The Way I Go Along The Appalachian Trail

The morning temperature was 32° with an expected high near 40° and the forecast is to be partly sunny all day.    Today we are hiking from Dennytown Road to the east side of the Bear Mountain Bridge, north on Route 9D    totaling 11.3 miles.    Tomorrow’s hike will take us across the Hudson River.  All the snow in the woods is gone and there is almost no ice on the trail which makes hiking much easier. The lakes and ponds are still frozen. Extended forecast for the next week looks good as no snow is being called for but we know that can change. The highest  elevation on the trail for this same time period is under 1400 foot which will help minimize any potential of snowfall.   We began  hiking at 9:05 am and starting right off with a rather good incline of 800 feet in elevation over .3 mi... you do the math  😂.  Half way up the first incline... There are a lot of day hikers on the trail today… I think some ...

We resumed   hiking after a 3 day break. We won’t be hiking continuously until I get back from bringing Jean to Florida and Beer Snob finishes work, around February 8th. We should have New York done by then. The current temperature is 39° and the high is expected to reach 45°- unseasonably a little warm. Which makes layering more difficult; you have to switch out wet layers from sweating and carry additional clothes or not and deal with it. This is one luxury or advantage we have by not camping on the trail every night  is that we can carry extra clothes which is extra weight and not be as concerned about that 😉 .  And today it’s currently raining so we are waiting a couple hours for it to pass before we start hiking. Again, another luxury of going back to our vehicles regularly. I got my new trail shoes, Salomon X Ultra 3 w/gor-tex, an ankle high trail sneaker. They are much lighter than my Salomon Quest 4D 3 GTX boots so I’m excited to see how they perfo...

The morning temperature was 30° and overcast. I’m surprisingly feeling pretty good. I do not have any blister issues as I did last year. It’s amazing what wearing the correct size boots can do for you. I’m experiencing some minor muscle pain but totally expect that until I get my “trail legs”. In the meantime Ibuprofen is my best friend. I take 1-200 mg tablet before I go to bed and then 2-200 mg tablets prophylactically in the AM with my coffee (Breakfast of Champions 😉).  Today we are hiking from Route 52 to Long Hill Road which is 7.5 miles. We should do this section in about 4 hours considering it is a somewhat harder section of the trail in Dutchess County which includes a couple challenging inclines and one long decline; combined with numerous rock scrambles. We originally were going to Route 301 but we decided to shorten today’s hike due to the harder terrain plus to align our next 3 hikes more appropriately - trying not to exceed 15 mile hikes until we get a few more hike...

It’s a little cooler this am . Temperature was 18° at 7 am and partly cloudy. Expected to get into the mid 30s this afternoon which originally was forecast to be in the low 40’s. I’m a little stiff but not totally surprised. I’m sure I’ll loosen up once we get moving. Feet are fine so I’m happy about that. We are hiking from the Dover Oak to Route 52 today which is 12.4 miles. I altered my pack a little today; took out extra vest and a face mask that I carried yesterday. I also took out extra toilet paper. I drank less than a liter of water yesterday so I’m only bringing 2 L today. All hikers say minimizing weight is key so I should really try and keep that in mind even though the majority of our hikes will only be day hikes as we will only be camping overnight on the trail about 20-25% of the time.    We started at 8:54 am, a little earlier today.         Saying Day 2 not peace 😂    Just a “Walk in the Woods”.    Beer Snob m...

Woke up at 7:15 AM. The weather is overcast and the temperature is 20°. Forecast is for temperatures to get to the mid-upper 30s; that’s plenty warm to be hiking on the trail so I anticipate we will be stripping off a layer about five minutes into the hike. We’re only doing a 9.3 mile segment today as our initial hike starting from the Connecticut-New York state line hiking southbound to County Route 20, Dover Oak, Pawling in Dutchess County. Beer Snob (That’s Jim’s trail name. I don’t have one yet; I’m in no rush) thinks we can do it under five hour so we’re getting a later start than typical; hoping   to be on the trail by 10 am and finishing around 3 pm. Starting off from Jim’s in our CDC approved pandemic garb.      The  famous “Dover Oak”.  Appalachian Trail crossing Metro North.  Fence ladders over electric fences. All trail maintenance is down by volunteers from local hiking clubs.    Needs a little trail maintenance... Met local ...