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July 19 – Rocks, Scrambles, and Slushies: Slack-Packing Through NY’s Rocky Terrain
July 19
We wake up late again. My left foot hurts and Tara is tired and hurting all over. We need to hike, though. I leave the hotel room and chat with some of the hikers and trail angels outside it. It turns out the hotel will do slack-packing. I sign Tara and me up for 12.1 miles through these rocks. We also ask to change rooms so we can both have beds—Tara’s air mattress is deflating again. So we pack our things to change rooms and repack for the slack-pack. Slack-packing is when you don’t take all your gear with you while hiking; instead, you take a day pack. After all this time with the heavier pack, it feels so easy. Regardless, it’s going to be a rough day, but we hope the rocks will be behind us soon. Seriously, NY, get your act together. OK, some of it is type 2 fun, but it still hurts and my foot is unhappy. In fact, my right foot hurts a bit today too. Weird, I don’t think I hurt it.
We eat some apples off a nearby tree and jump in the car. Trail, here we come. We get dropped off on the road and will now walk back to where we got off yesterday. I look for my bug repellent and discover I forgot it. This isn’t going to be good. Thankfully, Flamethrower has the wherewithal to bring hers. I spray a generous amount on. I do not want to repeat yesterday. Then we resume hiking.
It’s not long before we discover we’re starting our day with an 800-vertical-foot rock scramble. At least our packs are lighter. In fact, I immediately run into the woods, poles held high in the air, whooping and screaming to celebrate how light my pack is. I’m sure Flamethrower was plotting my death by this point. No worries, the 800-foot scramble still manages to take a lot of wind out of my sails and I move at a normal speed thereafter.
Anyway, we climb and climb and climb. Then it gets flat before we climb and climb and climb again. Then I think it gets flat, but the trail turns to yet another rock fall that we must, you guessed it, climb.
Eventually, we summit and get nearly no views for our trouble. Ahh, a hiker’s life. At least it’s downhill for a little while. As the day presses on, we sit and have a snack. This is where we see Stealth, Matt, Tinder, and Mongoose. I’ve never hiked south before, so we spend the day running into and chatting with all the other hikers who we typically only see at night or when taking a break. It’s nice to know just how many others are in the woods with us. People are never far away despite how deep into the woods we are.
Matt warns that the trail ahead has some rough spots that he says will be difficult to climb up since they were hard to climb down. We give a similar warning for the 800-foot talus field ahead. We then continue in our respective directions. We climb some rocks—nothing too awful rock-wise at first—but there was a very steep PUD with about 200+ feet of gain/loss. Then we actually do hit some bad rocks and assume it’s what Matt was referring to.
The water in the trail is still sad and mostly brown-tinged, but thankfully today we don’t have to drink it. Today is cooler and there are two water caches left by volunteers along the road; one has a bottle of ice in it. Flamethrower and I take turns hugging it. But eventually, we depart. Soon afterward, we run into Speedgoat and Lugnut who must have gotten a late start. We. Compassion to them about how mean the trail is being, but they are climbers so they are actually liking this. I’d like it more if we knew this was all here. Everybody seems to have been blindsided by these rocky sections – we thought we escaped them when we skipped PA. Anyway, they warn us about some rocky bits a few miles ahead and we tell them about the water caches and the ice, then depart.
The trail gets pretty nice for a while as we get near the waterfall. It wasn’t much of a waterfall because there wasn’t a lot of water. Anyway, we continue on to our pickup point and call for a ride back to the hotel. We get into our new room—yay, two beds—then walk to town. It’s only about a mile round trip. We go to a pizzeria and order an appetizer of broccoli with garlic oil and entrees that come with salad and bread. My entree is eggplant parm, and Flamethrower has lasagna. We go across the street and get slushies even though it’s cooled off a lot. It’s still good to have something cold to drink. We then head back to the hotel.
Flamethrower stops at an ice cream store on the way back and has a banana split, but I’m stuffed, so I head back to the room. I have leftovers, which I put in the fridge for a midnight snack.
Flamethrower arrives regretting her ice cream decision already. She reported it was already melting when they finally finished preparing it. And it melted before she finished. She took the first shower. I intend to take an Epsom salt bath. I do, but the tub is leaky so the water doesn’t stay and then the hotel runs out of hot water, so I soak in a lukewarm bath hoping for more hot water but give up after 30 min. Both of my feet are painful and cramping. I determined that my shoes are in too bad of shape and might be contributing to my foot pain. I’ll include some before and after new shoe photos in tomorrow’s update. Because I’m getting new shoes tomorrow!
I go to bed and enjoy the air conditioning. I love sleeping in cooler temps.
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