Day: 074
Date: Friday, 07 July 2023
Start: Clarks Valley Road (AT Mile 1167.3)
Finish: Green Point (AT Mile 1183.5) but staying at Pine Grove.
Daily Kilometres: 26.5
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 1990.4
Weather: Partly sunny, very warm and very humid, with some rain later in the day.
Accommodation: Motel
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts
Lunch: Trail mix
Dinner: Cheeseburgers and fries, ice-creams
Aches: Dave - a few niggles and very tired; Julie - nothing to report.
Highlight: None really.
Lowlight: Dave was struggling during the morning, though we covered the usual distance. He felt very tired with a low-grade headache and was finding the hiking hard work. Maybe it was the continuing heat and humidity and/or cumulative fatigue from the last six days hiking but, whatever the reason, we decided at our lunch break to find a way off the trail in the afternoon for an unscheduled day off tomorrow.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We woke at 5:30am and were hiking by 6:30am after a warm and humid night. More heat and humidity was forecast for the day with the chance of thunderstorms and heavy rain showers in the afternoon.
We started by crossing the valley floor and Clark Creek along which we could see a number of hikers camped, though apparently it is prohibited there. Then there was a steady climb up onto the long ridge of Stony Mountain. It wasn't that steep, but it was warm, despite the hour. The trail was rocky for long sections, as was the case all day, jmeaning you had to constantly watch your foot placement, but it wasn't bad enough to significantly slow us down.
It was the same story once we reached the crest of the ridge and followed it to the north-east, but Dave was finding it hard work. There were no views with the trail staying in the green tunnel - sometimes forest and other times rhododendron and mountain laurel groves. We did see quite a few thru-hikers, all moving faster than us, but probably walking shorter hours since we have seen some of them before.
Our breakfast break at 9:00am didn't do much to revive Dave's spirits and the next six miles seemed to pass very slowly for him. Originally, we had thought we would hike every day for the next week to reach the end of Pennsylvania without a day off but, with Dave feeling exhausted after six days of heat and humidity and a steady mileage, we rethought our plans at our lunch break and decided to see whether we could organise a day off tomorrow.
Without phone coverage, we couldn't explore our options for another hour or so until we reached the top of our next ridge, Second Mountain, having had to first cross an old beaver dam that had turned Stony Creek into a swamp replete with many croaking frogs.
From the ridge we booked a motel by a freeway interchange at Pine Grove which we could reach via PA Route 443, a couple of miles ahead. Uber seemed to be available, if necessary. However, when we reached the road we decided to try hitch-hiking for a while before trying Uber and within minutes a pickup truck which had already passed us returned and the driver offered us a lift to our motel. There was only room for one of us in the cab, so Julie rode in the tray with our packs. The driver, an electrician returning home from work, was a really nice guy who was very interested in our hike and peppered Dave with questions all the way to our motel. Hopefully we have encouraged him to hike some (or all) of the trail himself. He seemed keen.
It began to rain before we reached the motel but, fortunately for Julie in the tray, not too much. We reached the motel at 3:30pm and checked in for two nights. Later we bought dinner from the adjacent McDonalds and are looking forward to an early night.
No comments:
Post a Comment