HEAT AND HUMIDITY

AT Day 090  Thursday July 6, 2023

Mile 1529 + 11.5 miles/18.5 km

Total Distance Hiked: 1540.5 miles/ 2478.7 km

Great Barrington – South Mount Wilcox Shelters 

A: 2959 ft /902.5 m  D: 1798 ft/ 548 m

A local Trail Angel, Joe offered to pick us up at 10am and give us a ride to the trailhead. On the short trip over he was telling us about the stats he collects on the hikers he shuttles. Interesting to see his spreadsheets from 2022 on hiker numbers across the months, number of men and women and country or US state of origin. Interesting also that over the years he has collected figures on pack brands hikers are carrying. Not surprisingly Osprey is dominant.   

Once back on trail we followed a relatively short flat section of section of trail through cornfields along the Housatonic River. Just before we left the corn fields behind and starting a long climb up June Mountain  we met Amy and Tim who are the parents of a hiker we’ve met a couple of times now on trail. They live in Maine and are here supporting their son ‘TripleP’ for a couple of days. We chatted to them for a little while about their son who hiked Mt Katahdin when he was 6 years old. Hammer and I commented on his confidence on this trail when we first met him, he is only 18. Now we know the reason. It was nice to meet Amy and Time and learn a little bit more about their background. I hope we get to meet them again in Maine. TripleP passed us southbound just as we neared the summit of June Mountain. 

From here the trail undulated with lots of short steep ups and downs. Not many spots to relax and just hike. The Mountain Laurel stands lining  the trail have almost all lost their flowers. There were a few holdouts along the way. Sections of the trail were waterlogged from recent rains. This made for slow progress trying to avoid stepping and sinking into sticky mud. In addition,  the heat and humidity were really challenging today.  Around midday temperature was around 35°C (90F) with humidity around 65%, although it felt a lot higher then that.  It was the warmest day we’ve had on trail. 

We were  running low on water by 2pm so we stopped at the Tom Leonard shelter for a lunch break.  It was nice to take the pack off and hopefully dry our, freshly laundered but now sweat soaked, hiking clothes.  It was a nice spot and tempting to call it a day way too early. Of course we didn’t. 

A couple of miles from our lunch stop,  we crossed a relatively busy road, Route 23 and entered a trailhead car park and here we met another Trail Angel,  Joe who was providing some trail magic. We couldn’t eat anything but the couple of icy cold drinks were an amazing gift on a hot day. Joe is from Boston and is hiking the Massachusetts section of the AT and in-between providing some trail magic. This was so welcomed and Joe even packed us a beer in a bag of ice to have when we reached the ledges on the  summit of a climb which followed Route 23. 

It was after 5:00 by the time we made it to the ledge to enjoy the view and a beer that Joe packed for us.  The view was very nice. In the distance we  could see Mt Everitt which we traversed a couple of days ago. It seems so much further away then the separation distance suggests.  We had around 3 miles to go before we reached our destination shelter for the day. The sky looked ominously dark to the north.  So I checked the weather forecast again and was so surprised to see that a thunderstorm was likely in about an hour. 

So we cut our rest stop short and headed off the ledge. We decided to stop at the first shelter which was about a mile away.  As we quickly descended off the ledges, rolling thunder could be heard in the distance. I dreaded being caught out in another thunderstorm. Hammer was not so worried. Thunder continued for a little while without any rainfall and then it slowly got further away.  We could hear a rumble in the distance after we set up camp. There is no one else staying at or around the shelter. We met only one northbound hiker today, Toto whom we’ve met briefly in Harpers Ferry. He passed us around lunchtime. I’m still surprised by how lonely this trail can feel at times.