Day: 084
Date: Monday, 17 July 2023
Start: Fairview Lake View (AT Mile 1313.6)
Finish: Mashipacong Shelter (AT Mile 1334.3)
Daily Kilometres: 33.2 (Ascent 2772', Descent 2874')
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 2241.0
Weather: Hot, humid, hazy and partly sunny.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts
Lunch: Ham & cheese rolls, other snacks and ice cream.
Dinner: Rehydrated meals.
Aches: Dave - some niggles and very tired; Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: The trail magic that we received when we passed a trailhead at lunchtime. Unfortunately, there had been a lot of hikers in front of us and the superbly stocked spread had been severely depleted. In particular, no cold drinks left. But we did find other things to eat and enjoyed the unexpected treat.
Lowlight: A toss-up between too many rocky tedious sections of trail and too many mosquitoes.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We were hiking soon after 6:30am on a misty humid morning. Our tent is pretty good, but the misty night has left things in the tent damp and the constant dripping from the leaves of the trees overhead had left our tent fly quite wet.
The morning's hiking, with a breakfast break atop Rattlesnake Mountain, mostly followed a ridge through a nice mix of deciduous and conifer forest. It undulated a lot, climbing up and down rocky outcrops and ledges, and was a mix of very good and very bad trail with everything in between. There were.no views initially because of the mist, but gradually that cleared and we had very hazy views for the rest of the day.
Our morning goal was to reach Culvers Gap and the tiny hamlet of Branchville, 12 miles from where we had camped, in time to have lunch at a pub there and perhaps pick up some insect repellent and a new gas canister at the hunting and fishing store there. With a couple of miles to go, a thru-hiker told us there was trail magic at the trailhead just past Branchville and that there was a huge spread of food but it would be closed by 2:00pm. That created a bit of a dilemma for us, as we didn't want to skip Branchville then find slim pickings at the trail magic. We decided to check out Branchville first, picked up our supplies, decided the food options there weren't great and bought some cold drinks to take with us just in case there were none at the Trail Magic.
This turned out to be a wise move as the Trail Angel had run out of drinks and a lot of other stuff as well (see above), but we found enough to eat and were very grateful.
After lunch we had to climb back up onto a ridge from Culvers Gap in very sweaty conditions and the rest of the afternoon was a bit of a slog, made worse by mosquitoes and some very rocky sections. There was a nice old pavilion at the top of Sunrise Mountain where we took our afternoon break and Julie did manage to stir up a large black snake she hadn't seen which reared up, but didn't strike. Subsequently she worked out it was non-venomous.
In New Jersey we are only supposed to camp in designated areas near shelters which is a pain in the butt, so we stopped Mashipacong Shelter around 6:30pm and found a spot to camp amongst a few other tents. We may not always observe this rule!
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