May 24, 2009 - Day 7

Starting from Fingerboard Shelter (New York)
Hiked 14 miles

Hiking today was a challenge. The trail continued to be rocky, which was bad enough, but the rocks were covered by leaves. Today’s stunt was performed by Turtle who planted his trekking pole on a rock covered by leaves which was immediately followed by the pole sliding off the rock while he tried to gain his balance. The acrobatic act resulted with the trekking pole being injured worse than the hiker. Thank goodness! The hiker's reported that the pole kind of had a 90 degree bend in it. Navigator did give Turtle a bit of a hard time, but then gallantly gave Turtle one of his trekking poles.

After lunch the hikers hit a bit of a roadblock. Turtle’s energy was low and he felt short of breath on the uphill climbs. In past years something similar to this happened to Turtle, but he was able to push on to the end of the day. This year seemed a little different so they decided to call home for support. Thanks to the Internet I was able to arrange for a taxi to pick them up at a road crossing and make hotel reservations in Fort Montgomery/Bear Mountain.

Turtle thinks that several things were working against him. First, they started out this year with a very aggressive hiking schedule, 17 to 18 miles nearly every day. Second, they terrain was harsher than anticipated and finally the temperatures and humidity were higher than expected. The lesson learned today was that adjusting is OK.

They decided to stretch out their plans for the next four days to five days. Instead of arriving in Kent on the 28th they will arrive on the 29th. It looks like they will be able to juggle their supplies with the trails resources (shelters and water sources) to make this happen.

Those of us at home are standing by to see what we can do, if anything, to make their journey better. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

Miles complete: 108.2 (Wow! 100 miles!)