Date: 2006-07-05
From: Wildcat Shelter

To: Fingerboard Shelter
Miles today: 14.3
Weather: light rain

Missed details from yesterday's entry:The leech experience put some previous excitement out of my mind. After climbing Wawayanda Mtn. the trail leveled out and passed into shady forest, some relief from the sun and heat. As I proceeded I saw a black shape on the trail about sixty feet ahead of me. Just a few miles from the New York state line I saw my first New Jersey bear sitting on its haunches and staring into the shrubs on the right-hand side of the trail. It was small, maybe an older cub or a yearling. As I stopped to watch, a bigger bear, maybe a mother, peer out of the shrubs on the left-hand side of the trail. She was large, maybe six or seven feet high. Ears straight up and a long brown snout, she stared me in the eyes and I stared back. Too bad I didn't have my camera in my pocket. After forty-seven miles in the state and no sightings I was not prepared for this one. After a pause to decide I was no threat the smaller bear moved into the woods. Mom lowered and followed after. I saw her whole body, and she was huge with a fat hind end. And then the best part. A tiny fuzz ball of a cub ran out of the bushes following her. This one was so small it would have fit in my arms. Much later that night while sleeping in Wildcat Shelter I woke up in a stupor as some one popped a piece of grilled steak into my mouth. Juicy with untrimmed fat on the edge. Just as I was falling asleep Uber, Ice Tea and Slugger arrived with groceries. I was wiped out and dropped off only a few minutes after the showed up. They had followed through with the holiday plans and except for the bite of steak I missed the celebration. Later, half awake, I listened to them talking about the lobster dinner they'd had in town. They said they brought leftovers and offered to share. Uber brought over a lobster tail. I happily turned it over and it was empty except for a few scraps. They burst into laughter and Uber said, "It's all gone." I said, "That's it? You went through that long lead up for that lame punch line?" They'd carried the thing for miles and spent half an hour talking about their dinner just for, "Its all gone." It doesn't take much to amuse out here.Others who shared the shelter last night: Sir Lancelot, Good Times Charlie & Outlaw who were excited to see Kutsa, Texas who brought a fresh pineapple to share, and Charlie Foxtrot who tented in the back.Today was possibly the toughest day since North Caroline. The first miles of New York kicked my ass. It's beautiful trail here and different from anything that's come before. You work hard for every mile you gain. Like in the South, the trail climbs and descends continuously with little level ground. Unlike the South, a climb is not a steep smooth path. It's a hand over hand scramble up the side of a cliff or over a rock fall. Like yesterday there was a good amount of walking on bare granite ridges. A ridge to ravine course all day. The trail should be fun like a big playground with more climbing that any jungle gym. There's just a lot of it. It wore me down. At one spot I looked up at a fifty-foot waterfall down the side of a cliff and saw that the trail climbed to the top of the cliff a few feet to the right of the cascade.I woke this morning to pouring rain again and got packed and ready to go. I waited in the shelter hoping the rain would let up again. I did some journaling and fell asleep for a couple more hours. When I woke up again Kutsa was finishing a pop tart and heading out. I followed soon after. The rest were sleeping in.Kutsa and I passed each other all morning. We had lunch together and hiked with each other the rest of the day. The ground got rougher and the climbs higher and steeper. We reached one road crossing that I mistook for another. When Kutsa said we had six miles to go, not four, fun turned to exhaustion. More ups and downs that made no sense, ridge to ravine over and over. Probably fun for day hikers, but we had to cover fourteen miles. The stretch was beautiful but tough. Never expected this from New York. Thought we'd have easy miles. Besides the climbs, there were high ridges with views. Lots of walking on round slabs of pink and grey granite. Groves of blueberry bushes and low shrubs. Two miles to Fingerboard Shelter we reached the Lemmon Squeezer. It's a sixty-foot path, slanted and very narrow crevasse between two high house-size boulders. It's a landmark on the trail that people have been talking about for months, but it didn't really reach my expectations. I thought it would be much longer. It was a tight squeeze at the end and I had to turn sideways. The toughest part was pulling my pack through it. Another long uphill got me to a vast treeless area of smooth solid rock. Fingerboard sits on the side of the mountain. It was wide open and beautiful. Lancelot was already there and the other trickled in later. We all agreed that the fourteen miles, a short day in Virginia through New Jersey, signaled big changes in the trail and challenges to come.