Trouble on the Trail

Palmerton, Pennsylvania, 1250 miles. Monday, August 1, 2011

My granddaddy's granddaddy walked from the deep South to Pennsylvania nearly 150 ago wearing a wool uniform and carrying a rifle, so my doing the 1250 miles from Georgia in shorts and a backpack doesn’t seem that big a deal.

His adventure did not end well. A Rebel soldier, he was wounded at Gettysburg and joined a 14-mile-long trail of wounded warriors who limped back South after three days of hell. I am not taking enemy fire, but my last week in Pennsylvania had me wondering if I might be going home in a box.

Late Sunday, I was lost near the summit of a 900-foot boulder field after scrambling and laboring up a very steep and challenging mile of trail to flat walking and a campsite six miles beyond. I had turned back from an impossible climb and was cautiously inching my way along a steep descent when I stumbled slightly, wobbled, spun and fell back, banging my head and slamming my left foot against a rock. Dazed and staggered, I wondered how I was going to get to the bottom without breaking an ankle, a leg or my neck.

All this high drama came just four days after I had nearly stepped onto a timber rattler and two days after I happily but cautiously hiked along a flatter boulder field, my feet never touching soil – just rocks – for a few hundred yards during a thunderstorm and drenching rain. Once confident that the Lord Jesus wasn’t going to call me home just yet, now I was not so sure.

I slipped off my pack and slid over to a broad flat rock to catch my breath. The sky was a spectacular blue and a hawk (perhaps an eagle) floated above while a small airplane flew by on approach to a tiny air strip below. All I could see was the boulder field beneath me and I could not enjoy the view because I was shaken, and, for the first time since leaving Georgia, I was scared.

On my own, I was in a mess. It was just past 4 p.m. and about 100 degrees when I walked out of Palmerton with a chocolate milkshake and without a worry about the hike ahead. I was the last hiker out of town and was sure nobody was behind me. Strider had called to tell me that the climb included scaling a few boulders and some hand-over-hand rock climbing but that the path was sometimes confusing.

I sat and watched the valley as my breathing calmed. I ate a Snickers bar, and drank a half liter of water while deciding what would come next. I was bloodied, but OK and knew that I would be able to get to the bottom. I needed to talk to someone because sharing my plight would take some of the terror out of it and I knew that talking through my options would help.

Strider could offer nothing but sympathy, but said he knew I’d be fine and that he would pray for me. I had talked to Kathy in Columbia before I left Palmerton and things were still rosy, and she now offered the reality check and reassurance that I needed to refocus and know I was going to be fine.

I picked my way cautiously down, lowering myself gently a step at a time, hoping the rock that I trusted would not shift under my weight, tip or slide and praying the tread of my Trailrunners would hold. I never saw another white blaze as I made my own path while brambles clawed at my legs and my ankles sometimes yelped.

The trail I found was not the Appalachian Trail, but it led me to a parking lot where two hikers were locking their car before heading up the hill.

Samson, a 2008 thru-hiker, said the section was the most difficult part of the trail in Pennsylvania and that he had gotten lost on that climb when he had come through. He offered to lead me to the top, but it was well past 5 o’clock and I’d had enough adventure for one day. I wanted a hot shower and a glass of Jack Daniel’s and accepted his kind offer of a ride back into town.

I had that one drink and shared my tale with Musher, a fellow northbounder who had watched me limp back into town and waited while I washed away the blood and pulled myself together. I did not eat dinner and sleep was difficult as I thought through the past week and scribbled notes in my journal, eager to get to the library and a computer on Monday morning.

I will strap on my pack and face that same climb early Tuesday, humbled and a bit battered, but structurally sound and eager to get going. I will climb out of Lehigh Gap without getting lost this time and find my way to the top and beyond.

By Wednesday I will be in New Jersey, but Pennsylvania will stay with me. This is why:

-- Gettysburg. Chilling. I took a Zero Day to get off the trail and take my mind away from hiking. This was a perfect choice. I took the tours, walked the cemetery and then brought the book Killer Angels along to learn what happened during the three days that left 50,000 killed, wounded or missing. I left the battlefield and caught a ride to the Mason-Dixon Line and crossed from Maryland into Pennsylvania like my granddaddy’s granddaddy before me.

-- The Half Gallon Challenge. A sign marks the 1090.5 mark, exactly halfway from Springer to Katahdin, and a Trail Challenge waited at a country store at Pine Grove Furnace State Park three miles away. I pulled in at the end of a steamy 17-mile hike eager to try and eat a half gallon of ice cream. The choices were grim – Peanut Butter Twist (gag), Banana Split (ack), or Cherries Jubilee (barf). Vanilla was my only option.

A half-dozen hikers looked on and cheered as Green Light and Joontsy ate. Green Light was groaning while he dug out another spoonful, and Joontsy’s face was bloated and an odd color and he looked close to being ill. Not deterred by seeing what pain lay ahead, I settled in and finished off a box of vanilla in 48 minutes while both of those youngsters had taken more than an hour.

My reward for ingesting more than 2400 calories at one sitting? A small wooden ice cream spoon and a caution to not get the spoon wet or the ink-stamped “Half Gallon Challenge” will run.

And no, I did not hurl. An hour later, I was ready for a cheeseburger and fries, but I lost my craving for ice cream and didn’t have more ice cream for nearly 48 hours.

-- Cumberland Valley and the Heat. Camping is prohibited in the 14 miles through the valley, and we made that day-long trip in 100-plus heat and humidity. It was Pennsylvania at its loveliest with smooth trails and mostly-flat walking through cornfields and forests and a mid-afternoon swim in Conodoguinet Creek (aka Whatyacallit Creek) four miles from camp to wash away the sweat. Add in swims in a lake near a campground and at a public pool in Boiling Springs and you have refreshed and happy hikers.

-- The Rattlesnake. I credit tai chi training with giving me patience and confidence as I sometimes teeter on the rocks of Pennsylvania and I believe it saved me from stepping into a life-challenging encounter with a timber rattler. That stutter-step move in the 32 sword form is called “wild horse crosses a mountain stream.” Having gotten past the snake, I now call it “grasshopper dances over rattlesnake’s back.”

-- Trail Angels. I stood in the rain beside the road for barely two minutes before Brad stopped and gave me a ride the two miles into Lickdale, PA. My shopping finished as the rain was ending and I was putting on my pack when Jeff came up and asked me if I needed a ride back to the trailhead. We stopped at Wendy’s on the way out of town. A Pentecostal pastor I met on the trail happily drove me all the way into Gettysburg.

-- Rockhound. A 43-year-old former Army MP, Rockhound had a heart attack in Troutdale, VA on April 2, the day I left Springer, and then had a double bypass operation and took three months off before getting back on the trail.

Most hikers haven’t had their walk disrupted by major surgery, but many of us have walked through crises of confidence, motivation, interest and will after making it halfway to Katahdin but knowing that we had more than a thousand miles to go.

Strider and I have hiked together since Franklin, NC more than 1100 miles ago, but he had gone to Gettysburg and was close to calling it quits. After a long talk with his mother and himself, he decided to stay in the woods and is happily hiking again, determined to get to Katahdin.

Francois Dillinger was distraught and yelling at himself when I arrived at the Ensign Cowell Shelter in Maryland and his buddy Sherpa was not doing much better.

“I have to finish this,” Dillinger said, “I have never finished anything that I started, and I have to finish this.” He had taken a series of zero days and was having problems getting re-engaged, although it seems like he’s now back on track.

Everyone has been running numbers – how many miles a day will it take to get me where I need to be? Will I make it? Am I behind schedule? Where are my friends?”

Our population has dwindled since we all left Georgia so many weeks ago. Those who keep track say that last year 1460 hikers left Springer for Katahdin, 747 of them made it to Harpers Ferry, and 349 made it all the way to the northern end of the 2,180 mile trail.

The success rate of a straight through thru-hike – about 10-15 percent.

It’s August now, and we start getting the same questions from others on the trail and in town as we move steadily north. Aren’t you running late? Are you going to make it to Maine? Wow, you still have a long way to go!

Undeterred, each moves on, knowing that half of us might leave the trail before reaching the end.
The mental part is the hardest because we often have to push our bodies through pain and injury, and because some days we would just rather not hike but go hiking anyway.

Sitting in the Palmerton, PA library, I take stock of my battered body as I am poised (odd word) to start my fifth month in the woods and on the Appalachian Trail.
Despite Sunday’s banging, my feet seem fine even though I switched from boots to Trailrunners in Harpers Ferry and I had been nursing a foot injury since the Shenandoah National Forest almost 300 miles back.

I took a chunk out of my right little toe when I was barefoot and kicked a rock while putting the rain cover on my tent before a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. Bandages helped, but the constant pressure of my shoes and the pounding of rocks and roots have made it hard to heal.

As July becomes August, I move ahead, confident in my ability to go the distance and stick with the adventure of a lifetime.

I move ahead with the support and caring of folks at home, somehow inspiring them as Rockhound and many others out here (and at home) continue to inspire me and cheer me on.

Tomorrow I head back up the mountain that kicked my ass so badly the day before yesterday. And tomorrow I will get it done. I will miss Pennsylvania (or not) but look very much forward to what comes next.

Happy Trails.

On to New Jersey and New York and Connecticut and Massachusetts and Vermont and New Hampshire.

On to Maine.

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