Connecticut AT Day 1 (4/16/22)

I am back on the Appalachian Trail for another section, this time hiking through Connecticut. As usual, my wonderful girlfriend Dragonfly helped me drop my car off at the endpoint yesterday, and then drove me to the starting point this morning. I started out on Connecticut Route 55, right after the New York border.

It was an early start, too. The weather forecast showed afternoon rain, so I wanted to get off trail before it set in, and I had an 18 mile day planned. Thus, Dragonfly got me to the trailhead around 6:15 AM. We took some start of hike pictures, and then I was off.

It was a nice morning for hiking. The woodpeckers were hard at work. However, lest I forget that I was in Connecticut and not somewhere more remote like Maine, I kept hearing a train whistle, and there were a number of residences visible from trail.

The mud was a problem at the lower elevations. It wasn’t as bad as it would have been in some place like Vermont, but there were definitely some puddles that had to be carefully stepped around. I know hardcore purists say to just walk right through it, but I enjoy keeping my feet dry and not sliding.

A few miles into the hike, the trail does something weird. It exits Connecticut and heads back into New York, before again re-entering Connecticut. Somewhere around that area, I was startled by a sudden noise. I looked up and saw two deer scattering. One of the deer stopped and looked at me for a while. I thought it would run away some more, but it stood its ground once it was convinced that I wasn’t going towards it. I got a halfway decent picture.

The Ten Mile Shelter was interesting in that it had a rock wall around the whole area. I am not sure why it was put there. Maybe to mark the area that camping is allowed in. At the camp sites around the shelter, I saw my first other people of the day, albeit at a distance. They were some tent campers, and I would meet one of them later on.

Leaving the shelter area, I came to a bridge. It was well constructed, and so high that it required a relatively steep couple of steps just to access it. The trail then walked alongside the Housatonic River for a while, and I enjoyed listening to the river roar. It’s definitely springtime, given the mud and water levels. It’s a lot better than hiking during a drought, though.

As I moved away from the river at last, another hiker caught up with me. We didn’t exchange names, so I am going to call him Blue Shirt Guy (is that a Free Guy reference?) after the blue shirt he was wearing. We chatted for about ten minutes. He is from Connecticut, and also section hiking the AT. He gave me some good news when he told me that his favorite section of trail is the area around Bear Mountain in Connecticut, which I will reach in two days.

Blue Shirt Guy stopped to get water and I didn’t see him again. I started to run into more people, though. There were two guys who, based on their accents, I think were Australian. They looked like thru-hikers. We joked about knocking out spider-webs for each other.

Behind them there was a guy who looked a lot like Freddie Mercury. Another guy I ran into made a comment about how nice the weather was. That was at 9:40. At 9:45, it started raining, and kept up for the next half hour. Some things you just shouldn’t jinx.

I stopped for a water fill-up and lunch at the Mt. Algo Shelter. While I was there, three girls and their little dog stopped by. They ate on a log beside the shelter instead of using the picnic table in front of the shelter, I guess because they didn’t want to disturb me. However, their dog got under the shelter, and that’s not a place you usually want to go. Snakes and other critters often live under shelters. I let them know, and they misinterpreted my concerns as not liking dogs. At least they kept the dog closer after that.

There were two main ridges I walked along today, and between them was the road heading into Kent, CT. When Dragonfly and I drove through it yesterday, it looked like a really nice town. Maybe I will get to visit it someday.

The highest peak along the second ridge was Caleb’s Peak. The ridge began with a rocky climb, but that was nothing compared to the ending. The climb down from Caleb’s Peak featured a steep, rocky descent that reminded me of the descent on Mt. Percival in the Squam range, and Mt. Percival is on the Terrifying 25 list, and for good reason.

While I was descending, I saw some impressive sheer cliff faces. “I’ll bet even Alex Honnold would have a hard time finding handholds in this,” I thought to myself. Of course, shortly after that thought, I encountered a large group of climbers practicing on the lower cliff faces. I saw an REI van, so I suspect that they were part of an REI class.

From there, the trail wandered down a dirt road for a while. I hate driving on dirt roads (too many bad experiences in the past while trying to find trailheads), but I love walking on them. They tend to have reasonable grades, you're not getting whacked by vegetation, and they aren't as hard on your feet as paved roads are. They're not quite as great as a level pine needle covered dirt trail, but they're up there for the best places to hike.

As I entered the final stretch of hiking for the day, I finished up the audiobook I had been listening to. That was The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien. I still have to listen to the Appendices, though. I am definitely a Tolkien nerd (some would claim that I am just a nerd, period). The whole thing made me think back to my last night on The Long Trail, when I met another hiker who went by the trail name Strider. I remember him telling me that I was the only person he had met on trail who had understood his trail name. Again, I am a definite Tolkien nerd.

I soon arrived at camp for the night, which was the Stewart Hollow Brook Shelter. When I got there, there were three people that already had their hammocks set up. After I set myself up in the shelter, I went over to say hi. I learned that they were not hikers, but instead had come out to fish in the nearby Housatonic River. One guy explained to me that he had never done trout fishing before, but his two companions had, so they were showing him the ropes. A little while later, as I walked out to the water source to get some water to filter, I passed that same guy walking back carrying a fish. I guess he was a quick learner.

One more guy eventually came in to the campsite. He pitched his hammock a good distance away from everyone else, over at the edge of the camping area. He had a dog with him, so that may be why he wanted to keep his distance. Unfortunately, I was disappointed to see that when I went to put my food in the bear box for the night, no one else in the campsite had used the bear box, which meant that everyone had their food with them. Thankfully it didn't result in any incidents, but it's not a hard thing to do to put your food away in the bear box, and it can protect both you and wildlife.

It rained overnight, but I stayed dry and relatively warm in the shelter. I have gotten better with using my quilt, so I don't have the problems that I had last April. As I tried to fall asleep, I couldn't help but think of the (paraphrased) words of Edwin McCain, "Rain falls, angry on the tin roof, as I lie awake in my bed." Thankfully, I did eventually fall asleep, because I needed my rest for the big day I had planned tomorrow.

Always remember, you can't take flight until you spread your wings!