August 8, 2010 New York Section 6 from 2.7 to 7.3 and New York Section 7 from 0.0 to 3.7 going North to South. [AT: 8.3 miles]
With Sona. Started at Long Hill Rd. (just south of Shenandoah Mountain) and went south by Canopus Lake, across Rt. 301 and down to Dennytown Rd. We tried to start out driving to the trailhead earlier today but still only managed to get on the trail by about 10:45. The weather was beautiful with a little bit of overcast in the morning. We had a sprinkle of rain mid-afternoon that didn’t even manage to wet the ground and then the sun came back out.
At the start of the hike, ran into thru-hiker “Dead Man Walking”. (A thru-hiker is someone who is attempting to hike the entire AT in one shot end-to-end.) Hikers are given, or sometimes chose, trail names that they use along the trail. Sona and I guessed that this guy was given his name by his fellow hikers because he was smoking cigarettes.
About half a mile into the hike on a overlook, there was an American flag painted on the rocks to commemorate Sept 11. Unfortunately there was a fire-ring here too with lots of trash, beer cans, etc. We tried to pick up as best we could using a plastic garbage bag we had picked up along the trail earlier.
We saw 2 snakes today, heard a few wood peewees and towhees (those are birds whose call sounds like their name so they’re pretty easy to remember), and saw a few chipmunks.
One interesting feature of today’s hike was a long section of level trail which had been built up of stones. It was made for a mine railroad. A lot of work to build that.
We also saw a large patch of cardinal flower in bloom in a “damp” stream near the trail.
Most of the streams we crossed were bone dry but this one still had damp soil. We saw lots of evidence of the recent weeks of extremely hot weather in dead leaves, crisped up leaves, shriveled up fruits, dried out streams, etc.
We planned on a dip in Canopus lake near Rt 301 but by the time we got there, neither of us felt hot enough to take the time for it.
We finished at about 6:00. At Dennytown Rd., we ran into a group of 3 guys who were thru-hiking but slack-packing for a few days. (Slack-packing means they were able to leave most of their gear somewhere and just carry very light backpacks for a while.) Unfortunately we didn’t get their trail names.
lindasnature
