Date: 2017-07-09
From: West Mountain Shelter, mile 1396.8

To: Bear Mountain Recreation Area, mile 1402.8
Miles today: 6.0
Weather: clear sky

This was my last day on the trail. I couldn't wait to see Carrie again. I had hiked the 1 mile from the West Mt shelter back to the AT proper by 8:45am. The sound of traffic from the Palisades Interstate was an almost constant din in the background as I descended West Mountain, almost as if my ears where in one place and my eyes where in another.I met a woman on the climb up Bear Mt who asked me to take her picture. I initially mistook her for a day hiker because of her cleanly state and the fact she was only carrying a fanny pack and water bottle.  It turns out she was a thru hiker who had come all the way from the start of the AT at Springer Mt. GA.  She earned her trail name, Girl on Fire, by leaving all the mucho young men in the dust as she passed them by in the early days of her hike.  Somewhere around NC her husband called her and told her she had to come home because he was just too lonely.  He came and got her and they went home to Kansas.  By the next day they decided to buy a used RV and head back to the trail!  Now she hikes during the day while he explores the local towns and they meet up at the next trailhead each night.  Ah, love.It was Sunday and I encountered a lot of tourists on the trail. By the time I got to the top of Bear Mt they had become throngs of people out on this gorgeous summer day.  There is a road and tourist area at the top of the mountain and people were there in abundance with their Harley's reving and rumbling and their blaring stereos as if to say welcome back to humanity. Yeah.It was a welcoming to be greeted by a row of vending machines at the rest area.  I had two ice cold drinks and a mini can of Pringles while I propped my pack up against a stump and rested in the midst of the meandering hoards. The AT down from the top of Bear Mt was some of the most finely crafted trail I've seen, this was probably just so it could withstand the multitudes of human beings that walked on it.  Almost the entirety of the path was a series switchbacks fashioned with rough hewn stone stairways and fine cobbled stone and gravel walkways.  In places people were queued in bunched up groups in both directions like salmon trying to swim upstream!  By the time I reached the bottom of the mountain at Bear Mountain Recreation Area around Hessian lake, I was swimming in a sea of New York City picnic-ers. Every picnic table or grassy spot offering even the most modest and inhospitable bit of shade was occupied by people with charcoal grills, coolers, and blankets. Litter seemed to blow around the grounds as if it were conjured into being by the mere coalessing of this many New Yorkers in one place.I bought a couple of cheeseburgers and a large Dr Pepper and found a shady spot on a covered stone pavilion wall, took off my pack and sat down to eat.  I few minutes later I spotted Sir Passalot forging his way thru the throngs on this most bizarre portion of the AT. I called out to him and he joined me for a bit of people watching. We parted ways with the traditional AT fist bump. I hope he makes it all the way to Katadin, ME (the northern terminus of the AT).That was the official end of my section hike. I had made it 2/3rds of the distance I had originally planned to hike. Still, for me, 100 miles is nothing to sneeze at.  I do take some solace in the fact that many of the thru hikers I encountered thought this section of trail was no cakewalk. The journey became for me more about experiencing the environment than ticking off the miles, and it is something I profoundly enjoyed despite the mildly ascetic nature of the endeavor.Whoo hoo!