Appalachian Trail - Day 102 - Mt Greylock to Old Seth Warner Shelter Site

Day: 102

Date: Friday, 04 August 2023

Start:  Mt Greylock (AT Mile 1594.3)

Finish:  Old Seth Warner Shelter Site (AT Mile 1607.5)

Daily Kilometres:  23.8 (Ascent 2759'; Descent 4049')

GPX Track:  Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos

Total Kilometres:  2653.5

Weather:  Warm, humid and mostly overcast with rain in the late afternoon.

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Muffins 

  Lunch:  Fried chicken pieces, pasta salad

  Dinner:  Turkey sandwiches 

Aches:  Dave - the usual niggles and a sore rib; Julie - nothing reported.

Highlight:  None really 

Lowlight:  None really 

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

The breakfast muffins at Bascom Lodge were very tasty and we could have eaten more.  After saying goodbye to some other hikers we knew who were also staying at the Lodge, we set off hiking about 8:45am.  There had been a very loud thunderstorm and some rain around 4:00am, and more thunderstorms and rain were forecast for throughout the day but, at the time of leaving, it was just foggy, damp and cool, with no views.

It was a day of two parts.  The morning was spent on the seemingly never-ending descent from Mt Greylock to the Hoosic River on technical slippery trail through gnarly conifer forest with few views.  It was slow hiking with Dave also complaining that his injured rib was making it hard.  A minor highlight was passing the 1600 Mile mark.  We are now meeting quite a few southbound Appalachian Trail thru-hikers.  They generally start later to allow the northern rivers and streams that are swollen in the spring to subside.  It's always a boost to think they have about 1600 miles to go while we now have less than 600 miles to go.

The afternoon was spent climbing away from the Hoosic River on sometimes rocky and slippery trail with many boggy sections that had to be carefully worked around.  Other parts were relatively easy walking, and a minor highlight was crossing the Massachusetts-Vermont border.  We now just have the states of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine left.

In between the morning and afternoon we passed through the outer parts of the town of North Adams and detoured off the trail for half a mile to a large supermarket where we bought some lunch and enough supplies to last us through to midday tomorrow when we reach a road crossing and will detour off to the town of Bennington for a day off.  We ate our lunch sitting on the concrete walkway near the supermarket entrance looking like a couple of derelicts - muddy, smelly, hungry and not caring what people thought.

We had hoped to cover a few more miles before camping today, but the word was that tent sites would be hard to find, so we got water from a stream at 5:30pm and then walked a little further to the site of an old (removed) shelter where we knew there were some tent sites and camped at around 5:45pm.  To that point, none of the rain forecast for the day had arrived, but we could hear thunder rumbling for the last hour or two of the afternoon so were anxious to get the tent up before rain arrived.

Sure enough, just as we began erecting the tent it began to rain.  We quickly got it up and then got everything inside, including ourselves, and ate dinner there.  The rain didn't last for too long and it is forecast to clear soon.