woodford hollow to seth warner shelter

miles: 13.8 (11.6 + 2.2)

woke up late this morning. rags was already getting dressed. as we were packing up marilyn passed us on his way to the trail. we skipped both coffee and breakfast, instead planning to have it on top of harmon hill.

the climb out of woodford hollow was steep. hundreds of rocks set in the mountain as steps. it was tough on an empty stomach, but we made it.

above the steep section was flat open trail to the top. we passed a beautiful fern forest on the way up.

we arrived at the top of harmon hill and took the short spur trail to the view. there was a tent smack in the middle of the view. we took a quick photo and thought about having breakfast there, but opted to retreat up to the trail, but not before having a not so subtle conversation about our feelings of the tent right next to the tent. talking to other hikers through the day, it sounds like others had similar choice conversations to the tent.

we retreated back to the trail and had breakfast under a large birch tree surrounded by golden ferns.

hiked to congdon. crappy shelter, but a beautiful setting by a river. for some reason i’ve always let the run down shelter color the beauty of this spot. in the shelter there is some graffiti which every time i see it i feel like it distills why i’m out here, and frankly the long walk that is my life,

“journey not to find, but to accept yourself.”

we continued on, the trail roughly running beside stratford stream. we passed a number beaver ponds, stopping at the last one for lunch where we ran into batgirl, bb, and a section hiker from new jersey we had seen a couple times during the day.

batgirl and bb left before us, but we quickly caught up to them at some power lines which aside from the lines themselves, offered a fantastic view.

we hiked on, our next stop was the seth warner, however at county rd, 1 mile north of the shelter, we found a pouch that i recognized as belonging to the section hiker from new jersey. it contained some glasses which she had said she needed otherwise she couldn’t see her phone.

i grabbed the glasses and ran the mile to the shelter, some folks setting up camp said she had left 20 mins ago. i dropped my pack and ran down the trail after her, finally catching up to her after an additional 1.1 miles. she thanked me, telling me that she had realized they were gone but had decided not to go back for them.

i jogged the 1.1 miles back north to seth warner at a slower pace. it felt good to run.

i got to the blue blaze to seth warner and caught my shoe on a rock, tearing it clean open and sending me flat onto the trail. i lay in the middle of the trail for a moment looking at the unassuming rock i had tripped on.

rags had made it to the shelter, selected a tent site, and had tried to set up the tent. it did not go well. she had taken it down and tried again and while it was better, it still wasn’t going to fly. we had a brief tent pitching class, and at the end it looked great!

as it was still pretty early, we fixed some hot chocolate and ate some sour gummies at our tent site before moving to the shelter for dinner marilyn, bb, and batgirl. for all of us it was our last night on trail. a couple and guy with a dog were starting through hikes - their first night on trail. marilyn made a fire and as it was our last night on trail, we stayed up late telling stories. i’m not sure if we encouraged or scared the prospective new hikers. it was almost 20:00hr by the time we retired to our tent.

an additional photo from today: