Date: 2008-09-09
From: Shenandoah Campsite

To: Greymore Monastery 
Miles today: 17.5

It's 9:30AM and we've already taken a break for the day. We got up, packed, and headed out as usual this morning. There was a threat of rain in the air, but we figured we'd push as far as we could before getting wet. As we crossed over the top of Shenandoah Mountain we began to hear thunder, lightening flashed not far away. What is it with us, mountain tops and thunderstorms?We crossed the exposed top without any rain. Someone had painted an American flag on top in honor of 9/11. We stopped briefly to take a picture and look at the view. As we started down the other side (a very gentle down, not much descent) I began to think through a plan. When we were on top of Saddleback in that awful storm we had no options. There were no bail out points. Today we are in New York, there are options. We are however on a fairly isolated stretch of the trail. It will be five more miles before we cross a road even though the traffic noise from the Taconic highway is just down the hill.Most importantly the terrain is very tent friendly. We could pitch our tent quickly at anytime. It's not really okay to camp in this area, but we're not thinking about camping, just shelter. I pulled out my phone to see if I could look up the weather. I was happy to see I had four bars on my cell. It should connect to the internet with that. I turned it on, went to the weather channel and entered Fort Montgomery's zip code. The radar popped up with the prettiest bright colors...reds, yellows and greens. A severe weather alert said a string of strong storms were headed toward Orange and Putnam counties. Checked our map, sure enough we're in Putnam County walking toward Orange County.We started looking for a flat spot off the trail away from trees. About the time we had located a spot and started setting up the tent Soaring came along. She had gotten out of camp a few minutes later than us. We told her about the storm but she said she didn't mind getting wet and felt like she was walking strong and wanted to keep going. I don't mind getting wet, well I don't like getting wet, but I can do it. I really don't like walking in thunder and lightening. I figure a storm like this will pass in and hour or so, then we'll start walking again. Meanwhile we are staying dry. Hopefully we will still make our planned 18 miles today.Later...The storm lasted three hours, longer than we expected. It left us with a predicament. We still had sixteen miles to go but we knew we couldn't do that before dark. Do we stop at the only campsite in this section, just six miles away, do we stealth camp somewhere along the way or do we hike into the dark to make it to the monastery? We decided to plan to hike into the dark with the option to bail to a stealth camp if we were uncomfortable with the idea.The rest of the day was a forced hike to make as many miles as possible in the daylight. Not much fun, but the terrain wasn't bad. We saved the difficult terrain until after dark. Soaring called at 5:00 and she was there, we told her we hoped to see her. At 6:00 we called her and said we had four miles to go, we would almost make it before dark. She had ordered dinner from an Italian place that was very good and offered to order for us and have it waiting. That sounded wonderful! It's really what kept us going.Just as the night got dark, the sky opened up into a downpour. No thunder, no lightening, no warning, just suddenly buckets of rain. I stopped to turn to Owl and ask her to help me pull out my poncho. As I did I twisted my foot and stumbled over my hiking pole and it snapped in two. That's it, two snapped poles, no recommendation for Gossamer poles. So now, on the top of a rocky peak, pitch dark, pouring rain, one pole. Sigh, I know God is teaching us something here.We walked slowly and cautiously down the hill. If it wasn't for Owl's great eyes I would have never found the blazes. Roo had had enough. She wanted ahead of me to lead and I wouldn't let her. It was rough.Soon we came to what appeared to be a gravel fire road. I wasn't expecting that so I called Soaring. She started giving me directions and I could hear Creature, another SOBO in the background giving other directions. I just said, nevermind, we'll find it. We continued on through the woods and quickly came to another road with a sign saying to follow the blue blazes to the ballfield pavilion where hikers are welcome to stay. We were doing pretty well with finding white blazes in the dark, but blue? We walked on for awhile unsure of ourselves but finally Owl spotted a blue blaze. We walked onto a road and followed it until it led to a large field with a pavilion. What a welcome sight!We set our tent up, took off our soaked shoes and dug into our Chicken Marsala and baked ziti. It was good. It was great! A dry spot to sleep and good food.Tomorrow we have six miles into Ft Montgomery to pick up supplies, so we should be able to sleep in a little and take an easy morning.Rabbit, Owl and RooJoshua 1:9