A slower start this morning after a late night last night. Once I got water and used the shelter facilities, I didn’t hit the road until 8am. Not a good start to the day, even if it were necessary, since we have ambitious plans today.
New Jersey High Point State Park
This morning’s hike was pretty rocky most of the time. There were also a lot of climbs and descents, where you went up 50 to 100 feet and then went down and then went up again. Which became tedious and annoying. Some hikers would probably call these PUDs, useless ups and downs, but I have mixed feelings about that saying. If you really think about it, the whole road is useless ups and downs. No one has to walk the path, we do it for the experience. And sometimes this is the experience. Anyway, I made good progress this morning. It was a relatively calm morning, but I added another snake to the snake tracker.
Around 12:45 I arrived at the High Point State Park headquarters, where I stopped for lunch. This is a good place to stop as they had restrooms, drinking water, and even cold sodas for sale. Not to mention a place to sit while you eat lunch. This turned out to be a common stop for hikers and I ended up seeing probably 10 while having lunch there. But after an hour it was time to get back on the road.
The hike after lunch started out a little rocky for the first couple of kilometers. It began with a climb to the High Point observation deck, which provided an excellent view of the monument atop the highest point in New Jersey.
I had intended to visit the monument, a short 0.2 mile blue trail, but Queso and I missed the turnoff and didn’t notice it until we were 0.2 miles past it. And we were too lazy to turn around and do all the bonus miles that entailed. After that, the trail slowly became easier for the rest of the afternoon. We passed through an area that had a lot of these old stone walls, which was cool to see!
At my wit’s end
After a few kilometres, I left the forest and entered some fields for a couple of kilometres. This was a nice change of pace and allowed for easy walking, which was nice. After a few more miles of cruising, I ended up outside Unionville, New York, where I went into town to meet Shooter and Birdie at Wit’s End Tavern. I narrowly missed the end of the USA World Cup game, but still had time to grab a couple beers and a cheesesteak sandwich! After spending some time there and even though we were already 20 miles into the day, we had another five miles to go to the shelter we planned to stay at. So we left. The hike to the shelter was pretty easy outside of the last half mile, which was straight. Over 500 feet of elevation gain in less than 0.5 miles. It was also getting dark at that time, our fault, but that also added to the challenge. We arrived at the shelter shortly after 9pm and quickly set up our tents and went to bed.
Luckily, I even found a tick embedded in my ankle under the edge of my compression sleeve…
Day 96 Statistics:
25.3 miles
3,274′ ascent, 3,707′ descent
From Gren Anderson Shelter to Pochuck Mountain Shelter
4 DSLC…
Stove use times: 14
Snakes seen on the trail: 20
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