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July 15 – Sweat, Scenery, and Struggles: Hiking 14.3 Miles in 100°F Heat
July 15 – 14.3 miles, 2200 ft of gain and just so many rocks.
We wake up in our icy cold hotel room and get ready for the day. I pack my bags, eat my leftovers, brush my hair, and then call an Uber. We get dropped back off on the trail. We have 15 miles to hike before we get to the pick-up place for tonight’s hostel. And it’s going to be hot. Like 100°F heat index hot. Needless to say, we started our day early.
When I was in the hotel room I was surprised my feet hurt so much when walking. On the trail, on rocky surfaces, it’s so much worse. I cry out when I step awkwardly or on a rock. I’m very concerned I tore my other plantar fascia. I really hope I just bruised my foot pretty badly on its sole and hopefully in a day or two it’ll feel okay. But for now, I spend my day stepping carefully to avoid pain and occasionally yelping in pain.
Flamethrower is just melting in the heat. It really does suck to be stuck in a continuous heat wave. And we really ought to do something about global warming before this gets worse.
We knock off our first half-ish by about 10:30. Then we take a break in a parking lot with a privy. We love privies. There should be a view but it’s blocked by the thick, dense, hazy air. We hike on. We have another 8.5 miles, and it’s so hot already. The sweat pools and we just drip constantly.
I find some cool mushrooms and tell Flamethrower about them. Any distraction is nice. We see scat from a large bear on the trail and hope we’ll get lucky enough to see it, but I think it’s just too hot even for a bear to be roaming in the middle of the day.
We get to a shelter and refill our water. Somebody fills the bear box with about 25 gallons; it’s super appreciated. There is even a number to call when the water cache runs low. This saves us from having to drink from a dank stream. We snack and tour the shelter and the privy. The privy is bright pink inside; this is new. They are normally dark or white. The shelter is shorter than usual, I suspect this is an old one.
In the next parking lot, we find a cooler of trail magic, just flavored water. Flamethrower drinks a bottle; I’m not interested. We hike on.
The trail is easy except for the rockiness and the random rock scrambles. We only have a few miles left till we get to the pick-up point when we start hearing intense thunder.
Because we’re in NJ, there is cellphone signal almost everywhere. I call up a weather map. It’s an isolated T-storm just north of us. It looks like it’ll miss us, which is good because it’s very red. I was ready to go to ground to stay dry in a tent till it passed, but we’ll hike on and get to the hostel sooner.
We keep hiking and arrange for a pick-up around 2:30/3. We get there at 2:30 and head to the nearby buildings for bathrooms and water. I also buy a soda, chips, and fuel. The hostel owner arrives and tells us that the next hiker is shortly behind us. He’ll arrive at 3 pm. We all hang out and wait.
On the way to the hostel, we stop at a Dairy Queen for slushies and apparently fried cheese curds. Ahhh more deli blazing. Then we get to the house and get the grand tour. The owner leaves to pick up a few more hikers. We all take turns showering.I need a resupply run, so I go to the store. And then we pick up dinner. I basically buy some healthy snacks for tonight, bars, jerky, and candy for the trail, and then filet mignon hibachi for dinner.
Flamethrower stayed at the hostel. I know she’s exhausted after today.
We’ll have an easy day tomorrow, only 8 miles to Unionville, NY. Then because of the heat, we’re going to call it and go no further. There is a hostel in town that will take the first 4 people to arrive, no reservations. We hope to be there first. Otherwise, we won’t have AC and will be tenting in the local park with our free permit. We’re not doing anything intense tomorrow; today was hot enough.
On the bright side, the heat is going to break next week with multiple nights dropping into the 50s. I can’t wait. We’ll be able to get some good miles in.
We’re only 27 miles from the NJ/NY border. It’ll still be hot on Wednesday, so I don’t think we’ll make those last 19 miles. Instead, we’ll camp around 15 miles from Unionville and hike into NY the next day. Sidenote: the trail actually crosses into NY briefly before its final crossing, but I’m only going to refer to the final crossing out of NJ.
I’m exhausted and we’re hitting the trail early tomorrow so goodnight!
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