Well, I originally set up this account to try to keep track of my hikes and to be able to somewhat record them as well as tell other about my experiences. Once again however, life got in the way and it fell by the wayside. I never forgot that this blog was here I just never really took the initiative to get around to being serious about it. 2012 is hopefully the year that this site begins to grow and expand with a little bit more effort on my part.
After I created this blog in 2010 I set out to begin work on section hiking the New York Long Path. This is a long distance hiking trail running 345 miles from Fort Lee National Historic Park at the base of the George Washington Bridge just outside New York City to Thacher State Park in Altamont, NY (about 15 miles away from where I live). In the spring of 2010 I was very empowered to start working on sections of this trail as it is a long distance trail that less than 100 people have ever completed in its entirety (officially). This was going to be a different long distance trail for me however as I planned to do the entire trail in roughly 25-30 day hikes instead of a thru-hike. The trick with thru-hiking is that you have either have to be unemployed or have the ability to get weeks or months off of your job to be able to hike an entire trail. At the time when I started doing day hikes on the long path I was employed and I was content working piece by piece southwards from Altamont. From March through May of 2010 I was able to piece together over 75 miles on 7 seperate day hikes and felt as though there was a good chance that I would be able to make it through the entire trail in one hiking season. This is where life somewhat got in the way. I wound up quitting my full time job which would have made hiking a lot easier for a period of time, but I felt guilty that instead of looking for a job I was out hiking instead. I was able to actually find a "Job" which involved hiking though it was only for a very small period of time and a very small bit of money. I was working as a weekend ridgerunner on the Appalachian Trail in Connecticut and Massachusetts every other weekend throughout the summer. The piece of mind was great, but I couldn't live off of this so I had to be constantly looking for something that was more lucrative and stable. Hiking fell by the wayside a bit as a result of my job hunting. I got back out once more in the middle of the summer with a friend of mine named Nat, but just couldn't find the ability to work out many more trips as I moved farther and farther away from the Altamont/Albany area. In 2011 I was able to get out early again at the beginning of April and start filling in some gaps I had left in the trail in 2010, however on my very first trip out I strained my right calf pretty bad postholing through more snow than I expected to encounter on the high ridges in the Catskills. Even though I was able to get out again a few weeks later, I aggrivated the injury further and pretty much didn't hike again the entire summer as it took that long to get healed up. That brings me to 2012 which I will elaborate on in further posts.
In the meantime, a little bit about section-hiking a long trail.
The trick with trying to section hike a long trail and do it in very small pieces is transportaion. If you are hiking a mountain, you can drive to the trailhead, park your car, hike up and down the mountain and return back to your car without a problem. However, if you are trying to hike 10-20 miles in one direction along a set trail you eventually wind up 10-20 miles away from where you started and need a way to get back to your car where you started. I have hitchhiked a lot in my life, but for the purposes of the Long Path it is extremely unpractical. Most of this trail traverses either remote regions in the mountains where there are no major roadways to hitch from, or it traverses through very rural areas with obscure trail crossings in the middle of nowhere with only local traffic that will be very few and far between and not as willing to drive you back to where you started from. So because of this, it is almost necessary if just doing day trips to utilize two vehicles in the process. I either need to convince somebody (of nescessary hiking ability) to hike with me whereas we leave one car at one end and another car at the other end, or I need someone at least willing to take a drive and drop my car off then deliver me to the other end so I can hike back to my own car. This last method was very practical the closer I was to home, but the farther I move away from home and the more time and gas consuming it becomes to help me out the more difficult it has been to find people willing to donate their time. So I have been left to try to convince friends that they want to come with me on these hikes. For the most part I have some active friends who are willing, the problem is in my lifestyle and my profession. I am a bartender, and for the most part the best money to make is on the days people drink the most which is Friday-Sunday. Unfortunately these are the days I have to work even though these are the same days that most of my friends who are willing to hike have off. As of right now at this moment my days off are Mondays and Thursdays and it is really hard to find people who have those same days off and are willing to take off into the woods with me.
The other trick to this trail is that because it is mostly 20-40 miles west of major roads (i.e. I-87), some of the access can be tricky to get to. I have completed most of the northern half of the trail through the central Catskill Mountains, but the farther I get away from Albany the longer the drive to and from access has become. Right now if I were to stage 2 cars I would be looking at roughly 1 1/2 hours driving time on each end of the trip even to the closest uncompleted sections. This driving time will only increase the farther I get from Albany and the closer I get to NYC. And even though I have significant sections left of real forest and mountain hiking, I have a lot of sections (probably about 40 total miles worth) with roadwalks left in them. It is hard getting people excited about driving 1-2 hours to park their car and walk a road for 10-15 miles and then get back in their car and drive home, so some of these roadwalks are going to need to be done on my own somehow.
It has been challenging but I have found my way to completing exactly 131.75 miles thus far or roughly 40% of the trail. Hopefully I can continue to keep updating as the hiking season progresses on both the Long Path and any other outdoor ventures that come my way this summer.
In the meantime...
keep on keeping on
Todd "Patch" Everleth
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