Boiling Springs, PA

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June 26 ~ Boiling Springs, PA (19.4 miles slacked)

Cumulative Miles this trip: 117.1

Cumulative AT Miles: 138.1

It was a miserable hike for much of today. I started out at 6am, and the first three hours were pretty good. Then it got hot. The bugs and the heat were relentless, as was my knee pain. I hiked from 6am to 3:30pm with nothing more than two 10 minute breaks. I thought I was going to fall over when I got to the ATC Headquarters. I know I drank plenty of water (I went through 2 liters of Gatorade and 4 liters of water), but the heat really got to me.

There were many, many blazes on rocks today. I'm glad for the blazes because getting lost sucks, but it really annoys me that they can't find any where else to paint a blaze. In short, blazes on rocks are just a confirmation of nasty terrain involving big rocks and scrubby trees, if any trees at all. I know this will continue throughout Pennsylvania.

Tino picked me up, and we drove to Lancaster and wound up in York. Right before that, Squeak (who I'd met at Tom's Run) showed up at the ATC office with a story for me, Danger, Dr. Raggamuffin and Elroy (??). It seems that Baltimore Jack had found a dead body at The Doyle in Duncannon. Baltimore Jack is quite a character, and The Doyle is a legend among hikers (it's a real dump, but you can get a single room for $18. They used to have a bar and restaurant, but they've now lost both of those licenses). One of the long-term boarders at the Doyle had died in his room and B.Jack was assigned a room on that floor. He asked "does it always smell like this? I don't recall it smelling like this last year." Then, he asked if there was anyone on this floor that they "hadn't seen for a while." As it turns out, there was, and they opened the room, and you can imagine the rest if you've read any Stephen King books.

No one was surprised that there was a body at the Doyle. No one is surprised that Baltimore Jack is the one who found it. Oh, and that was a total shock to me -- Tino mentioned something about King and of course I hadn't heard a thing about him being hit by a car. It sounds like a truly random thing that happened to him.

June 27 ~ York, PA (0 miles hiked)

OK, I'm resolved now. I've made the mistake of trying to keep up with the thruhikers around me -- the psychology of being passed up by everyone was a strong pull to push myself beyond my ability. I need to split the hiking up better. I tend to push hard one day, hiking 16-20 miles, and then hike about 20 less that number on the next. Effectively, I'm doing an extra climb and descent on those days instead of spreading them out better, and the long days might be causing my knee distress. There are places where I must do 14-16 miles between camping spots, but no where near as many as I've done. For instance, I never should have left Rocky Mtn. Shelter on June 22. I also should have stayed at Hemlock Hill Shelter on June 20 instead of pushing on to Devil's Racecourse. I was really afraid of it because of the proximity of the road and the guys somewhere behind me that had set off my radar. As it turns out, the Maryland Ranger lives a couple hundred feet from it, so I would have been fine there.

I must take a few days off if I want to keep my own knees. Also, I have more than a dozen blisters on my feet. I know from taking a zero day at Caledonia State Park that one zero day is not going to fix my knees (they are worse than before Caledonia) or my feet (also worse). In addition to all that, I was going to come home for a few days over the 4th because most thruhikers do. The lack of thruhikers on the trail over that holiday means that there won't be many on the trail, which means that the trail is then considerably less safe for me on my own. Thus, I'm going home until after the Independence Day holiday. I will probably return to the trail at Port Clinton after the holiday.

This means that I'm skipping some of Pennsylvania. This is less of a deal for me since I'm a still considered section hiker, no matter whether I do that section of PA now or later. If I had started at Springer, I'd be much less inclined to skip ahead. I'll make up my mind about this during the week, but the fact that this section isn't far from home makes it more likely that I'll skip it for now. If I finish before October 1, I can even do it this year when it's not so damn hot.

Of course, this means that I'll backslide on the trail conditioning that I've gotten, which is bad, but I've learned what not to do now.