Mason-Dixon Line and Rocksylvania

We're officially in the North. We crossed the Mason-Dixon Line this week and are over half way through Pennsylvania or what's commonly referred to as Rocksylvania. As you'll see and read in  the posts below, PA is extremely rocky and one the most disliked sections of the entire trail. The terrain in this state is mostly covered in rocks from the size of a golf ball to a suitcase, with a few boulder fields as well. If it were just boulder fields it wouldn't so bad but unfortunately it's more of the latter. There are so many of these smaller rocks that's it's nearly impossible not to step on them, they're also very pointy. One hiker described it as the trail being covered in small tips of icebergs sticking trough the ground, everywhere. It has definitely made for some very sore feet and cursing rocks and the state of PA.

6/22/14
Day: 77
Starting: Harper's Ferry, WV 1019.6
Ending: Dalghren Backpack Campground 1037.8
Total: 18.2

After dropping off the rental car and putting the finishing touches on the blog, we headed out of Harper's Ferry a little after 10:00. The trail went through the historic part of town.

I would definitely like to come back and spend more time here. Half of the city is a National Park with restored buildings from the 18th and early 19th century with reencters from those periods.

We hiked about two miles out of town along the old C&O Canal Towpath on a nice, flat crushed stone biking/hiking trail. I was very happy with this flat terrain as I was wearing a new pair shoes that haven't been broken in yet.

The AT breaks off from the towpath trail and crosses a parking lot then heads into the forest. As we were walking across the parking lot a hiker in the back of a pick up asked if we wanted to slack pack. My initial reaction was yes but I have no idea who you are and I don't know if I'm 100% comfortable leaving 98% of my gear with a complete stranger in a parking lot. Jessica on the other hand apparently didn't have the same trepidation as I did as she immediately said yes and was already pulling her pack off of her back before I could say anything. We had just resupplied in Harper's Ferry with 5 days of food so our packs were very heavy. 

After chatting with the guy for a few minutes I felt a little better about the situation so we emptied our packs, kept our lunch and water and headed on our way. He was taking our packs 3 miles further than we had planned on going so it was nice not only having much lighter packs but also getting in some extra mileage.

The hike went by rather quickly with fairly good terrain and no real hills to climb. We ended up seeing our slackpack trail angel about two miles sooner than expected. It made me feel good to see that he didn't take off with our stuff.

On top of the slackpack, he took us to the South Mountain Creamery a few miles from the trail. It's a working dairy farm that has a storefront that sells fresh dairy products. We each enjoyed a pint of delicious ice cream.

Overall, it was a great day!

Day: 78

Starting: Dalghren Backpack Campground 1037.8
Ending: Raven Rock Shelter 1055.6
Total: 17.8

Another day of slack packing!! Sheperd stayed at the same campground as we did and offered to take our gear 16 miles ahead. We would liked to have gone a few more miles but our packs felt twice as heavy when we put them on for the last 1.8 miles. 

We passed by the original Wahington monument which is a smaller version than the one found in DC.

Day: 79

Starting: Raven Rock Shelter 1055.6
Ending: Caledonia State Park 1078.8
Total: 23.2

 

We reached a big milestone today by crossing the Mason-Dixon. We've heard once you get into the north prices go up and hospitality goes down. We've even heard some restaurants in certain New England states don't allow hikers. On one hand, I understand because there are days where we're pretty ripe, especially after a four or five day stretch of 80 degree weather without a shower.  So I can understand why the owner of a restaurant would not want patrons, other than hikers, to have to endure the stench of hikers. But on the other hand, if you have hikers coming to your restaurant there's probably a good chance you're within walking distance of the trail so you should try to accommodate hikers not discriminate against them. Also, from a business perspective hikers eat a lot and I mean a lot! I can easily eat enough food for two to three people in one sitting and usually do and most hikers, if not all, have just as big appetites and are willing and able to spend the money to eat well.

We ended the day at a state park with a really nice pool that we couldn't pass up. We swam for an hour with Smurf and Grey Beard, two guys from Ohio that we've been leap frogging with for the few days and Yote from Hendersonville, TN.

Jessica enjoying ice cream after a refreshing swim

Day: 80

Starting: Caledonia State Park 1078.8
Ending: Pine Grove Furnace State Park 1097.9
Total: 19.1

Another big milestone today! We crossed over the geographic midpoint for 2014 at 1092.2. It makes me happy that we'll now have less miles ahead of us than behind even though there are still a lot of miles ahead.

The midway point marker is pretty funny and a somewhat sad. Several years ago they built a nice permanent midpoint sign, the problem is the trail changes every year. It's actually longer now than when we started. So for the 2014 midpoint they've taken a picture of the permanent sign. Here are a couple pictures of the picture of the sign and the actual sign itself.

Jessica showing some love to the old marker.

There's a tradition that once you reach the half way point you must complete the half-gallon challenge. It's eating a half gallon of ice cream in one sitting. This is completed at the Pine Grove Furnace State Park General Store.

We both chose mint chocolate chip as our flavor for the challenge. I completed mine in twenty minutes with relative ease, I actually ate a cheeseburger right after I completed it because I was still hungry. Jessica on the other hand found it a little more challenging. She ended up completing it in 35 minutes.

Trying to put on a happy face for the camera although she wasn't feeling very happy. (Runny Nose and Joe from Germany are in the background, we've been flip flopping with them since TN)

Challenge?? More like an "appetreat" I was ready for another one

Thankfully, the hostel we stayed at that night was right next door so we didn't have far to walk. The hostel is a beautifully renovated 1829 mansion that was once home to a local ironmaster.

In 19th century the hostel also served as a safe house as part of the Underground Railroad. It had a secret room that housed runaway slaves during the day. The room was essentially the crawl space of the house. 

Entrance to the secret room under the staircase.

Day: 81

Starting: Pine Grove Furnace State Park 1097.9
Ending: Boiling Springs, PA 1117.5
Total: 20

Today started with a beautiful walk out if the park on a flat, crushed stone trail with beams of sunshine coming through the trees.

I wish all of the trail was like this!!

Unfortunately, the nicely groomed trail only lasted a couple miles. Shortly after that we had the first of two rock mazes...

Me maneuvering through the rock maze.

We finished the day at Boiling Springs PA and stayed at the Allenberry Inn & Playhouse. The Allenberry is a large resort style hotel with a theater on the grounds. They have an older hotel type building where the actors and actresses live, if there's availability, they offer rooms to hikers for a great price. Thankfully, they had a room for us that night. In the basement of the same building was the PA Fly Fishing Museum. 

An exhibit at the fly fishing museum.

Day: 82

Starting: Boiling Springs, PA 1117.5
Ending: Cove Mountain Shelter 1139.1
Total: 21.6

Today, the dreaded Pennsylvania rocks we've heard so much about began.

What trail?? All I see is a pile of rocks.

In addition to the rocky terrain it was a hot day with temps reaching the low 90's. The hiking has never been easy but with the heat and the rocks it's starting to get real. With each day that passes, I have a better understanding of why only 30% who set out to thru-hike the entire trail actually finish.

Day: 83

Starting: Cove Mountain Shelter 1139.1

Ending: Clark's Ferry Shelter 1147.4
Total: 8.3

The over abundance of rocks on the trail continued today. Thankfully, it was a short day as we stopped in Duncannon midday to resupply and have lunch at The Doyle.

The Doyle is a 100 year old hotel that now serves as a hiker hostel and restaurant. The place can be best described as a dive but it's very hiker friendly and the food is really good. We enjoyed burgers and a beer and hung out there for a few hours getting to know fellow thru-hikers we haven't met yet. One of them was Neon, a young guy from New Hampshire. We hit it off with Neon because he started on the same day as us but he did the 8 mile approach trail that we didn't do. It's still pretty incredible it's been almost three months and this is the first time meeting each other.

The Doyle

After resupplying and hanging out, we finished the day with a short four mile hike to the shelter.

Day: 84

Starting: Clark's Ferry Shelter 1147.4

Ending: Rausch Gap Shelter 1172.1
Total: 24.7

Neon ended up staying at the same shelter as us. He headed out before us but we caught up to him at lunch so we ended up hiking the second half of the day with him. We normally just hike with the two of us so the company was nice. We got to know each other and had some great discussions comparing New England and Southern cultures.

It was a long day but felt much quicker talking with Neon.

Day: 85

Starting: Rausch Gap Shelter 1172.1

Ending: 501 Shelter 1189.6
Total: 17.5

The rocks continue!! We hiked most of the day with Neon. All I can say about today is, hiking in PA is miserable. The rocks are like meat tenderizers on the feet. I haven't been this sore at the end of day since we started.

On a more positive note, we had our first bear encounter outside of Shenandoah. We heard rustling off in the distance and immediately knew it was more than a small chipmunk or squirrel. After a few seconds of surveying the area where the noise was coming from, we saw a large bear climbing down a tree about fifty feet from us. Soon after, two cubs followed the first bear down the tree. Over the past couple of days we've heard from two hikers who were charged by a mother bear with two cubs so we didn't want to hang around to experience that. It was very obvious the mom was on guard as the two cubs climbed down, thankfully for us they were close to the top of the ridge. As soon as the second one made its way down they crossed to the other side of the ridge.

Day: 86

Starting: 501 Shelter 1189.6

Ending: Port Clinton, PA 1213.7
Total: 24.1

We got our earliest start today, 6:40 AM.  We wanted to get to town and our hotel room as early as possible.

Today was the most difficult day of hiking thus far for me. Of the 24 miles we hiked today, I would guess 22 miles of was on rocks. We also accidentally got off trail twice today, the second time we ended up on a large boulder field.

Not happy about wasting time and energy on a boulder field.

Neon maneuvering through the boulder field.

We ran into Runny Nose who passed as we were getting ready to start hiking again from a short break, so we hiked with him for a short while and caught up a bit. During our conversation he asked if we had seen any snakes lately, in particular any rattlesnakes. He was saying how he hasn't seen any throughout the entire trip. We told him we thankfully haven't seen any lately. His pace was a bit faster than ours and our feet were in too much pain to keep up so we let him get ahead of us.  It couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes after we lost sight of him that I nearly stepped on a rattlesnake. I was walking along in front of Jessica and out of nowhere I hear this loud rattle at my feet, I immediately leaped three feet forward and nearly had a heart attack. I turned around and saw the tail of a timber rattlesnake slithering away from the trail. It must have crossed the trail between us and Runny Nose because when we caught up with him later he hadn't seen the snake.

Thankfully, the day ended with a shower, bed and pizza.

Day: 87

Starting/Ending: Port Clinton, PA 1213.7

Total: 0

We took a zero day in Hamburg, PA today to rest up and resupply. Jessica also bought new shoes. 

Overall, it was another good section of hiking. We're still making good progress and other than being very sore we're in good health. Which we're very thankful for as we learned that Trippy contracted lyme disease. Trippy and Cowboy are a couple we met a few weeks ago and hiked with for a couple of days. They're in between our ages and we shared an uncanny amount of similarities between us. We were hoping to see them soon but she's taking some time off the trail to recover.

We're anxious to get out of PA because we've heard the rocks continue and in some places get even worse. We're not only excited to get out of PA next week but we're also looking forward to going to Lake Cumberland next weekend. It will be nice to have a four day break from the trail to hopefully let our body's rest and recuperate a bit.

Hope all is well back in the civilized world!  Thank you for your interest and your support, we appreciate it!!

Happy trails,

Z & Gia