Holy hell if you could smell this room.
4 hikers, 4 drenched bags, 4 dirty bodies, and 4 pairs of musty, muddy shoes.
But so glad we're here.
This past week wasn't exactly a fun one. Its rained every day since last Friday, and even a night at the "hotel" Doyle in Duncannon didnt dry our stuff out. Adam had a shitty day into town on the rocks, scared the crap out of me with his fall, and broke a pole. Duncannon was a nice little break, with delicious cold beer and laundry, but the moment we left the rains started again and soaked us once again.
Side note on the claim of "waterproof." Why do you have to lie to me so? Why treat me so bad? Baby? No seriously. The lie hurts. Unless you are rubber or plastic i'm pretty sure your label should say "waterproof only in light rain. Otherwise will get all your shit wet and laugh as you shiver."
Anyway - left the luxury od Duncannon, aiming for a shelter 11 miles out. We left late in the day after one last beer, and apparently right before a monsoon. The rains really picked up at 2 critical points - when we crossed the river by a super heavy highway (trash trucks spraying us was a highlight) and later when we climbed the mountain and hiked on the ridge of the mountain. Thats when the thunderstorm also came through. Fantastic moment to be holding metal poles.
But the kicker was when, after deciding to punk out and head to the closer shelter only 5 miles out, we took the wrong blue blaze trail. The trail wasnt marked in our book, was about the right spot to be the shelter, but wasnt marked. We took it ALMOST all the way down the mountain before finally confering the book in the pouring rain to realize this was wrong.
And as soon as we got to the shelter, on the correct blue blaze trail, it stopped raining....
The next day, to make up in mileage we set out for the a shelter 25 miles away. Longest day yet. Actually a fairly decent day, weatherwise, until the end. We had about 2 miles to go, it was dark, and the trail had turned into a series of ponds. So obviously the next step was rain...we finally see lights and think it must be the shelter, but instead its our friends Treebeard and Stormsong. Apparently the shelter is full with weekend hikers and any hope of drying out our stuff and getting out of the rain was gone. But because they rock, they found a good camp site and showed us the way. Setting up the tent in the rain wasnt fun, but at that point just glad to be done!
Soooo...today we woke up to rain, and the four of us made a fairly quick decision to hike 6 miles to rt 72 and go into Lickdale, where a Days Inn boasted a hot tub.
Hot tub apparently broke down this afternoon, but we are dry, we have beer, and if all goes well, we might have a Yuengling brewery tour in our future.
I'm fairly certain we should convince Yuengling to sponsor our hike. We'll keep you updated on that...