On the AT in October Mountain State Forest -- with my new Samsung Galaxy S7 and the Guthook App

So I downloaded the Guthook App onto my Galaxy S7 and decided to see how it performed in the woods. Mind you, this is my first smartphone and there's a steep learning curve that I'm trying to climb, along with the hills. :-)

I started where the AT crosses County Road and headed north to the October Mountain Shelter. On the way out, I turned on the Guthook app and saw only a base topo map with a little blue dot and a small triangle that seemed to point what direction I was heading. Alas, there was no AT trail showing at all. Confused? You bet I was, not with where I was on the trail--this is almost in my backyard, so I know the trail well. However, the app wasn't giving me much help.

When I got to the shelter, I sat down and tried again. Then I clicked on the Elevation tab, and I was seeing the Approach Trail. LOL  Really, that's what is shown when you get the free demo app. 

After a bit of playing around, I finally got a screen asking if I wanted to download the offline maps. Well, or course I did. Turned on the Verizon connection and downloaded them within a minute, and, voila!, there was the trail, the shelter I was sitting in, etc. 

So finally something was going right. 

And here's are a video for your amusement--showing that it's already green in Massachusetts:

And there's plenty of food for all, too:

Training on the AT -- heading south from Jerusalem Road in Tyringham, Massachusetts

It won't be long before the NOBO's get to Massachusetts and one of my favorite sections lies between Jerusalem Road and Beartown State Forest. Much of the woods are old-growth trees, the terrain varies from very steep to gently rolling and there is a remarkable quietness to the woods, thanks to the lack of paved roads and any buildings in the area.

The trail was remarkably clean, save for a couple of recent blowdowns. Certainly the blazes have been repainted, a new plank bridge has been installed over a stream, and one particular wet section near a beaver pond will now be a much drier traverse due to a string of planks nailed to big logs. Kudos to the Berkshire chapter of the AMC!

Today's hike with a modest amount of running.

Progress: a few steps at a time, running!

Went for a hike in Pittsfield State Forest yesterday on a couple of nice bike trails--the Turner Trail and the Honolulu Trial. The Turner which I took first is a twisty route with a good steady climb for two miles. When I used to run it, I could make it up without stopping. Sadly, I'm not in that kind of shape now, but I did decide that I should try to run any incline that wasn't too steep, as well as the flats. 

I felt fine on the short sections while running, although a bit clumsy. Once on top of Honwee Mountain, the Honolulu Trail is mostly downhill. However, since it is a bike trail, there were numerous little climbs to enjoy even while descending.

Overall, I was delighted to do some running, even if it was slow and clumsy. :-) It was a start and today the knee felt just fine. Not that I'll be running on the AT, but running is still the best form of training, so I'll try to increase my running time over the next few weeks.

On the AT in Connecticut -- just a training hike

My friend, Bruce Shenker, joined me in doing a small section of the AT in Connecticut, from W Cornwall Road in Sharon up to Route 44 in Salisbury. The guidebook showed the distance to be 15.9 miles.

Where the AT started on W Cornwall Road is only about two miles from West Cornwall, even though the actual town is Sharon. 

There is only one significant hill on AT along our route, Mt. Prospect, which gets up to 1460', as I recall. However, we did a have a short, steep, rocky climb from W Cornwall to start the hike. By the top of that climb, the clothes were coming off quickly.

From there, it was mostly rolling terrain until the trail dropped down to the junction of Routes 112 and 7, just south of Falls Village. I had hike from that junction in the fall, heading north on the east side of the Housatonic River; at that time, I was under the impression that the iron bridge in Falls Village was still crossable, but, alas, it was not and I didn't know that the detour was actually back where 112 & 7 joined. Instead I walked on roads up to Route 44 and then picked up the AT where it crossed 44.

As we were leaving the AT and hitting Route 7, there was a sign saying that the AT did detour by going west on 112 and then taking Dugway Road north. So we went that way, although the rumor was that the iron bridge had been replaced and was open, but was soon to be shut down for further work. Given the good weather that might have allowed for work to start sooner, we opted for the safe, but boring road detour to the bridge. It was open when we got there. :-(

We stopped for a quick lunch and then headed north, passing the beautiful waterfall just south of the dam; there were some folks enjoying the sunshine and the rocks in the river since the water was very low.

Finally, the two-mile climb to Mt. Prospect was upon us and Bruce led the way at a good clip. I managed to maintain contact, but had I been alone, the pace would have been significantly slower. Once past the summit of Prospect, we were treated to a nice view of the Taconic Range to the west:

Photo credit: Bruce Shenker

We assumed, of course, that the rest of the trail would be mainly downhill to Salisbury, but that wasn't quite true--there were numerous little climbs to overcome.

We started to see a few day hikers, but had not seen any before we reached the summit of Prospect. On our way we did get to see this rather unusual rock:

Photo credit: Bruce Shenker

As you can see, it seems to be a popular rock--I wonder why? ;-)

We covered the 15.9 miles in 5:43, with 3,278' of climb. This is certainly one of the easier sections of the AT, but it was fine for me after last week's two-day rogaine.

My knee was swollen and tight after the hike, but an anti-inflammatory did wonders to restore it by the next day.

Pressing my luck--two days of orienteering

On March 5th and 6th, I participated in a rogaine event with my friend, Frank Boscoe. Rogaining is orienteering, but done with a partner. We had eight hours each day to find as many controls as possible and the route and order was our choice. These controls are scattered over a wide area and involve traveling on anything from paved roads, dirt roads, marked trails, game trails, or just plain bushwhacking, in order to reach them.

Since I'm still in recovery mode from my arthroscopic knee surgery, I had agreed to join Frank, but only if we could walk the entire time. In previous rogaines, we would have run and been able to cover much longer distances than we would if just walking.

Day 1 went fairly well navigationally, and route choice wise, and I ended up covering 22.30 miles, much better than I had anticipated.

The event was based at Endless Trail, a horse farm in Hubbardsville, New York, that offers B&B service to riders. It was a beautiful location and the start and finish, along with our room, was at the farm. So, we got to eating and replenishing right away after day 1.

The next day, due to distribution of the controls, we knew that we could reach only certain controls within the eight hours and that we'd have more roads to traverse than day 1. And we had that right--I covered 24.2 miles. Surprisingly, despite barely being able to walk upstairs on my way to the bedroom the night before, I felt pretty energetic the whole eight hours. As I team, we placed third in our age group, about what we thought possible.

My knee, however, wasn't too happy with those two days--it swelled a fair bit and was sore for at least three days after the event. 

So, I may have done too much, too soon, but I do not feel that I did any further damage to the knee. It just needed to rest and recover. Certainly I have zilch plans to do 20-mile days when I start hiking the AT.

Time to get everything in order -- Today I worked on the tent

I've never had a lightweight, single-person tent, but after a lot of online research and some feedback from Airlock, I chose the ZPacks Altaplex -- a 1.5-person tent with a bathtub floor and mesh between the floor and tent so that condensation can run down the inside of the tent and out through the mesh, hopefully keeping everything inside the tent dry. We shall see.

Today I finally broke out the instructions and went to work cutting the supplied Spectra cord and creating 2" loops on the ends of every string before attaching them to the tent.

Five 27" cords and two 50" cords.

And then it was time to get outside and learn how to set up the tent. Fortunately, ZPacks has an excellent tutorial on YouTube. 

Let's just say that it was a learning experience; first, I realized that if I do want to use a groundsheet, such as Polycro, it helps to put something heavy on each corner. Or, you can then watch it blow away on any breeze; fortunately, I managed to run and jump high enough to pull it down. Most likely I won't bother with the Polycro--after all the floor is waterproof, so the groundsheet is a bit of overkill, albeit the bottom of the tent might stay cleaner longer.

Finally, after re-watching the video and making the adjustments, I had a reasonably satisfactory set-up:

The tent, including all the guy lines, stuff sack, carbon fiber pole, and 10 Toaks Titanium angled tent stakes (with stuff sack) comes to 24.7 ounces. I could probably drop that a couple ounces by using some lighter stakes, but I'm a Ti lover, so I will wait and see how these perform.

There is plenty of room inside the tent for two not-so-large people; my wife and I could sleep in this together, if need be, but the waterproofness might be compromised by the sides of the floor being depressed from the bodies pressing against them. With only one occupant, there's more than enough room for me, my bag and my shoes.

With two mesh pockets, one on each end of the tent, there's plenty of space for the little items: eyeglasses, flashlight, etc.

Costs: Tent and carbon fiber pole: $624.00; Toaks Ti angled tent stakes: $36 for 12 pieces.

AT Starting Date

With the warmer than normal weather, it is looking more likely that I'll start my AT thru hike in early April, rather than the end of April.

This weekend I gave my recovering knee a real test--I partnered with a friend to do a two-day orienteering event call the CNYO Snowgaine, which consisted of two eight-hour days of searching for orienteering controls in the woods.

We had agreed that we would restrict the event to walking only, whereas in the past we had run during this event. And since there was no snow this year, we didn't need the skis, nor the snowshoes.

The first day I covered 22.3 miles in 7 hours and 40 minutes and the second day we did 24.2 miles in 7:46. And, yes, the knee was hurting a bit, but an overnight dose of an anti-inflammatory helped it recover enough so that the second day was possible.

While the knee isn't back to 100%, it is improving, so now it gets some rest and recovery and then I'll be back to more normal hikes of two to four hours.