Day: 091
Date: Monday, 24 July 2023
Start: Canopus Lake Beach (AT Mile 1430.7)
Finish: Telephone Pioneer Shelter (AT Mile 1452.4)
Daily Kilometres: 35.9 (Ascent 3776', Descent 3829')
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 2427.6
Weather: Very warm, humid and mostly sunny.
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts
Lunch: Calzones.
Dinner: Noodles.
Aches: Dave - a few niggles and left Achilles tendon a bit sore; Julie - tormented by mosquito bites.
Highlight: Food and drinks again! Early in the day, after a road crossing, we came across a cooler that contained ice cold drinks and Snickers Bars and we happily treated ourselves. Later in the day, at other road crossings, water had been left for hikers which was also very welcome. And for lunch, we detoured off the trail and roadwalked half a mile to a pizza shop where we enjoyed excellent calzones and free refills of cold Diet Coke.
Lowlight: Mosquitoes again! For much of the day they were tolerable, but as the afternoon wore on they became increasingly bad and setting up camp was a nightmare. We ended up eating in the tent to escape them.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We packed up and left our probably illegal campsite by 6:15am before any Park employees turned up to discover us.
The day's hiking involved continuing in a northeasterly direction across New York state, mostly following a series of low ridges through leaf-carpeted and boulder-strewn forest. Much of the land had once been farmed and we frequently came across old stone fences. It was also quite populated and we crossed a number of roads and highways and often passed near houses.
For lunch, we detoured off trail to a small industrial estate where there was a pizza shop and deli who, apart from thru-hikers, seemed to mostly serve employees of nearby businesses. They actually let thru-hikers camp behind their shop, but we still had miles to travel.
Along the way there were some views and the trail was once again a mix of nice walking and gnarly rocky short ascents and descents. It was warm and humid in the forest and hiking was sweaty work, made more unpleasant by the increasing number of mosquitoes during the afternoon. Most hikers we saw were wearing headnets and we'll have to get some at the next opportunity. Instead, we liberally and frequently coated ourselves in repellent, ignoring any cancer risk.
We reached our goal of Telephone Pioneer Shelter soon after 7:00pm, later than we had hoped, but the trail was often slow today. There were already a number of tents set up, taking the best spots, and we ended up with a sloping site on the other side of a small creek. The mosquitoes were diabolical, and setting up camp, washing and cooking were miserable.
Thirteen weeks/three months on the trail completed today.
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