Date: 2015-06-01
From: Wind Gap

To: Little Gap Road
Miles today: 15.4

After looking at the weather and considering the terrain, we decided to skip ahead on the trail and hike a less strenuous section today when rain was almost certain. We also decided to hike this section SoBo so that we would be closer to our shuttle driver when we finished. That will leave us one more section to do tomorrow (Tuesay) before we head into Delaware Water Gap on Wednesday. The temperature dropped dramatically last night and this morning it was hovering around 60. The sky was overcast and it started to sprinkle a bit as we approached the trailhead at Wind Gap. The trail climbed steeply SoBo out of the gap and it started to drizzle as we went up. I mentioned yesterday that Princess had lost her poncho and she still hasn't located it, so she was resolved to hike without it. Fortunately, we only had intermittent light rain, although the tree drips persisted through much of the hike. We met several hikers we knew early in our hike. Brown Gandolph was the first. He's moving pretty quickly and we may not see him too many more times. The last time we saw him he was in Maryland while he was trying to finish the Four State Challenge. He said he did it in 22 hours, so he beat the challenge by 2 hours - pretty impressive. Not too long after that we met Roadside. He planned to push through to Delaware Water Gap by the end of the day. He said he had enough of the PA rocks and wanted out of the state as soon as possible. Much later in the hike we saw Fireball and No Sew in a group of about a half dozen hikers. The hike today took longer than we had expected. The trail was full of rocks of all sizes. When we're crossing over a field of large rocks we generally step on top of individual rocks and we have to take time to pick a path over rocks with reasonably flat spots that don't look slippery. And today the rocks were wet from the rain. And long sections of the trail were strewn with smaller, pointy wrocks. Sometimes we could find small spaces between rocks for footsteps and in other cases we simply had to walk on top of the pointy rocks. So we shared Roadside's frustration.About two-thirds of the way through the hike I caught my boot on a rock and fell forward on a rocky section of trail. It took me several minutes to shake off the effects and I managed to bruise my knee, but there was no apparent long-term damage. However, I bent one of my hiking poles pretty badly and the other was already bent near the tip. So I'm in the market for a new set of poles. The hardest part of the day was a rock field at the final descent into Little Gap. These rocks were larger boulders, more akin to those at Bear Rocks or Bake Oven Knob, plus today they were wet. We had to take this descent slowly and cautiously, but we finally made it and we were pleased to be finished. We did see some wildlife today. We saw a number of red-spotted (eastern) newts, probably over two dozen total. They're pretty small, not much more than a couple of inches long. We saw them further south earlier in the spring, but none for quite a while. They're really cute and they move pretty slowly, so had to be careful not to accidentally step on them. On the ride back to the B&B, Kathy suggested that she could take us to a local inn where we could get dinner and drinks if we liked. You bet!! So a couple of hours later, after we got cleaned up, she drove us to the Covered Bridge Inn. We had a couple of hours to get dinner, talk with some of the regulars, and check out the local brews. We had a great time. The Filbert B&B here in Danielsville is working out great for us. Kathy, the owner is very gracious and accommodating. We've had a terrific time with her and her friend Sherry, who helps her with the B&B. We're looking forward to one more night here before pushing on north.