Date: 2012-07-12
From: Danby-Landgrove Rd

To: Clarendon Shelter
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

Left camp at 7:45am and was looking forward to resupplying and eating a restaurant in North Clarendon, VT. Passed by a beautiful scenic lake. i went by two locations where they built rock towers. I went swimming in the Clarendon Gorge...it was very hot and around 2pm...Perfect! It is a very popular local swimming hole.After swimming, I hiked a little ways to a roadway...the restaurant was .5 miles west and the general store 1 mile west...so I off I went. Got to the restaurant and it had just closed So I hiked on to the general store. It was very small and only had a few items, but I needed 3 days of food one way or another. All they had was canned food e.g. Chef Boyardee, Chunky Soup, ect. I laughed to myself when I realized I was going to have to take heavy canned food with...it gave me a flashback when I did once before many years ago.Flashback:The last time I went overnight hiking was literally 35 years ago when I was all of 17 years old. Typical teenage thinking, my friend, Steve Hurtado 16, and I in the summer of 1977 decided at 10pm to go hiking in Yosemite National Park for two days...we were going to hike to the top of the Yosemite Falls and spend the night. I told Steve I would pick him up in a half hour...I am not sure how I convinced my mother to let me go. Anyway, I pulled my dust covered backpack from my Boyscout days from the garage rafters and began stuffing it canned food to feed an army. I brought a sleeping bag that was made for slumber parties. Thinking we were all that, we hit the road for the 4 hour trip to Yosemite. At around 2:30am we pulled into Yosemite National Park...we decided to sleep outside my vehicle in a lodge parking lot...only one problem the racoons were everywhere and they hissed at us...so back in the car went and slept the best we could.The next morning we hit the trail with our overweight packs. Full of adrenaline, we thought we would be at the top falls in no time. As we got near the base of the falls we hit a teenage boys dream...two 20's year old females were sunbathing topless on a large boulder. I looked at Steve, he looked at me..I think we both simultaneously said, "Yes!" The girls never flinched. With our eyes bulging out..I said my eyes...we continued hiking as if we were really cool and it wasn't a big deal...Right! We were sky high and feeling great about our decision to go hiking.Well, reality it us when we got to the part of the trail that went up. If you have ever hiked up to the falls, you know the trail has switchbacks after switchbacks..at very steep angle. After about the 5th switchback, I couldn't go any farther due to the weight of my pack and the steepness of the trail...Steve was also at the end of his rope. I started bailing out numerous cans of food...putting them next to the trail (teenage misjudgement)...after a LONG time and many many breaks we finally made it to the top of the falls. Being the dry season, you could literally walk to edge of the falls in part of riverbed and look right over the falls. We swam in some of the swimming holes just before the falls and ate some of our canned food. Nighttime came and we got into our bags...No tent..cowboy style under the stars....Well, once the sun went down so did the temperature (high 30's I am guessing). At around midnight I asked Steve if he was cold and he said he was freezing...I was freezing also. We thought we were going to freeze to death, so we made a tough decision for two teenage boys...we decided to put our slumber party type sleeping bags inside one another and we would both get inside one bag...and face the opposite way...plus we swore to secrecy that we would tell anyone! It worked...we lived to see the sunrise. We hiked down back into Yosemite Valley and I never overnight hiked again until I set off on my Appalachian Trail journey...I guess I was traumatized from the ordeal.OK, back to the AT...I got my can food...Chef Boyardee Lasagna and Spaghetti/Meatballs...Chunky Noodle Soup...and Pork and Beans. I bought some other goodies as well. I headed back tot he restaurant, because at 4pm it opened as a pizza place. I ended up ordering a meatball calzone and chicken grinder...I could only at half of the calzone...took the leftovers with to eat later on. After drinking almost a liter of Sierra Mist, I felt sluggish and nauseated...I should have learned from my lemonade overdosed back in Virginia. I hiked to the nearest shelter and stopped. Put up my tent and called it a night.