Allegheny Pilgrimage: Day 2, North Country Trail from Handsome Lake to Hemlock Run

 

Sunrise over Handsome Lake Campground, with mists still on the waters and in the woods.  On Wednesday I set out at 7:30am and told myself that an early start is always best when doing a "through hike" with quantifiable distances to attain each day.  I was convinced that I would start by 7:30 every day of my pilgrimage, and in retrospect I wonder what gave me so much confidence in myself.  

The fresh green of the springtime forest is especially lovely when backlit by the golden morning sun.  It was a beautiful day for walking among ferns and hemlocks.

I did about 10 miles a day on the NCT.  This stretch of the hike was pleasant, but it does feature two road crossings and one roadside trek of about a quarter mile.

Despite these brushes with the motorized world, I encountered not another soul on the trail all day.  Chafing started to become an issue.  I thought regular old boxer shorts would serve better than briefs, and I was wrong.  In the end, it proved best to forego underwear altogether.  Fortunately, I brought some other skin ointment that worked well on the abraded skin.  Later, at the Rite Aid in Kane, I would find a product that was made especially for hiker's chafing. 

It was nearly a perfect day in the woods--though I lost my beautiful Protestant prayer beads, the ones with jasper stones and a copper Celtic cross.

Water is almost never an issue in the Allegheny National Forest.  There's always a brook, or a creek, or a "run," which is something in between the two.

Silence and Solitude were my companions.  Portions of this trail I had hiked before, but most of it was new to me.  I wondered how I lived here without having explored every square foot of this forest.  But that is one of the things I most miss about this place: I discovered something new each time I went out.

There's just SOOO MUCH to discover up there.

And 3.5 years is not nearly enough time to squeeze it all in.  By the time we moved away, I had only just begun to know that marvelous place.  By the way, this is the first time I ever hiked using two trekking poles, and I think it really helped my speed and balance.  It returns your bipedal self to a quadrupedal design, which redistributes weight and effort to four limbs instead of two.  

The Hemlock Run campsite is a little dark and forlorn.  It straddles the trail, with the fire ring on one side and the tent area on the other.  I typically prefer to sleep out of sight of the trail, but it was less easy than I'd expected finding areas suitable for setting up the hammock tent--pictured here.

See how the trail runs right through the site?

In the interest of giving myself easier evenings, I stopped hanging a bear bag on this trip.  Instead, I invested in some odor-proof plastic bags and a bear-proof sack--which I simply dangled from any tree branch.  It's a lot more convenient when you're pitching camp just before dark.