Taking Flight

Day 5 dawned with me not really being sure how to get back to trail. I only had a small section that I had to complete today. You see, when I did the Long Trail a few years ago, I reached the Long Trail via the Pine Cobble Trail. However, that meant that I skipped the Appalachian Trail section between Williamstown and where the Pine Cobble joined the AT. Today, my goal was to fill in that section, and connect my Massachusetts section hike to the Long Trail. However, as I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t sure how to get back to trail. I was told that the motel that I was staying at offered shuttle rides, but I had already tried to call the front desk twice that morning and they had ignored me. When I finally went to the front desk, they told me that I should call a taxi. Given everything else I had seen from this motel so far, that didn’t really surprise me. I ultimately decided that my best course of action was to walk from the hotel to the Williamstown Police Department, where my car was. ...

Today was always going to be the hardest day on trail. It was the day that I planned to go over Mt. Greylock, the largest mountain in Massachusetts at more than 3500’, and it was the day that the weather was supposed to turn bad, crashing from a high of 67 yesterday to a low below freezing today, with thunderstorms to boot. I knew that I needed to make it over Greylock as quickly as possible to avoid the worst of the weather. However, that wasn’t going to be easy, as it was 14.5 miles from Cheshire, on one side of the mountain, to Williamstown, on the other side of the mountain. There was good news right off the bat, as it didn’t rain overnight as some outlets had predicted. Packing up camp in the rain is the pits. However, there was bad news: condensation. Double wall tents, which are tents that have both an inner tent and a detached rain fly, don’t suffer too much condensation. However, single wall tents, where the tent is all one connected piece, tend to have more significant conden...

You would never think that sleeping in a motel would involve hearing more snoring than sleeping in a tent near a bunch of other tents, but that’s exactly what happened. I nicknamed my motel neighbor Buzzsaw because his snoring came right through the motel walls. I knew that this was going to have to be a big day, so I set my alarm for 4:30 AM and got on the trail at 5:25. It was so early that the sun wasn’t up yet, which meant hiking by headlamp. This would have been no problem with my day hiking headlamp, but my backpacking headlamp is more for use around camp than on trail. It didn’t help much, but the sky soon lit up and made it irrelevant. There was a tough climb up Becket Mountain early in the day, but I knew that after that the terrain got a lot easier and I hoped to make big miles. I knew that if I could get 28 miles into Cheshire (which would smash my previous record of 22.4), I would put myself in good position to summit Greylock the next day before the weather got too bad. I ...

I  tend to thrive on social interactions on trail, and so yesterday was a great day as I got to meet so many new and interesting people. Today was harder, as I was alone most of the day. The day got off to a rough start with a poor night’s sleep. Directly, this was caused by the cold, but indirectly it was caused by lack of skill with my backpacking quilt. A backpacking quilt is basically a sleeping bag without a bottom. Sleeping bags offer warmth through their loft, and since the material underneath you is compressed, it does no good. Therefore, a backpacking quilt simply removes that useless portion, and saves weight. However, The lack of a bottom opens you up to drafts if you don’t secure it right. Unfortunately, because I am still new to using them, I did not secure it right. That led to a cold night. Once I got packed up and moving, I leapfrogged with Allie and her son a couple times. I decided to take the opportunity to try to re-learn her son’s name in a really clever way. I...

Before I start this blog entry, I have to thank Dragonfly. Without her willingness to shuttle me down to the trailhead, the hike would have either been impossible or significantly more difficult. When Dragonfly dropped me off at Massachusetts Route 7 to start my hike, I was happy to see a tent set up at the trailhead. I was afraid that I would be by myself on this hike. Thankfully, that would not prove to be the case. The trail started out with some beautiful scenery as it stayed on flat terrain and wound between a farm and a river. My shoes got a bit soaked in the grass, but they’re Altras and they dry off quickly, so I wasn’t worried. Before too long, I ran into my first other hikers. They were two guys just finishing up a southbound overnighter. They warned me that the trail climbed steeply once it hit the woods. Well, I enjoyed the last of my time in the fields, and then as promised, began to climb steeply after the wood line. Before long I started leapfrogging with two other north...

Hi everyone! This post is going to be a little different from my normal posts. It's not a trip report, but instead it is a news post to let you know about my upcoming hiking plans. I have two major hiking plans in the works right now, both of which further my long term goal of hiking the entire Appalachian Trail. The first hike is going to be next week. It's going to be a short section hike on the Trail in Massachusetts. A section hike is where one hikes only a piece of the AT instead of the entire thing, whereas a thru-hike would be a hike of the entire trail. I anticipate this section hike being about 75 miles. It will connect back to where I started the Long Trail back in 2018. I anticipate going over Mt. Greylock, the highest mountain in Massachusetts, as part of this hike. This will be my first April backpacking trip since 2017, and I am excited about it. I only hope that the weather will hold out. Early reports don't look great. The second hike will be a much longer s...

My apologies that there hasn't been a post in a while. It's mud season up here in northern New England, and the hiking conditions aren't great. It's hard to find solid trails that can be hiked on without causing environmental damage. The problem is that when the trails are muddy, hikers walk around the edge to avoid the mud. This creates more erosion, and the trails get even muddier, until eventually the trail is one big mud pit. That's why some places, such as Vermont (also known as Vermud), don't even allow hiking during mud season. Thankfully, this past weekend Dragonfly and I were able to find a place to hike where mud wasn't a major issue - the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway. I thru-hiked the Greenway last summer with my friend Red, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, so I thought it would be a great place for Dragonfly to earn a hiking patch and me to get more hiking in on a trail I enjoy. We decided to do a car spot for this hike. We would drop my car off at the...