Date: 2005-07-15
From:  Island Pond

To: West Mountain Campsite
Miles today: 11.8

We had a fun morning! Early on, we were faced with an obstacle course. After we climbed out of the area we camped in, we were greeted with the Lemon Squeezer, an extremely narrow passage between two boulders. Lots of people have to take their packs off and drag them along the top of the boulder while hiking through the Lemon Squeezer sideways, but all 3 of us managed to hike through with packs on. Next, we were faced with another physical challenge, one that also required some thought process as well. First of all, there were two different trails, both blazed in white; secondly, the latter of the two went straight up a 12' rock face, with no obvious way to get up. Being that we, as a couple like to challenge ourselves, I'll give one guess as to the route we took. You got it.....we went straight up, instead of taking the graded rock path around the boulder. It took some figuring out how to get up there, but we were determined and made it up without knocking out any te! eth!Once we reached the top of the mountain, we took a moment to enjoy the views and the wonderful breeze that was blowing our way. The rest of the morning's hike was easy as we walked gradually down through mountaintops of blueberry bushes.At the road, we decided to go down to Lake Tiorati where we were told we could get good water that didn't have to be filtered. It was potable, but came out of the spigot the color of urine (our guess is because of the high iron content), nevertheless, we decided to filter the water anyway. What was meant to be a short hour long break, turned into a lengthy 4 hour break as we enjoyed a cold coke and cooked lunch. Several of our friends walked up while we were there, which also slowed us down from leaving.Motivational issues can be a challenge out here, and today one of those issues was the heat. One thing that needed to be done was to have my prescription changed from th patch to the pill. I love using the patch, but when they did all the tests to see how well it sticks, it was not on a thru-hiker. They tested it on women who were olympic athletes, sure, but those women also shower everyday, and are working out alot of the time in air-conditioned gyms, not out in the heat and humidity. So, I called my doctor and she called in a different prescription, no problem.The afternoon's hike was a little more tough, with steeper climbs and more rock scrambles. Even though the day has been beautiful, we still have yet to see the NYC skyline from any of these mountaintops.Mr. Clean Jr. got ahead of us when Bug and I stopped at the shelter to read the register, but we caught up with him at Palisades Interstate Parkway. Here, we played Frogger in rush hour traffic. Beechy Bottom Brook provided a lovely setting for dinner before we made one last push over West Mountain. We bypassed West Mountain shelter and instead opted to stay a little further beyond at a lovely little campsite.As I type, we are all gathered around a campfire (to keep bugs at bay) and Bug is doing his best to make a last ditch effort at gluing Mr. Clean Jr.'s boots. They are on their last miles. I am going to wrap this up. Since I have phone signal, we are going to call our folks.