WhiteBlaze Pages 2024
A Complete Appalachian Trail Guidebook.
AVAILABLE NOW. $4 for interactive PDF(smartphone version)
Read more here WhiteBlaze Pages Store

View RSS Feed

GoldenBear

You choose a title! (Part 2)

Rate this Entry
Continued from Part 1

Once again, miscalculation. Liberty Springs Trail is just as full of rocks as the other parts I had walked on, my legs were more stiff than before, and my mouth was getting quite dry after drinking the last of my water. Thus, I still couldn’t travel downhill at a rate of even one mile an hour – I still had well over a mile to go when I lost all lighting (no moon out this night).

Fortunately, I was smart enough to bring a flashlight on this “day” hike, and smarter still to bring a faraday-type light
http://www.shake-flashlights.com/how-they-work.html
Thus, I had no concern about my batteries running out. Note, however, that the statement that one need only shake it for a couple minutes for the capacitor to be charged is complete balderdash – even ten minutes of shaking still leaves the light with fairly minimal output. If you vigorously shake such a light while you have it turned on, each shake will give a much brighter output; but doing so will leave you pretty tired after only a minute or so.

ANYWAY, I was able to follow the trail in pitch dark in a bizarre way – following the rocks. A forest zone has all plants on the ground; a trail has all rocks. However, using only a flashlight meant I couldn’t see the overall “look” of the trail ahead; I could see little more than the rocks at my feet. Was one route down the rocks safer? Was there a tree anywhere to hold onto? Was the trail about to take a turn up ahead? I couldn’t tell; it was hard enough trying not to fall.

Which I did not succeed at. I was thirsty. I was off-balance. I didn’t have my pole. One hand had to keep my flashlight well protected from damage. My leg muscles were “rubbery” (hard to describe exactly what I mean – they just didn’t feel solid when I needed them for strength). I soon stopped counting how many times I fell; I estimate about six or so times, all in the last mile of the hike, when normally I might not fall once in a day. Each fall left me worried that I might hurt myself so badly that I couldn’t safely continue, but I worst I got was a gash and a bruise. I also kept a grip on my light in all of these falls, even though twice the light went out when I hit the ground. Blessedly, it came back on each time when I pressed its power switch.

One other thing I had going for me was the Guthook App
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...ude.atcomplete
on my Android. Because it relies on stored data and satellite location, I was easily able to ensure I was still on The Trail, even if it kept me informed that I was going downhill at a snail’s pace. Better to know that I was moving at about half a mile per hour than to falsely think I was making good progress.

Because I (1) had started this downhill hike short on water, (2) was taking far more time than I had planned, and (3) was hiking in a day with high dew points; my mouth kept feeling drier by the hour. Worse, I didn’t bring along any way to filter water – after all, this was only a day hike. When I crossed a stream (again, easy to do in broad daylight; not so easy with only a flashlight to see where to place my feet), I decided that the risk of giardia after a week of incubation
http://www.cdc.gov/dpdx/giardiasis/
(when I would be back home and could quickly see a doctor) was less than the present risk of dehydration clouding my balance and judgement – so I just drank right from the stream. I’ve never done that before, and I hope to never do so again. I could hear that the stream was flowing rapidly down over rocks, so I HOPED that the (somewhat) cleansing quality of bubbling water would give me enough protection to get through this trip. If you have to know, it’s now almost two weeks after this and I’ve had no symptoms of intestinal distress.

Signs are always something that a trail hiker loves to see; and, when I got to the sign telling me that I was a mere .6 of a mile from the bike path, I thought I’d FINALLY made it. After all, I kept telling myself, don’t trails ALWAYS get pretty easy in the last half mile or so? What I hadn’t counted on was (1) the Liberty Springs Trail remains hard to walk on the entire length to the bike path and (2) at some point I lost the trail. Although I suspect I somehow missed where the trail makes a turn “left” (going downhill), I can’t be certain. I thought I was fine – I was still scrambling over a bunch of rocks – but Guthook told me otherwise. Still, I was going closer to the interstate (the auto noise was obvious), which meant that I had to be getting closer to the bike path. Finally, I was at a point where the “trail” I was following seemed to disappear. However, I was so close to the interstate that I could clearly see the lights of cars going left to right, and I could tell that I was at the same elevation as these cars. At that point I decided to just walk towards the interstate until I started walking on pavement. Despite getting my boots wet while crossing a stream (I wasn’t going to bother even TRYING to look for a crossing point), I found asphalt within a few minutes. Which meant I only had to walk a mile or so north to the parking lot.

Some may wonder if I ever considered phoning for help. The answer is that I DID consider it, but (each time) I quickly decided that I was hardly in an emergency situation. Anyone coming to “rescue” me would simply find me on the trail, and then help me walk down with a bright flashlight. I wasn’t about to distract rangers from real emergencies, or cause the expenditure of funds (theirs OR mine) because of stupidity. I kept telling myself, “You got yourself into this mess, you’re going to have to get yourself out of it.”

Walking on an asphalt trail is no problem, it just takes time. I soon got back to the parking lot, thought I might have trouble finding my rental car in the dark (I didn’t even know the state of the license plate), quickly realized that the only car in the lot HAD to be mine, and started driving to the hostel I had reserved and pre-paid for. I also admired the incredibly clear night sky, one that allowed me to get a glimpse of the Milky Way – I haven’t gotten a good look at that wonder in decades.
http://petapixel.com/2016/06/17/80-a...ght-pollution/

I got to the hostel about midnight, not sure what I would do if the doors were locked and there was no way to contact anyone this late. My “Plan Z” was to just sleep in the car until dawn, as it was pretty plain that Day Two was going to be a zero day. I also phoned Shuttle to let her know that I was okay (I didn’t share ALL the details of my mis-adventures), with an admission that I wasn’t sure what would happen at the hostel.

As noted in my review of the Notch Hostel
http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/show...t=#post2085398
the managers VERY kindly left a note for me on where I would be staying for my three nights. I also found the doors unlocked, which they admit they sometimes do. My room was on the third floor, so I walked up there as quietly as I could. A woman in a different bunk room opened her door to see a complete stranger (and a shabby-looking one, I’m sure) coming up the stairs late at night – all I could say was the truth: “I just arrived.” I had no trouble finding my room, went in to see a room-mate STILL USING HIS SMART PHONE, and was blessed to find an un-used bed at ground level. Being covered in grime, my legs aching from my ordeal, and sharing a room with a snorer; all left me wondering how well I would sleep. Exhaustion caused me to have little trouble sleeping QUITE soundly.

Updated 08-16-2016 at 14:24 by GoldenBear

Tags: None Add / Edit Tags
Categories
Uncategorized

Comments