The Long Path—Week Three
By William Tucker
In three weeks of hiking the Long Path from New York to Albany, I've often been amazed at how little has gone wrong. Therefore, when something finally did happen, it didn't surprise me that it was something big.
The trouble began late Saturday afternoon. My dog Augie and I had crossed Orange County, trekking suburban and rural roads with an occasional state park thrown in between. We've become trail-hardened, much more comfortable in the woods than in the hamlets we pass through. Around dusk we pick a woods by the side of the road, set up the tent, and cook a freeze-dried meal with my amazing Jetboil camp stove, which boils water in less than two minutes. Augie gets dried food plus the leftovers and we're asleep by nine o'clock. Then it's up at the crack of dawn. We've been making 10-12 miles a day, enough to keep us right on target for a month-long trip.
On Friday we reached the Shawangunks, the 1600-foot portion of the Appalachians that stretches from the Delaware River to the Hudson and features the most spectacular rock climbing walls in the East. On fall weekends you'll find 200 cars parked along the narrow mountain road while the cliffs swarm with mountaineers.
We come in from the west on Friday afternoon and camp on the ridge. We haven't seen anyone for miles. (On the whole trip I've only met two other hikers.) A brisk wind blows in from the north. After we endured 100-degree temperatures the first few days, it's actually gotten cold—down to the 40's at night.
The next day we face only a straight 10-mile hike to Sam's Point, a popular overlook. I have some friends in New Paltz and they're picking us up. My Verizon cell phone has been betraying me all trip, and almost dies—despite not having been used since its last charge—when I call my friends. I have just enough time to blurt out "I'll be at Sam's Point at 5:30" before the phone goes dead. Oh well, message got through.
We're off at dawn and everything goes smoothly. We make one mile per hour in the mountains so it's easy to calculate. By 2:30 we are three miles from Sam's Point with one more ridge to climb. Then the trouble begins.
I appreciate the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference and realize all their work is voluntary, but the Long Path is very poorly marked. Time and again we have lost the trail. You hit an open clearing and never know where to go next. Turns aren't marked, there are huge gaps between blazes, and the most obvious trees are consistently ignored in favor of almost invisible saplings right next to them. So as we start up the last steep incline toward Sam's Point, I am not surprised to find that once again we have lost the trail.
It started at the bottom of a big rock slide, so I decide to follow that up and find the trail from there. When we reach the top, however, the trail is nowhere in sight. It seems as if it should be to the west but I'm not certain. I hesitate to go that way because if we
miss it there is nothing but sixty miles of forest between us and Port Jervis. I check the map and straight ahead is a network of roads we are supposed to intersect. There is even a house visible on the side of the hill ahead. I orient the map, take a compass reading, and decide to strike out for the road half-a-mile ahead.
Unfortunately, we immediately find ourselves in a thicket of mountain laurel. I don't know whether you've ever had any experience with this stuff but it is a hiker's nightmare. The scrub trees grow in huge knotted tangles so dense that it's hard to get your feet on the
ground. My wife and I once got caught in a stand of mountain laurel while taking a "shortcut" in the Taconics and it took us two hours to make 100 yards. We literally climbed from bush to bush. I vowed never to do it again.
Yet here I am again stuck in a forest of mountain laurel. I hack my way through about 25 yards and suddenly realize Augie is no longer behind me. I call and holler but there is no response. I put my pack under a forked tree—one I can easily pick out—and retrace
my steps back to the rock slide. There is no barking, not a sound.
For about an hour I can't find him. Finally I make my way back to the forked tree, sit down for a few minutes and listen. The wind dies for a moment and I hear whimpering. I follow it back and find him huddled under a laurel bush, his pack tangled in the branches. He never barks.
I take his pack and we thrash our way back to our gear. Now what do we do? I decide to keep pushing for the road. We find some downed trees and are able to climb along them but in another half hour we have made only a short distance. My instinct is to keep going but I finally realize this is doing us no good. Struggling through this jungle we are losing things left and right. My Long Path Guide Book and map are gone. So is the rope I had taken from Augie's pack in case I had to pull him along. Finally we come to a big pine tree with a clear, rocky space around it. I decide to sit down and think things through.
"S.T.O.P." is what they tell you in Boy Scouts—"Stop, think, observe, plan." We aren't going to be able to get out of here before dark. We filled our canteens at a beautiful mountain stream in the last valley and have lots of water. We can survive for days. Then I realize my watch is gone—another casualty of the laurel. About two months ago, however, I accidentally set the alarm and never figured out how to turn it off. It was waking me at 6 a.m. every morning. So I finally set it to the most innocuous time—5:30 weekend afternoons. Now I hear it going off. I follow the sound and find it hanging in a
laurel tree at eye level fifteen yards back.
It becomes a strange evening. I hear voices nearby. "Hello! We're lost out here," I call but there is no response. Am I hallucinating? Then I realize the voices are coming from hang-gliders overhead. The Gunks are a great place for soaring as well. As darkness falls we can hear car radios. Still, we’re trapped in a forest of mountain laurel. I pitch the tent on a pile of boulders at a 45-degree angle. We both find niches, though, and sleep very soundly.
With the clarity of morning, I decide that pushing on is useless. We will have to leave most of my gear and go back to try to find the trail. I fill Augie's pack with a few essentials—first aid kit, canteens, my journal—and we start back down the mountain.
Mercifully, we hit a patch of blueberries. Not only are they nourishing, you can walk right through them. We follow the blueberry latitudes to the west and in about a quarter-mile hit the trail. That was easier than I thought. Now I decide to go back and get my gear. But when we hit the mountain laurel I once again get lost. We thrash around for another hour until—miraculously—we come upon the trail where it apparently loops back to the east as it climbs the slope. I decide I have had enough and follow it out.
At the road my friends have left a big sign telling me where to call. When we make Sam's Point—another hour's walk—the visitors' center is expecting us. "You're the guy with the dog hiking the Long Path, right? Your friends were here an hour ago."
Finally we are reunited around noon—but we're going to have to go back up on the mountain tomorrow to hunt my gear.
New Paltz is 90 miles north of New York, more than halfway to Albany. The Catskills are still ahead, though, and the weather is getting colder. Family responsibilities are beginning to weigh in, and I don't know whether I am going to make it this time. One thing is certain. I have a much greater love for the outdoors than when I began—and a greater respect for it as well.
This is William Tucker’s last Right Idea column for The American Enterprise Online. Readers can pick up his column next week at www.spectator.org.
