Today is miles 19. AT miles 1272.9
We were up and back at Bert's Steakhouse at 7:30am for breakfast. We both ordered blueberry pancakes, three medium sized pancakes arrived each plus maple syrup, they were delicious and very filling. When ordering pancakes we never know what size the pancakes will be or how many we'll get, it varies from place to place. After breakfast we walked to the edge of town where we stood trying to get a hitch back to the trail. After about 15 minutes a lovely lady stopped and picked us up, she said she regularly gives hikers lifts. It was only just over a mile to the trailhead but along a very busy road, illegal to walk along.
Immediately this morning on the trail we were in to a steep and rocky uphill climb from Lehigh Gap. A rocky gravel path to start then large rocks and boulders to climb and scramble over on the Mountain top where there were great views. Very similar to some rocky mountain tops/ridges in the UK except we don't normally carry 30lb packs over those, you wouldn't want to lose your balance, that'd definitely be the end of the trail. We both like these bigger rock climbs/scrambles, it's the smaller rocky paved/lined paths that are a pain in the butt. They're tiring, it's constantly like doing a rock puzzle working out where to put your feet - on the rocks or in the gaps between and avoiding all the sharp pointy knife edge rocks and loose wobbly rocks. After the bigger rocks the trail came out onto an open deforested ridge due to zinc smelting in the past.
From the summit the trail took a four mile detour running slightly below the summit on a completely contrasting grassy path which felt like it followed old railway inclines/tracks from the zinc smelting days. There were great views back down to Palmerton. After the detour though we hit rocks again! The rocky path theme continued for most of the day. After about thirteen miles we stopped at Smith Gap for a break in the sun, it was another warm sunny day. Another three and a half miles after the gap we reached Leroy A Smith shelter. We just stopped here to fill up our camp water bottles with water. We planned on walking another three or so miles and stealth camping, there were no camp spots marked in our guide. There was no other water source marked either so we needed to get water and carry it to camp, well Nigel carried it, 4 litres of extra water - that's heavy!
We found a camp spot just before Hahn's overlook. Just as we arrived at 6pm and started putting the tent up it started raining, we sheltered under the tent fly briefly. Luckily it was a very quick shower so we managed to get the tent pitched before it started raining again. There were a few short heavy showers and thunder in the evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment