Date: 2017-08-18
From: Delps Spring campsite

To: Palmerton, PA
Miles today: 9.7
Weather: moderate rain

When the rain began -- first with a few fat drops and then with a downpour that verged on the biblical -- all we could do is watch. It helped, of course, that we were watching this tempest through a window while sitting inside an air conditioned room at a hiker hostel rather than being out in it."This was a good day to take a nero, eh Train?" I quipped. He'd thought about continuing on to the trail south of Palmerton but was very happy to have given in to my indolent tendencies rather than his more innate workaholic ones.I'd worried that this well-forecast afternoon storm might have occurred while we were descending Lehigh Gap, a notoriously difficult jumble of boulders where the ridge we've been following since the New Jersey high point is breached by the Lehigh River.It's why I was keen to get going early this morning, since the speed of the trail remained an unknown, even though we only had less than 10 miles to do.As it happened, the long rock gardens similar to the start of yesterday's section were absent, other than for a brief moments. But since it had rained all night, the rocks we did encounter early on were slippery and required extra care. This area is famous for the boulder descent but also for the remediation efforts to revegetate the ridge after the effects of a century of zinc smelting in Palmerton had left it looking as barren as the moon. The smelter had closed down more than 25 years ago but the vegetation was definitely still in recovery mode compared to the long green tunnel the rest of the ridge had been. "I'm sure there would be great views here," Train said, "if we weren't in this cloud."One of my theories so far about Rocksylvania is that for nobos, every difficult section is followed by an easy one, like a kind of half-apology.What it meant for us sobos is that every time I found a section of easy trail, I'd begin to think they must be something awful ahead. Quite often, this was proved right.So when the trail avoided the rocky crest of the ridge and instead took a fast and smooth old forestry road to one side, I knew we were getting close to Lehigh Gap.We were fortunate to not just avoid doing this segment in driving rain but also for the jumbled boulders to have mostly dried out from the previous evening's heavy rainfall. With one short section of scrambling, where use of hands were as essential as they had been in Maine, we reached the highway just before midday.In truth, it was not nearly as bad as I'd expected -- the guidebook talked about it being "reminiscent of the Whites", which is a chilling comparison to those who'd already done those mountains -- but by the same standard, we knew that in different conditions it could have been much much worse.Soon we were sitting in Bert's Restaurant in Palmerton, eating a huge pile of appropriate stodge, and an hour later, we'd snaffled bunks in the old manager's office at the back, showered and had done our laundry when the afternoon deluge began.Life is good.AT fact of the day: Until a few years ago, AT hikers would stay for free in the town's old jail. But then a few badly behaved hikers ruined it for all who followed and that option was closed. We're fortunate that other locals, such as the manager of Bert's, took it on themselves to fill the gap.