Date: 2022-06-06
From: Stealth campsite 

To: Just past West Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 11.4
Weather: scattered clouds

We were up at 5:20 and out of our stealth camp by 6:05. We just ate a protein bar and decided to do breakfast at Fingerboard Shelter, just a couple miles away. We didn¢t want to get caught by the rangers at Harriman State Park for camping where we shouldn¢t. We are such outlaws!!We rolled into Fingerboard and woke up Hey You There in the Woods. He is a very, very slow hiker. (I thought we were the slowest on the trail but he has us beat.) He said that he didn¢t get into the shelter till midnight. He had seen 2 good sized bears by Pond Island so he kept walking. We asked if he had coughed several times going through the Lemon Squeezer and he said yes. We heard him and weren¢t sure what made that noise :) He said night hiking was interesting and that the white AT blazes on the trees glow in the dark. After breakfast we said our goodbyes and talked about possibly meeting at the West Mountain Shelter. We stopped for lunch at the William Brien Memorial Shelter. It was built in the 1930¢s by the CCC. It was made of huge stones and was  just beautiful. It had a bunkbed on each side and floor space for at least 5 more. After another exciting lunch of tuna (for me, SPAM for Coffeebean °¤®) and tortillas we headed out. Something we¢ve noticed with the NY shelters, other than NO PRIVIES, is they have no logbooks. Any shelter we have been to up to NY had a logbook for hikers to leave notes and thoughts. (Before we got to the Fingerboard Shelter we came across an AT ¢mailbox ¢ along the trail with a logbook in it. I left a note for Cool Whip, Smooth, and Tin Man to hurry up and catch up. Leaving the shelter we had a heck of a time finding the AT blaze. We walked around everywhere and found it going up along side the shelter. You know, up the mountain of boulders that the shelter was built into. Of course!We climbed up Black Mountain and at the top you could see all the way to the NYC skyline! It was a bit hazy but you could definitely see the skyline. It was so cool! (There is actually a 52 mile trail called the Long Path that will take you from Black Mountain right to the George Washington Bridge in NYC.) We came down the mountain and there was a big sign showing the detour around the Palisades Interstate Parkway. (A thru-hiker was killed in 2018 trying to cross this 6 lane highway.) The detour was obviously devised by a non-hiker because it was a 5 MILE DETOUR! No hiker in their right mind is going to add 5 miles and 2-3 hours onto their day to cross a road! We walked down to the highway. It was about 3:20pm. Not too busy a time of day. We cinched all our straps down so we could run without our packs flapping against our backs. Now it was time to play Frogger with AT hikers as the frogs! We held hands and ran across 3 lanes when the traffic cleared. Then there was a wide forested area to walk across (probably 3 car lanes wide) before you got to the other side and 3 lanes going in the other direction. All we could think was that maybe the hiker tried to cross at dusk, evening or rush hour. We had no problem. We won the Frogger game!On the other side of the highway we came to a bridge and a great water source. Speaking of water, the damn BeFree filter is plugging up again. We are having to squeeze as hard as we can to get water through it and it¢s a new filter! It has less than 250 miles on it. We are done with BeFree. Going back to Sawyer filter. (We mentioned our filter frustrations to Hey You and he gave us a Sawyer Mini that he was carrying as a backup. We were so happy and he said it helped lighten his load.) We have to get a connector and CNOC bag at the next outfitter and we are good to use the Sawyer and ditch the BeFree. We really wanted to get to the West Mountain shelter and give ourself a 10+ day. The last 1.5 miles were straight up a stone mountain!! It was brutal and we were really dragging. We had to stop and rest several times. Then we got to the shelter sign and remembered that it¢s .6 into the shelter. Oh hell no! Usually there is a grassy area before you turn into a shelter but not here. Shelter path on the right. Down the cliff on the mountain on the left. We decided to hike on. Guthook said there were a couple stealth sites within .7 of a mile. We found a really nice site. Coffeebean found a great bear bag tree and a large snake skin too. I hope we don¢t see either of those critters tonight. Dinner was chicken noodle soup (dry soup) with two packages of Ramen noodles, all cooked together. Coffeebean then hung the food bags. I worried about bears at the Harriman State Park stealth site. Hope we are lucky 2 nights in a row. We were in the tent before 7pm. Late in the night we could hear music playing LOUDLY from below. (A hiker in Guthook had made the following note: ¢A big shoutout to the person playing LOUD reggae music from midnight to 3am so we had to nighthike out.¢)Well we heard it too but it wasn¢t constant and with the sound of the wind blowing it didn¢t disturb us enough to get up and leave. We were surprised how loud it was and how clearly we could hear it at times on top of a mountain. We hiked 11.4 miles today and saw lots of cute toads too.