT section hike. He is currently hiking in Vermont and we¢re going to meet him in Hanover at the line between Vermont and New Hampshire. Our revised plan is to hike with him through the rest of the AT up to Mt. Katahdin. Plus there¢s more, a former work colleague of Princess¢ is also going to join us for a period of time. So instead of 2 of us, there will be 4. And we¢ll have more vehicles, so it will be easier to coordinate slack packing. No one will have to hike alone (this helps tremendously in the White Mountains) and we can preposition a vehicle at the end of the hike so that everyone can hike together if desired. We still plan to slack all the way, and we have reservations at 3 of the AMC huts in the Whites as intermediate points. So it should be a great adventure. I¢ll flesh in the details as we get closer.So today we finally got back to good hiking weather. It was in the 60¢s when we started and slowly climbed up to the low 80s in the afternoon - most important, the high humidity was gone. We still had some tough hiking, we had to cross Jug End Mountain at the end of the taconic ridge in CT. We remembered that it was tough, but we didn¢t remember how tough it really was. We were already at elevation at the starting trailhead and the biggest challenge was really the series of sharp descents as we came down from Jug End to the valley. The rocks were still damp from overnight rain when we started, but they dried quickly and we had good footing on the way down. We followed Hudson from Bearded Woods in our car out to our first intermediate point at Jug End Road, only about 4 trail miles from our starting point. Then we joined Hudson and he drove us to our starting point at Guilder Pond. We said our goodbyes to him, since we are leaving Bearded Woods and moving on. Then we headed NoBo together back toward our car. We took it slowly and carefully and met Arizona, a thru-hiker along the way. Our next section took us from Jug End Road to Boardman St. This section was mostly flat - farmland, meadows and bogs. Princess did it NoBo and I did it SoBo. We had a number of plank walks and a lot of roots and mud along the way. We did encounter a crew working on a section of bridge through the bog. They had set up some temporary planks for hikers to walk through. It looked like pretty hard, hot, sweaty, demanding work and we thanked them for keeping the trail in such good shape. I took a photo of them and it¢s included. It's a good illustration of how much effort it takes to maintain the entire AT. I noticed a lot more synthetic wood in the plank walks than I¢ve seen before. I¢m sure it will hold up better than natural wood, but it¢s probably much more expensive. I also noticed that I had much better traction on the synthetic surface, wood can be very slick when wet. We also passed the Shea Rebellion stone monument.Our last section climbed back up into the hills. Once again, I did it SoBo and Princess did it NoBo. Neither of us remembered this section very well and it had it¢s challenges. The trail marking turned out to be a problem in several places. The blazes were inconsistent, some were very old and faded and others were difficult to find. At one turn in the trail, the blazes actually indicated a turn in the wrong direction. Princess had the hardest time. At one point, as the trail wound around past an overlook point, she ended up going in a circle. And she wasn¢t the only one - a man going in the same direction had the same problem. Fortunately, he had Guthook and between the two of them, they eventually got back on track. It was a fun section of trail with some interesting challenges and it took me longer than I expected. Ice Gulch near Tom Leonard Shelter was impressive. So tonight we¢re at Jess Treat¢s in Sheffield, MA. This is the third time that we¢ve stayed here, we have some good memories and it feels good to be back. We know the Sheffield/Great Barrington area pretty well now and where to go to get things. We contacted Marshall (a thru-hiker I¢ve mentioned before) who we knew is staying in town and he joined us for dinner at the Barrington Brewery. We probably won¢t see him any more since we¢re jumping forward. Princess tried hard to talk him into joining us for the Whites, but he graciously declined, in favor of keeping his own pace. It¢s already hiker midnight and time for sleep, we have a long section tomorrow.