Date: 2014-06-26
From: Pochuck Shelter

To: Wawayanda Shelter
Miles today: 11.5
Weather: broken clouds

Day 43: Mother Nature fulfilled the forecaster's prediction. At about 10pm, the lightning and thunder began, soon followed by lots of rain. We were happy to be in the shelter.We awoke to partly cloudy skies. Since today was going to be a shorter day, (this would have been a FULL day when we started this hike!), we slept in. We finally hit the trail at 7:35am, with temperature at 70 degrees.We had a short climb, then an extended descent over a moderately rocky trail. The trail was a little more difficult due to the rain. The rocks were slippery and so was the dirt that was now muddy. So we took it slowly.What we have found, hiking through this valley for the last couple of days, is that it is boggy in low places. Walkways have been constructed through the bogs, primarily from 2x6" boards nailed to logs or other boards laying on the wet ground. Today we walked on the Pochuck Boardwalk you see in the attached photo. What an engineering marvel it was, through 1.5 miles of marshland.Soon after leaving the Boardwalk, we came to NJ 94...and an opportunity to eat. 0.1 miles down the road was the Heaven Hill Farm store.. -it was a combination plant nursery and general store. We bought some fresh fruit, pastries (they also had a bakery) and milk. We sat outside at a table with a couple other hikers and enjoyed our feast. To top it off we bought 2 bowls of ice cream...Mmmm!! Heaven Hill Farm had a water spigot for hikers, so we watered up and hit the trail again at 12:30pm.We had finally finished crossing the valley and now had a steep, 1000-foot climb back into the mountains. Normally a good challenge on a warm, humid day anyway, but we had added the additional factor of ice cream filled stomachs!!The climb actually went fairly well., especially when we passed several sets of day-hikers with no packs and a lot younger! Maybe being ice cream-fueled isn't all bad!!At the top of the climb was a rock viewpoint (that's where the day-hikers were going). The viewpoint had great views to the north. We could see Heaven Hill Farm down below and off in the distance we could see High Point Monument where had been yesterday.The remainder of our hike was made up of minor ups and downs on fairly good trail. We arrived at our destination shelter at 4:20pm. There are lots of people here, but only 1 thru-hiker. Not sure what the attraction is for this shelter on a Thursday night. The water source. For this shelter is different; Spider had to walk about 0.25 mile down a side-trail to a state park office and get water in their bathroom. That's the water source for the shelter, as published in the official guidebook.We are tenting tonight because we want to get an early start tomorrow. The end of the hike is calling!! Also there was only a forecast of 10% chance of rain.. So what is it doing now?...raining!!! Oh well!.Animal sighting: 2 bears...Ho-Hum It was actually kind of exciting. As we were hiking this afternoon, we heard a noise to our right, so we stopped. Then we see 2 bears racing through the woods parallel to our trail, one chasing the other.. About 50 yards ahead of us, the lead bear made a left turn down onto the trail and then started up the trail, straight at us, with the second bear in hot pursuit. Now what do we do?? We're going to get run over by 2 bears!! We had always been told to make yourself as big as possible when confronted by a bear, so Spider, who was in front, spread his arms with his trekking poles out. As soon as the lead bear saw Spider, it made a right turn off the trail and disappeared into the woods, with the other bear still right behind him. Boy, were those bears fast!!