Sunday, December 20, 2009

Laurel Highlands Trail Fail....

I generally dont like quitting things. At a certain point being safe trumps being epic. Oh well, another day.

Day 1.
Hiked in to the first shelters. Cooked some food. Some guys from Ohio showed up and invited me to their shelter to help better stay warm. I declined at first, but went over when the sun finally went down. They had a raging fire. 5 of us and a fire kept it super warm. Then at like 9pm a woman hiked in solo in the dark. Dang. 6 people in a shelter + 2 dogs = warm.














Day 2.
Long day. Started with a 3 mile climb. Scenic views. Had people leapfrogging all day. Ohio dudes went home. Checked in with Amy. Rad shelters at night on a cliff. Nice fire. Warm. NewfriendLex and I hung out and ate food.























Day 3.
Another long day. Walked forever. Through 7 springs. Ended with the forest ranger giving me and NewfriendLex a ride around the Turnpike because the bridge over the road was closed that day due to it falling down. Weird.










Day 4. Wake up with snow IN the shelter. 8 - 10 inches of snow on the ground. Camera dead due to cold. REALLY hard day breaking trail through the snow all day. Days 5 and 6 were supposed to be 12 mile days. I bailed on it. The area the trail goes through for those two days has 1 road crossing over 24 miles. The pace I held on day 4 while breaking snow would have left me hiking from 6 am to 6 pm and it was hard enough to find the blazes in the daylight with all the snow. I hiked about 44 miles total in 4 days.Good times.
Another day.

6 comments:

steve k! said...

everyone else in the photos has no bright orange. apparently they do not care about being shot by a drunk hunter.

Anonymous said...

looks cold

JMP said...

Looks cool - have fun.

Tim said...

Was your hike on some of the trails that the Laurel Mtn mtb race used to go on? That was a long time ago-like 1994 or 1995 that I raced it. Either way, nice work!

Gary Bywaters said...

Super cool story ( no puns intended ).

Andy said...

That picture of the two dogs with the back packs is awesome!