Date: 2019-04-27
From: NY-17A crossing, AT mi 1373.8

To: Fingerboard Shelter, AT mi 1390.1
Miles today: 16.3

Day 63, Day 7 of Section 6, 4/27 Sat.From: NY-17A crossing, AT mi 1373.8To: Fingerboard Shelter, AT mi 1390.1Statistics:AT 16.3 mi, up 3879, dn 3667, 8.8% plus walk fr old 17A AT trailhead to new, and a 4? mi SNAFU around Little Dam LakeCommentary:My most tiring day. Rained hard overnight, stopped by morning. Very lucky to get an Uber before 0600 from B&B to trailhead. Arrived ~0615. But Google Maps & Uber show an old? AT trailhead and parking, which is a blue blazed side trail, and worse, the AT signage is still at that spot and not the new? parking area 0.1 or 0.2 farther along 17A where the AT actually crosses. Faked me out, and I had been to the new parking area 2 days earlier. So road-walked to the crossing. Two pointless climbing gym exercises before Wildcat Shelter, especially slow due to the wet rocks. At least these had blue blazed bypasses (I was tempted, but stuck to the white blazes.) From there to Harriman State Park there are a series of very rocky, steep-sided glacial? ridges 100s of feet high that need to be crossed. Very tiring, slow going.The SNAFU was dealing with the stream crossing at 1382.8, Little Dam Lake stream crossing. Guthook comments note this crossing as dangerous and very deep after a hard rain, so I was concerned. When I reached the road crossing before there, an experienced, 60-ish dayhiker from CT asked me if I was headed for the crossing, said it looked impassible, and a ¢knowledgeable¢ local had given him detour directions around the lake, shorter than the Guthook comments detour (which involve a 2.4 mi roadwalk, missing 1.4 miles of AT). The direction started okay ¢ we found the gated access road to the dam spillway. But, what the local thought was a bridge over the spillway turned out to be a fence preventing access to the spillway. So we ended up with a worse ford, thigh deep, in fast water over slippery rocks in the outflow below the spillway. From there it was a bushwhack back to the AT above the shore of the lake ¢ fortunately, not too difficult. When we reached the AT, I decided to out-and-back back to the road where we started, thereby not missing any of the AT white blazes. My companion decided to follow as far as the 1382.8 stream crossing to pick up what he missed. There was a dam or log jam at the crossing, but it did not look safe to me to use, so I forded that above that, partly thigh deep but not fast moving, and hiked up to road and back. A crowd had collected by the time I got back to the stream. Someone had managed to cross on the rickety logs on the top of the log jam with barely wet feet, and people were following. A troop of SOBO Boy Scouts were crossing very slowly. one by one, and spending even more time trying to add more branches to the top to try to make it easier. It wasn¢t helping, just adding stuff to trip on. They gave us a chance to cross. We crossed NOBO on the logs as well and proceeded. A couple more steep ridges remained before the bigger climbs in Harriman SP. A bit of rain and sleet now and again around this time. I slipped descending on loose gravel, landing on my butt and pack bottom. My 3rd fall since my 9/30 start. A minor fall, no pain or bruising.At the bottom of Harriman SP, there were a zillion cars (100+?) in the access lot. My CT companion from the SNAFU and I started the climb about the same time as a group of inner city kids, ages 8? (or a small 10?) to maybe 14 and their leaders. CT eventually pulled well ahead, with a longer hike to his car. (I never did get his name.) I passed the front of the group of kids well below the ¢Lemon Squeezer¢ rock feature, but they caught up while I was trying to figure out how to get up the white blazed ledge above the squeeze. I eventually gave up and took the blue blazed ¢easier¢ bypass (not easy due to a downed tree in the middle of the boulder scramble). My first missed white blaze.(Above the Lemon Squeezer, the trail through the rest of NY gets easier, though I didn¢t know it at the time.) The kids passed me when I stopped to fill up and filter water a couple of miles before Fingerboard Shelter. I caught up with them again on the final climb up to the shelter. Most of the group had turned back at or before the Lemon Squeezer. The dozen left spanned the age range, with one older  teenage leader in charge. They were all exhausted by this point (so was I), and asked me how far they had yet to go. Assuming they would picked up at the next road crossing (they weren¢t sure of the road name) I used Guthook and told them 1.6 mi, maybe an hour. I left them still resting before their final push. Arrived around 1730 at Fingerboard Shelter. There were probably 20 tents scattered around the tent sites around the crammed full shelter. Saturday night close to NYC. ¢No privy, no place to hide¢. No bear boxes either, despite a notorious bear problem. Lots of campfires with sparks burning holes in tents, gear, and clothing. I pitched my tent somewhat close to the shelter, away from nearby fires, and realized later why a lot of tenters went to the most distant sites ... ahem ... closer to the edge of the woods. A tent stake pulled out, when I reset it and readjusted the guy lines, one of my hiking poles that I was using to support the tent buckled in the middle. wtf.  (Not fatal for the tent, I was also using the freestanding struts.)I called Asta. She offered to drive up tomorrow with her poles, 3.5 hrs each way, not counting stops ¢ unexpected and above and beyond. We arranged to meet at the next AT road crossing in the morning. In retrospect, I¢m sure I damaged the pole 4 days earlier, Tuesday PM, when the pole slipped between the first two bridge slats as I was lifting myself up onto a bridge. The pole buckled at about the level of the slats where it took a sharp levering force. At the time I was more concerned about my shin, which bashed the end of the bridge and really hurt. Also in retrospect, I¢m lucky the pole hadn¢t buckled while I was climbing or descending a rock face in the meantime.