by Bill Walker
Nurse Ratchet and I listened respectfully as he gave monologues on several subjects. On New Jersey bears he related the story of a hiking companion asleep in a tent next to his own when a bear came and swatted the rain cover off his tent in one swipe. “It was pretty logical” he recounted—“like a human opening up a bag of Fritos.”
He also revealed himself as a man implacably opposed in every respect to Warren Doyle, his rival for most number of thru-hikes. “He’s just such a ridiculous character that I can’t get into the subject at such an early hour,” he said. But then he did.
“Did he ever mention that most of those twenty-seven thousand miles he likes to advertise he has done were mostly without a backpack (“slackpacking”),” he dug in. “My grandmother could do it without a backpack.”
Then he went off, Scout’s honor, and began planning a route for Mary the trail angel to slack pack him that afternoon.
Every state on the AT is known for one thing. Pennsylvania is known for its rocks, New Hampshire for being so difficult, and Maine for its beauty. New Jersey is known for its bears.
The reason is that New Jersey has been developed to the point that there is only a narrow sliver of wilderness still extant on the western side of the state, in the Kittaninny Mountains. It is now estimated that there is at least one bear for every square mile in this part of New Jersey. And it is through this narrow corridor that the AT runs.
Because human-bear encounters have risen so sharply in recent years the word on the trail was that the state of New Jersey for the first time in many years had a “controlled hunt.” The purpose was to teach bears some respect for humans.
I asked several people before getting to New Jersey just how the “controlled hunt” had gone. “They killed 844 bears in two weeks,” one person had said matter-of-factly. “Everybody said it was like shooting ducks in a barrel.”
But just as confidently a trail wag back in Duncannon had told me, “They called it off. The animal rights activists raised a big ruckus.”
An ATC employee at headquarters in Harper’s Ferry had told me that the previous year on the AT a female hiker had been in her tent when a bear grabbed the tent and dragged it and her screaming for thirty feet. And the bear attack of the previous week was the second on a hiker this year. Bears in New Jersey identify hikers with food, a New Jersey hiker had told me.
So it was bears that were primarily on my mind as 49er and I crossed the mile-long bridge that the trail follows over the historic Delaware River. Whether he noticed it or not, I had assiduously stuck with 49er that morning as he had gone about making rounds to the post office, food mart, etc. And while I usually hiked faster than 49er, in New Jersey I stayed planted right on his heels. The huge bear the Trolls and I had seen had moved away from us a lot faster than the two bears I had lone encounters with in Shenandoah National Park.
The trail took a turn for the better in New Jersey. The Sahara desert feel of Pennsylvania was gone as the hillsides became fresher and greener, compared to the scraggly, worn forests of Pennsylvania. Nurse Ratchet taught me just which berries were suitable for eating and adding valuable anti-oxidants to my diet. There were even mountain ponds that afforded ample opportunity for hydration. In short, New Jersey was a pleasant surprise.
We made it through the state bear-free in four and a half days. Just before crossing out of the state, Whitewater, Nurse Ratchet, and I ran into Knees, whom we hadn’t seen since Virginia. Whitewater and Nurse Ratchet didn’t want to hike with him back then because they said he bragged too much about how many miles he habitually hiked. But I was glad to see him, and we walked along chatting until his legs suddenly came out from under him and he landed on some sharp rocks.
“Can I give you a hand?’ I asked.
“No, no,” he said quickly. “But I’ve marked my legs up a bit and need to apply some first aid.”
So I stayed with Whitewater and Nurse Ratchet as we crossed into New York at twilight. The terrain was proving rockier and more difficult than expected, so when we crossed a stream of dubious quality we dutifully pulled out our water filters to start pumping. Whitewater saw that an item from his backpack was missing and he hurried to go back and look for it. I sat down with Nurse Ratchet and enjoyed a Snickers Bar. Fortunately, she had retired her occasional towel-snapping manner towards me and our relationship seemed repaired.
I heard a heavy pounding sound on the other side of the ridge and flippantly remarked, “That was a bear.”
“It better not be,” she said in almost a reprimanding tone. But there were more heavy thuds and I said, “No hiker takes steps that sound like that.” A bear strode confidently onto the AT thirty yards in front of us. “I see it now,” I reported. “Keep the conversation going.”
“Oh no,” Nurse Ratchet said alarmed, “it has another bear with it.” “Where?” I asked. And a minor panic set in with the possibility of two bears (do the math). I also noticed my food bag was out and quickly stuffed it in my backpack.
It just stared at us and Nurse Ratchet sternly shouted, “Go away, go away. No, go away now!”
I picked up a rock and began softly saying, “Can’t we live together.” And to Nurse Ratchet I said, “Keep talking.” Finally, it moved slowly up a hill in the direction it had been going.
When it was out of sight she said, “That bear was not afraid of us.”
“Wow, you scared the hell out of me when you said there was another one,” I said.
“Well, the way it looked over its shoulder…” she reminded me.
“You were giving it commands like a dog,” I said in admiration.
“You were talking to it like a person,” she laughed. Whitewater appeared over the hill empty-handed.
“We saw a bear,” Nurse Ratchet reported to him. Whitewater walked defiantly right to where we pointed out on the trail and began examining the footprints. Nurse Ratchet and I followed behind. Thirty seconds later we heard an animal tearing down a hill and looked over to our right and saw a cub, perhaps a year old, fleeing in the direction of the adult bear we had seen.
“I guess Mama just rang the dinner bell,” Nurse Ratchet said. “Maybe a deer.”
“Maybe a hiker,” I responded.
“Hopefully, not Knees,” Whitewater drawled delightedly.
Chapter 16
If Pennsylvania is not an AT hiker’s least-favorite state then, chances are, New York is. The trail is not as well-blazed in the Empire State as in other states, and there seems to be a lower general level of awareness about the AT. Hikers with the theretofore “magic thumb” showed great consternation at their sudden inability to hitchhike into towns to resupply. Of course, female hikers reported no such problem. This led to improvisation. Male hikers would hide in the woods while a lone female would stick her thumb out for a ride. Everyone got great joy recounting how quickly the driver’s face would change from expectant to grim when the grisly, bearded male hikers poured out of the woods asking if they could pile in along with the female.
Hiker behavior also trended downward from the etiquette displayed in the initial phases in Georgia. Peter Pan, an agreeable thirtyish female from Ohio who always seemed to be in the midst of male hikers noted, “In Georgia I got a kick out of watching guys walk deep into the woods to urinate. By the time everybody was in Virginia they would only walk about ten yards away to do it. And now, I’ll be talking to a guy, and next thing you know he just turns around and takes a piss.”
Morale is often low when thru-hikers arrive in New York, as completion is still way off. And any AT thru-hiker faces a basic incongruity. The first and last five hundred miles are where the trail passes through its highest elevations. But these are usually done in spring and fall, when the weather up in the mountains is cold. Meanwhile, the trail passes through its lowest elevations in the mid-Atlantic states. And this stretch is traversed in high summer, when the bugs and heat are the worst. Not coincidentally, an epidemic of “yellow-blazing”—taking highways and skipping sections—bro
ke out in these parts.
Wawayanda Shelter—mile 1,349
7-25-05: It has come to my urgent attention that a contagion of yellow blazing has broken out amongst thru-hikers. I beseech you—Don’t yellow-blaze under any circumstances. Quitting would be better.—SkyWalker
But, I would soon regret this presumptuous trail entry.
Wildcat Shelter—mile 1,361
7-26-05: Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea Maxima culpa. One hiker has labeled me a “trail-Nazi.” Another hiker has threatened to “bear-bait” my tent by spreading peanut butter all over it. I humbly repent.—SkyWalker
The AT has a reputation for not being as difficult in these Mid-Atlantic States. But a few states back I had asked a New Yorker on the trail about his home state. “You’ll be surprised, actually,” he said. “The trail has been relocated and it’ll sucker punch you.”
After Nurse Ratchet and I had received our “ursine greeting,” just over the state line, we ran into a series of rocky and rugged ledges. We suddenly found ourselves stumbling and heaving ourselves over and shimmying down various rock scrambles. Maintaining backpack balance to avoid either a “header” or a backward fall was exceedingly difficult.
On a Sunday evening we were trying to hurry to make it to the shelter before dark when I pitched forward down a jagged boulder for only my third bad fall on the trail. Fortunately, it was my left arm that suffered the deep bruise. If you’re going to hurt something on the AT, an arm is actually the place you’d want it to be.
But I jumped up quickly without applying the triple anti-biotic ointment, bandages, and all that Knees had done after his fall a few miles back. I didn’t want to camp alone tonight out here in all these rocks, and with bears prowling around.
After finding a semi-rocky clearing near a cliff to camp for the evening, we arose early to try to make better time. But the in-your-face quality of the trail soon reasserted itself. For the next two miles the trail wandered in zig-zag fashion from one boulder obstacle course called Pinnacle Rocks to another called Cat Rocks. “This is obnoxious, is what it is,” Nurse Ratchet said.
“I reckon we could tunnel underground faster than this,” Whitewater added.
The unifying factor that had kept the three of us together so long was that we were all task-oriented toward doing as many miles per day as we reasonably could. But this terrain just didn’t allow it.
The mid-July humidity was so heavy it was no surprise that fast-moving black clouds swooped overhead. Soon, lightning blazes began snapping. A nice couple from New Jersey was huddled under a rock and looked very puzzled as we started to ascend Mombasha High Point just as the pyrotechnics got started. It didn’t take a genius to see our poor judgment in climbing a mountain during an electrical storm. We were again being “mileage greedy.”
Sheets of rain were falling, and Nurse Ratchet and I stood before a steep escarpment of boulders that together were the size of a mansion. We were at a loss as to our next step. But the unflappable Whitewater enthusiastically yelled, “Follow me,” and bounded over a giant boulder. We followed.
Like most summer rainstorms it ended quickly. But after descending a steep section aptly called “Agony Grind,” we arrived at New York Highway 17. Our feet were throbbing, and we were frustrated. A fit-looking middle-aged fellow was waiting there beside his pickup. In the back of it was every known type of hiker food. “Hi, my name is Paddie O,” he said. “I’m the local trail angel.”
“Boy are we glad to see you,” I said. “You are the first trail angel in two hundred miles. We were getting it every other day in the South.”
He started cooking hot dogs and handing out sodas when Whitewater said, “What do we owe you?”
“You don’t owe me a thing,” he said merrily. “I’ve got a five thousand dollar trail-magic budget I set aside for this year.” Then he added wistfully looking off at the mountains, “I owe this trail more than I could ever repay it. Mount Katahdin alone was the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen.”
“The trail almost brought us to our knees the last two days,” I said. “We were dumbfounded about New York.”
“You see that telephone booth over there?” Paddie O asked.
We nodded and he said, “I’m working on getting that removed.”
“Why?”
“Because people get to this roadside demoralized after all those rocks and they bail out,” he explained. “Five thru-hikers in the last two days have quit right here.” Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was apparently one of them on his attempt at a third thru-hike.
Nurse Ratchet had been having more problems with kidney stones, which are often caused by dehydration. Hiking in near one hundred-degree weather was exactly what the doctor had not ordered. The next morning she and Whitewater took the bus into New York City to spend three days with her aunt.
So I set off up Bear Mountain alone for what would be seven straight nights out in a tent. Being alone, my main concerns were bears—after the encounter a couple nights before—and losing the trail. Having other hikers around reduces the chances of both problems. The trail passed through a narrow cleft between two huge boulders, called the Lemon Squeezer. I had to remove my backpack and toss it up on the rock ledge to the left while squeezing through, turned sideways. Fortunately, the trail opened into grassy fields in Harriman State Park. There were even some great views of Seven Lakes.
The trail ascended steeply to the top of Bear Mountain, and the Manhattan skyline was visible in the distance. While chatting with a watchman at the top of Bear Mountain, I was struck by the lonely sound in my voice. I hadn’t seen another person since early in the morning. Water had been tight all day, and I savored a couple cold drinks from the drink machine. A steep descent down Bear Mountain spit me out of the woods onto the large, open expansive lawn of the historic Bear Mountain Inn.
This seemed a perfect opportunity to stealth camp right there, despite the police station at the far end of the lawn. I marveled at my boldness and brilliance. It seemed too brazen to erect my tent, so at dark I just lay down on top of my sleeping bag beside the lake. That was a mistake.
The bugs were ferocious, and I soon realized that the bug population increased with proximity to the lake. However, moving away from the lake meant moving toward the police station. I moved my sleeping bag and thermarest pad twice in the middle of the night, and by morning was less impressed with my stealth-camping agility. The bugs were so atrocious that I could barely eat a couple bites of breakfast before bolting out of there in desperation.
The AT runs right through the Bear Mountain Zoo, which hikers are permitted to pass through for free. Of course, given our appearance and odor some looked at us as if we were part of the display. When I passed by the Bear’s den I thought, “What a novelty to have a fence, for once, between this four hundred-pound ursine and me.” Actually, the bear in this zoo looked more happy-go-lucky than the six I had seen on the trail, which were going about their daily hunting activities in businesslike fashion.
The trail exits the zoo only to afford hikers another delight. It crosses the Hudson River at the Bear Mountain Bridge. At 124 feet above sea level it’s the lowest point on the AT and the lowest point in the East. This bridge was the largest privately owned suspension bridge in the United States when completed in 1924. With the powerful current flowing directly out to the Atlantic, an unsuspecting hiker could easily be afflicted with a case of vertigo while in the act of making the long crossing.
To state the obvious, the hiker is faced with an uphill climb after crossing the Hudson. When hiking alone, I checked my data book regularly to get my bearings. But when I checked my back pocket the data book wasn’t there. Right there on the far side of the Hudson I had a “hiker’s heart attack.” This was a stretch of thirty-one miles, with no shelters and few water sources. I would need to be scanning the data book closely to figure out where to camp this evening and where to get water on a hot day. Desperately, I clawed through everything in my backpack and finally found the book
at the bottom, near my sleeping bag. The bugs had hurried me into a careless retreat when packing up this morning. So began another day of solitary hiking.
When I ran into the Troll family a couple days later, it was clear they were going through an existential crisis of their own. “This damn state,” Troll cursed. “We should give it back to the Indians, or the British, or whoever we got it from.”
“Gordon told me you loved it,” I tweaked him.
“I hate everything about it,” he dug in. “The terrain, the bugs, the people, the animals, the trail maintainers, you name it.” New York-hating is a little like French-hating in America. It’s like a sport, with lots of competition. But after a few days with Troll I was ready to award him the grand prize, hands-down.
We camped at the Wiley Shelter, just 1.2 miles from the Connecticut line, although Troll made major noises about night-hiking to get across the border. “I don’t ever want to wake up another morning and find out I’m in New York,” he declared.
Wiley Shelter—mile 1,341
7-25-05: When no one is looking, pigs walk on their hind legs.—Loner
7-25-05: Beware of zealots; they are humorless. Beware of the image conscious; they are fair-weathered.—SkyWalker
Lemon Meringue rolled in at dusk. She was a thirty-three-year-old Dutch girl bidding for the Triple Crown. In 2003 she had thru-hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, running from Mexico to Canada. In 2004 she did the CDT (Continental Divide Trail, which runs from Montana, through Yellowstone National Park and the Rockies, down to New Mexico). This year she was tackling the AT. Not surprisingly, she had a streak of independence and style all her own.
“You sound like a professional hiker,” I said after hearing her story.
“I’m using my divorce settlement to hike,” she said. “When I get through with the AT I’m going to Nepal to hike the Anna Purna Trail with a friend.”