May 17
End: Hemlock Springs Campsite
Miles: 31.9
Total: 3262.3
My alarm was set to go off very early, so I didn’t actually get up until about an hour after it went off. Even so, when I left the shelter, everyone else was still in their sleeping bags.
It was a long, rough day. I was worrying about where I would finish the day from the beginning because I knew that the shelters were few and far between. I would have to set a new personal distance record for the day just to get to the first shelter past the thirty mile mark.
I was basically resigned to the fact that I would not be sleeping in a shelter, and that didn’t help me to progress either. Every climb was very rocky, and required gigantic steps and leaps upward instead of normal hiking. I also went through the Lemon Squeezer, a narrow passage between two large rocks.
I started to get nice views later in the day. After a long climb, I could see New York City off in the distance. It was a lot of fun to see the most populous city in America from the Appalachian Trail, even if the view wasn’t exactly from total wilderness. The top of Bear Mountain was also nice, and I liked having a well-manicured path to walk down to the park below.
Sadly, incredible frustration ensued as I tried to figure out what happened to the Appalachian Trail. I finally figured out that the geniuses who blazed the trail put it right through a zoo which had closed hours before I got there. I walked the road to the Bear Mountain Bridge after having wasted almost half an hour.
As evening approached, it became obvious that the farthest I could go was the Hemlock Springs Campsite. It took awhile to get there, and it was unmarked, but I found it. Glad that there was no rain approaching, I had dinner and set up camp under the stars.
