[Journal entry for May 9-14, 2018; Appalachian Trail in Connecticut]

May 9, 2018. Dallas dropped me off at Bulls Bridge, on the Housatonic River east of Wingdale New York. We took a wrong turn onto Schaghticoke Road as we approached and drove along the west shore of the River for a mile or so. The river was bright blue on this sunny day. We stopped to view a high and slender waterfall coming off of a high cliff next to the road. We parked when we finally found the bridge, which is covered, and spent a few minutes standing on it, peering out of one of it windows, admiring the river. The bridge is a few hundred feet downstream of a dam, which diverts the water into a power house. Its outflow makes a substantial waterfall and the river by the bridge is full of cataracts.

I then set off on the Appalachian Trail (AT, blazed in white), picking it up where I had left it in 2009, at the Schaghticoke Road crossing. After passing a wetland, the trail ascends Schaghticoke Mountain. I climbed slowly, for the sun was shining and the air was hot. The rock of the mountain is meta-plutonic, with deformed white feldspar crystals, about the size and shapes of almonds, set in a darker matrix. Lots of violets were blooming trailside. The view from the ledge near the summit looks south over the River and neighboring rolling hills. The canopy is the lime green of spring leaves and the sky and water are bright blue. I hike northward, along the ridge, through hardwoods with blueberry beneath. After a long while, I came to a sign marking the Schaghticoke Mountain Campsite. A nearby stream was mossy and fully of cataracts. Side trails led, I suppose, to campsites, but I didn’t investigate. I continued on, finding several good views of the hills east of the River (and a few glimpses of the River, too). The hills are mostly wooded, with farms along the valley and a few hilltop mansions. After two hours of so, and a very long downgrade, I came to Thayer Brook. It is about twenty feet wide and flows very strongly. Its water was sparkling in the afternoon sun. I crossed it by stepping from stone to stone. The AT then ascends a low hill called Mt Algo. On its north side is another brook, smaller than Thayer. A side trail )blazed in blue) leads to Algo Shelter, which is built on the north bank. A tall through-hiker with a red beard, a Marine Corp jacket and two enormous black dogs was camping there. I introduced myself, petted the dogs, and chatted with him a bit. He said that he had walked the AT in its entirety many times, and other trials like Pacific Crest and John Muir, and I believed him, for he seemed very fit and was very knowledgeable about several of the placed I knew well. he said one of his dogs was recovering from an injury that it sustained trying to jump across a stream, and this was slowing him down. I set up by Sierra Design Zolo tent in a clearing near the shelter, for I expected Black Flies and Mosquitoes would visit during the night. I purified four liters of water and then cooked macaroni and cheese with salami, along with hot tea. Afterward, I tidied up, put my food and dishes in the bear box, and sat at one of the picnic table, writing in this journal. I hike seven miles today in about six hours. I hope that tomorrow, with more time, I can go further.

May 10, 2018. The night sky was full of bright stars. I arose at about 7AM and made myself grits and tea. I then set off, crossing Route 341 and then climbing steeply up Skiff Mountain. I passed many wildflowers, including Red Trillium. The map shows a Glacial Rock, but I didn’t notice it. These highlands offer a few good views of the River, but most of the trail is beneath the canopy. I spotted butterflies: small and lavender; a medium and orange; and large and yellow. I also came upon an American Toad, two Garder Snakes, Chipmunks and Grey Squirrels. I crossed Chaggam Brook and Skiff Mountain Road and soon after began the steep climb to Caleb’s Peak. The view southward from its summit is spectacular, with the River winding by rolling hills. Most of the hills are forested with lime green hardwoods, but one hill has a stand of White Pine at its crown. The AT then follows the eastern edge of the ridge, which very steeply drops off to the river. I stopped at St. John’s Ledges for a rest. The descent off the ridge is precipitous. The AT winds down a gulley between large angular blocks of gneiss, beside an overhanging cliff. I found it to be daunting and difficult, for climbing down drops of two to three feet was because my heavy backpack was awkward. This part of the trail is a steep and treacherous as any of the Harriman Park gulley traverses and twice as long. A bit of rain began to fall when I was halfway down, so I stopped under the overhanging cliff and donned my rainsuit, only to stop again a few minutes later when then rain had ceased to take it off. I finally reached River Road.

The first mile or so of this gravel road has car traffic, but beyond a terminal parking lot it is gated and very pleasant, with good views of the River. I stopped at the Stewart Hollow Brook Shelter for lunch, and also to refill my water bottles from the stream. I then pushed on, hoping to make time on the very level and easily-traversed road. After passing some pastures with good views of the hills to the west, and after crossing Dawn Hill Road, I began my ascent of Silver Hill. After a hairpin turn by a ledge, I came to Silver Hill Campsite. It’s built on a flat grassy terrace, open to the east, but with the view mostly obscured by trees. It has a wooden pavilion, benches and a swinging chair – and most importantly and old-style cast iron cranked pump. I was relieved to bring up water on the twentieth crank, for I was about out. I pumped four liters of water, purified them, and made dinner of macaroni and cheese. After dinner, I sat at a picnic table, looking at the map and writing. I think I shall set my tent under the pavilion tonight, because the sky looks like rain. I’m the only one here, so I won’t be disturbing anyone. I hiked 10.5 miles today, bringing my total to 17.5.

May 11, 2018. Good thing I put the tent under the pavilion, for a thunderstorm hit around sunset. I hear a Barred Own during the night say Who Cooks for You! I arose to a sunny day with Chipmunks scampering about an old fallen log nearby my tent. I had breakfast of grits and tea, packed up, and headed north. I stopped briefly at an overlook on Silver Hill before heading steeply downhill to Route 4. I was taken off guard when I found that I had to ford Guinea Brook. Its waters, flowing amid rocks at the bottom of a wide ravine, looked daunting. I scouted around until I found a spot where I could cross most of brook by stepping from rock to rock, except for a six-foot wide section with a fast-flowing current. I ten dragged over two four-inch thick tree trunks that I found amid the rocks, and used them to bridge the gap. The water came up over them a bit, but using a branch as a pole, I was able to walk across them while only slightly dampening my feet. Still, the whole business took much more time than I planned; maybe I should have just forded the brook at its widest and shallowest place.

I stopped at the overlook on Pine Knob, which has a nice view. I crossed another major brook, this one with a small waterfall, but fortunately the trail crew has arranged large stones in a line across it, making the crossing easy. The AT then winds through the woods for a couple of miles. Beautiful Red Trillium was blooming on a hillside, beside a substantial stone staircase. I passed a stream with a beaver dam just before I crossed West Cornwall Road. I then began an ascent that took me to another south-facing glacially-plucked cliff of gneiss, with big angular stones blocks scattered around its base. The trail passed through a crack between cliff and block making a Lemon Squeezer. I then crossed a couple of miles of woods before reaching Sharon Mountain Road. The ascent of Mt Easter, on the other side, was relatively easy. The lithology switched from grey gneiss to pink quartzite. I then kept an eye out for a brook crossing the trail, for the Sharon Mountain Campsite is just beyond it. Actually, the right brook was the second, but I judged to first to small (and hence to seasonal) to have been chosen to supply a campsite. I stopped at the second brook and purified water and then took a side trail (blazed in blue) westward to the campsite. It is very minimalist and badly needs some picnic tables and chairs - or at least tree trunk sections to facilitate cooking. The best I could find were a couple of low, irregularly shaped quartzite blocks. I cooked macaroni and cheese with salami, made tea, and made myself as comfortable as possible. The map showed a viewpoint but I could not find it. Perhaps it has become completely overgrown. The campground lacks a bear box, so I suspended my bag of food on a line stretched between two trees. I set up my tent at the tent site closest to the brook but found that the plastic window had fallen out, on account of the glue having flaked away. I repaired it the best I could with duct tape and the relaxed in the tent, looking at the map and writing in my journal. I hiked 9.2 miles today, bringing my total to 26.7.

May 12, 2018. I woke up to intermittent light rain. My tent window repair was successful in keeping the interior dry. I made breakfast of grits and tea in a lull in the rain and ate them hurriedly, before the rain began again. Packing was harder than usual, for there was no good place to lay things out in proper order. I had to repack several times to get things just right. A set off and headed to Hang Glider View, a mile or so away. The view includes a race track. Cars were zipping about, their engines making quite a racket and their wheels squealing. I pity the folk who live on the nearby farms, and especially the nicely-decorated red one that was nearest. Fortunately for me, the rain intensified and the race track shut down. The next section was downhill and mostly at a manageable grade, until I reached Route 7. The AT then looped around a newly plowed field with a good view of a neighboring hill. After crossing the River via the Route 7 highway bridge, the AT followed train tracks and then the east bank of the River. Here the water was flowing quickly but without major rapids. I then passed a hydroelectric plant, crossed the River again via the bridge at Fall River Road, and ascended to a vantage where I could see Great Falls. The falls are perhaps fifty feet high, but a dams diverts most of the water into a channel that heads to the hydroelectric plant, so that I would call them picturesque but not especially impressive. The rock of the falls is beige schist, interbedded with white marble, all worn smooth by the flowing water.

I then began a long and gentle ascent of Prospect Mountain. The viewpoint at the top was fogged in. Though I couldn’t see much, I could hear cows mooing nearby, so I supposed that the clearing included pastureland. I passed a few Red Eft newts, enjoying the misty weather on rock ledges. I crossed several small brooks, each flowing in a rather deep and steep sided gulley. I finally reached the side trail (blazed in blue) to Limestone Spring Shelter. At half a mile, it is one of the longer side trails. I found it pretty daunting at this end of a very long day, for it winds down a steep and treacherous gulley, with a little stream on one side of the trail and a overhanging rock wall on the other. The shelter (like all the others, a three sided wooden lean-to) is on the side of a wide and level hollow beneath the cliff. The spring is a little ways behind the shelter, and flows from a hole at the base of a marble (or meta-limestone) cliff. Tent platforms are in the center of the hollow, downhill of the shelter.

A group of hikers arrived soon after I did. They were an organized group of college-aged people and set up a big tarp tent by the tent platforms. Other than to wave hello, I did not interact with them. I made dinner of couscous with sautéed onions and salami, together with tea. I set up may tent inside the shelter and rested in it, for I was feeling very chilled. Rain began to fall and made quite a racket on the corrugated metal roof of the shelter. Wearing a headlight, I looked at the map and wrote in my journal. I hiked 10 miles along the AT today, bringing my total up to 36.6 (plus a half mile on the side trail.

May 13, 2018. Today is the twentieth anniversary of Bryndis Brandsdottir’s and my Vatnajokull (Iceland) accident. I spent a while reflecting on the passage of time and celebrating our survival.

Another hiker showed up in the evening, a woman hiking from New York to Massachusetts and is a nurse from Germany on vacation. She set up at the other end of the shelter. The racket of the rain lasted for hours, but after it stopped I could hear the Who Cooks For You! of a Barred Owl. The morning was overcast but dry. I ate my left-over couscous (for I had made too much last night) and packed up, chatting a bit with the nurse, who was getting ready, too. The steep path by the stream was not so daunting today, both because I was more rested and because going uphill is usually easier than downhill. The Rand’s View overlook is terrific, looking out across pastures to distant hills that were shrouded in mist.

The AT descends down to Route 44, steeply in places. It crosses a pasture – this one with blooming fruit trees – and Moore’s Brook via a highway bridge and then winds through a suburban neighborhood with a retirement village and cemetery. After crossing Route 41, the AT ascends up onto Lion’s Head. The rock here is a garnet-staurolite schist. Some of the staurolite crystals are about an inch long. The summit is a rocky little knob with wide ledges, some Pitch Pine and blooming Black Cherry and great views to both the south and north. The descent is rocky, steep and tough. The trail then flattens and crosses Ball Brook and Brassie Brook. The latter is the more interesting, as the water flows among many large rocks without a well-defines channel. While this stretch has two campsites and a shelter, I did not stop and visit them, but rather pushed on. I huffed up Bear Mountain, which like Lion’s Head has many rocky ledges of schist. The bushy vegetation and the white flowering trees that cover the crown of this hill are strikingly beautiful. The view to the west includes Mt Frissel (which I climbed back in 2009) is excellent, too. The view east from the huge summit cairn (perhaps better described as a tower) and that includes Washining Lake is very nice, too. The way down is very tough, at least for someone with legs as tired as mine. I clambered down many steeply-sloping ledges, some with drops of six feet or more. However, I did encounter some surfaces with beautifully-preserved glacial striae. I finally came to the Paradise Lane Trail junction, which (in a way) was my goal, for it approximately marks the Connecticut-Massachusetts line. But of course I has to push past it by another half mile to the Sages Ravine Campsite, where I spent the night.

The campground is very spread out along a loop of a side trail (blazed in blue), on the north side of Sages Brook, and consists of about eight separate campsites, most of which have a tent platform. I examined them all and chose the one closest to the bear box. At least one, and perhaps two, groups of college-age hikers were also in residence, having set up large tarp tents in one of the larger sites. I spoke to a young man from one who said that his was a Yale University Freshman Orientation. Their group was doing a four-day hike, covering about five miles per day. I set up camp, purified water from a little spring near my site (though I thought that the water contained rather too much algae) and made dinner of couscous, sautéed onions and salami, and tea. I then walked down to Sages Brook and purified more water. I have managed so far to cook nine meals with one 450 gm canister of isobutene, and still have enough for one or two more.

For safety reasons, I have sent brief emails to Dallas three time per day during this trip, using my Samsung Galaxy 8 smartphone, and keeping turned off at other times. Each use consumes five percent of its power and it was now down to its last twenty percent. I had brought two different power packs to recharge it but discovered that neither had enough power when I went to use them. Bummer! However, I managed to retrofit one of them with four AA batteries and get the phone back up to fifty-percent.

I relaxed in my tent and wrote in my journal. I hiked 11 miles of the AT today, for a total of 47.6, plus a mile to and from Limestone Spring Shelter.

May 14, 2018. I awoke early to grey skies and mist. I prepared and ate my breakfast of grits and salami with tea, packed up, and headed off. I backtracked south on the AT to the Paradise Lane Trail intersection, and then took that trail (blazed in blue). I encountered Painted Trillium. I passed a little pond and later, a group campsite. I then joined the Undermountain Trail (really more of a woods road, also blazed in blue) and took it down off the mountain to its trailhead on Route 41. This marked the end of the last trail; the remaining eight miles of my hike were along country roads.

I took Beaver Dam Road past the dam on Fisher Pond. It has a beautiful setting, with a superb view of bear Mountain, behind. I joined Taconic Road and took it to Route 44. I was hoping to come to a convenience store from which I could purchase soda, but passed only a farm with cows and a couple of schools. The sky was clearing as I crossed the River view the Route 44 highway bridge. After the crossing, the road parallels the river all the way into the town of North Canaan, Connecticut. I came to a Subway Restaurant just before reaching the center of town, but passed it up in favor of Roma Pizzeria (81 Main Street). I had a leisurely and delicious lunch of a Roma Italiano pie, washed down with Diet Coke. I then walked across the street to the bus stop, which is in front of Collin’s Diner. I sat on a bench, enjoying the sun (which was now bright and hot) and waiting for the Peter Pan bus to arrive.

I took the bus to Danbury Connecticut, where Dallas picked me up. Overall I hiked the 47.6 miles of the Connecticut section of the AT, 1 mile to and from Limestone Spring Shelter, 3.7 miles to the Undermountain Trailhead and 8 miles to Canaan, for a total of 60.3 miles.

My gear:

Low Alpine Australis 80 backpack

Sierra Design Zolo-1 Tent

Mountain Hardware Thermic Micro Sleeping Bag

TheNorthFace Denali fleece jacket

Z-Rest foam pad

Marmot Precip rainsuit

Garmont Negevi Hiking Shoes

Ourdoor Research gaiters

Smartwool hikers socks (3 pr)

TheNorthFace hiking pants (2 pr)

TheNorthFace longsleve hiking shirt

TheNorthFace shortsleve hiking shirt

Eddie Bauer fleece shirt

Fastdry underwear (2 pr)

TheNorthFace light gloves

wool hat

balaclava

wide brim hat

waterproof sack

1L titanium pot with lid

1L titanium kettle

titanium spork

plastic serving spoon

MSR PocketRocket Stove

450 gm Isobutate fuel canister (2)

fire starter

1L Nalgene water bottle

1.5L Nalgene water bottle

2L soda bottle

MSR water purifier

toothbrush

Notebook and pencil

Nikon Coolpix B500 Camera

Samsung Galaxy 8 smartphone

magnetic compass and hiking map

jackknife

Leaterman tool

hiker’s headlamp

magnifying glass

Staples USB powerpack (didn’t work)

Goal Zero powerpack (didn’t work)

25 ft paracord

Duct tape

waterproof bag

AA batteries (8)

8-oz salami (6)

1-lb couscous

1-lb grits

family-size packages Kraft macaroni and cheese (4)

salt and pepper

onions (3)

8-oz jar cooking oil

2-oz jar butter

tea bags (20)

waterproof bag