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We started bumping into Yale freshman orientation groups within about the first mile. This didn’t make me too happy. I’ve encountered these groups before and never been pleased about it. The colleges up here have started doing this more – bringing groups of 10 to 12 people out and destroying a camping area is what it amounts to. They throw all kinds of trash into the privvies and generally wreck wherever they stay. They have no sense of trail etiquette and stay up until all hours basically partying. They have a very ambitious agenda of about 5 miles a day so they don’t care when they start.
Anyway, we had Race pretty much to ourselves and we were fortunate enough to be sung to sleep by owls and greeted in the morning to coyote song. We hiked a respectable 16.5 miles to Tom Leonard shelter for our second night only to be subjected to a group from Smith College. They were…..unpleasant. One of the chaperones (we dubbed her Florida Hag) when we asked for some room at the picnic table to make our supper told us, “No.” We shouldn’t of let this slide but, we did.
The girls built a huge bonfire and stayed up until around 11 or 12. Somewhere around 9 a guy comes staggering into the site reeking of pot and starts stomping around inside the shelter and talking real loud and shining his light in our faces. Again I let this go and I shouldn’t have. We didn’t get a lot of sleep that night and we needed it.
Saturday we hiked only 8 miles to North Wilcox shelter. Fortunately we had this to ourselves as it was about a half mile off the trail. We ended up being joined by a couple of women that pitched a tent a good distance away. They were very nice and we got along very well with them.
Sunday we got up early. I had been having a problem with my left pack strap and couldn’t seem to get it adjusted right. My shoulder was chafed and raw from this. We got a good strong start and after about 3 miles we took a break and I had to wrap duct tape across the shoulder (with a base of bacitracin). This helped a little. By the time we got to Tyringham Main Road it was really bothering me. 3 ibuprofen knocked the pain down a bit. We climbed Baldy Mountain and met (the other)Dave near the top.
He had brought in clementines and I ate my first one ever. They’re delicious. He also brought us OJ, Gatorade and bananas - he was/is our trail angel.
He was going to hike with us to Upper Goose Pond and stay the night and then head back in Monday morning. We had already decided we were going to call it because of my shoulder…it was getting worse. It was fortunate he was there and even more that he was understanding and willing to help us out. He gave us a ride to Dave’s home town where Dave’s wife picked us up a drove us back to my house.
We ended up completing about 49 of our intended 92 miles. We hope to head back out soon to finish the rest.
