Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail (27 page)

At the Pavilion I ran into the notorious Troll family for the first time. Troll was a thirty-seven-year-old from Washington state who was attempting to lead his wife, Anchor, and ten-year-old son, Oblivious, the entire length of the trail. Anchor was career Navy and always hiked behind her husband and son, thus occasioning her trail name. Oblivious was your typical happy-go-lucky ten-year-old boy who was blissfully oblivious to all problems. Their signature characteristic was the dark Scottish kilts they wore.

“Kilts are lighter, more durable, and cause fewer rashes,” Troll said. “It was a no-brainer.” Because of their outfits and having a ten-year-old kid bidding to thru-hike, they were among the most well-known hiking groups on the AT.

A sixty-seven-year-old psychiatrist named Chronic Fatigue Syndrome also was on hand in the pavilion. “This is my third thru-hike on the AT,” he said, “and my wife calls me a repeat offender.”

After a night in the pavilion I resolved to hike out with this eclectic cast, regardless of the rain. The biggest surprises in hiking ability were Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at age sixty-seven and Oblivious at age ten.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome had picked up his name because of his constant state of exhaustion from maintaining a whirlwind pace all day. He indeed had the face of a sixty-seven-year-old, but with his erect posture and confident gait could be mistaken for an NFL running back from a distance. But then none of this should have come as a surprise when I found out what state he was from: New Hampshire. He also added a touch of class to the trail with his considerable erudition. He could discourse at length on Freud and other worldly topics, which represented a significant elevation from the normal level of trail gossip.

Oblivious had an unusually confident and erect stride for a ten-year-old. He was always ahead of his mother, who anchored the group, and he never complained. At the end of the day he was the one who had enough energy left to dutifully go, often down steep hills, to find water. He weighed seventy-five pounds and was carrying a fifteen-pound backpack, which put his pack/body weight ratio at 20 percent; around the trail norm. The family slept in one big tent that Troll carried, and cooked dinner in one big pot that they ate out of with separate spoons. Before going to bed Troll searched their bodies closely with his headlamp for ticks.

They had started March 15, and I reckon any early observer of them back in Georgia would have been very dubious about their chances of making it this far. But they got up and out early every day and hiked long hours to make up for their relative lack of speed. It was an impressive effort to watch.

One night at the Allentown Hiking Club Shelter we sat in our sleeping bags and the discussion turned to bears. “Hopefully, everybody here is quite aware just which body part a bear eats first,” I said.

“Your stomach,” Troll said flatly.

“Bears don’t eat you,” Anchor said, sounding surprised.

“Troll,” I stated in as serious tone as I could muster, “you’ve taken your family on an epic journey and haven’t even investigated the most imminent threat to them.”

“Okay, I’ve got it,” Oblivious said. “Bears eat your legs so you can’t run away.”

“No, they eat your head,” I lectured them. “They like dessert first.”

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was listening in on this morbid discussion and said, “Let’s see Skywalker. The word in Latin for bear is ‘ursu.’ You have ursuphobia.” With this formal diagnosis by a clinical psychologist, the adjective “ursuphobia” attached to my identity, second only to tall.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome then said, “Just ponder this over all night, Skywalker. On a still, windless day—when you see a clump of bushes moving—you’ve got company.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “That sounds like the Viet Cong.”

Oblivious warmed to the subject and it was clear that he was different from so many modern-day kids. In this age of cell phones and iPod’s, when so many kids tune adults out, he actually enjoyed talking to adults. Finally, his father said, “Shut up, Oblivious. I’m not carrying you in my backpack tomorrow.”

From there on out, whenever I would clear a hill and see the Troll family down below I would begin screaming at the top of my lungs, “Bear, bear, bear.”

Oblivious would then yell back, “Everybody, cover your head.”

More than once, a concerned-looking stranger would approach, to say in a hushed voice, “Excuse me, did I hear there is a bear nearby?”

“No worries,” Troll would assure the frightened individual. “He just has ursophobia.”

Chapter 15

“T
his is hell in its full glory, coming up,” Chronic Fatigue Syndrome said.

We were now in eastern Pennsylvania in the worst of the rocks. Some were giant boulders that often necessitated using both hands to advance. These were usually in exposed areas, where the heat was worst in the middle of the summer. It was said that you could hear rattlesnakes under these boulders, but I never stuck around to listen. However, I once saw a big rattlesnake sunning on the boulder next to the one I was traversing. Another time I put my hand on a boulder to heave myself up and when my eyes cleared the surface of the boulder I saw my hands were less than a foot from a snake of undetermined type.

In the searing sun it was often difficult to see the white blazes on rocks. The downhills were especially dreadful. Once I ended up on the side of a hill in a huge series of boulders, with no blaze in sight. All I could do was laboriously and angrily retrace my steps, until I finally found the trail again.

But mostly this section was small, flat, sharp-edged stumble-stones for miles on end. The brand-new hiking shoes I had picked up thirteen days before at my sister’s house were already severely mangled by the constant banging against sharp rocks. Because it wasn’t terribly hilly it was especially frustrating. Everybody thought they should be going fast, but couldn’t. Plus, my feet were hurting like hell. Up to this point I had often nursed sore feet at night, but never anything as anguishing as this.

Troll had a propensity to fly off the handle easily. One afternoon after a thunderstorm he arrived at a campsite in an extremely agitated state. “This Appalachian Trail is the worst designed bleeping trail I’ve ever been on,” he ranted, his face turning crimson-red. “They constantly route it over PUD’s and through rock fields.”

I asked Anchor, “What’s a PUD?”

“A purposeless up and down,” she replied. It was said of the AT that it never left a hill unpassed and that the trail was constantly re-routed to incorporate pointless ups and downs. The AT is like some old-time religion,” wrote one frustrated hiker. “It heads for the top of every mountain.” However, the ATC staunchly rebutted this charge, saying that every hill the trail covered fit into a grander purpose.

As for Troll’s charge that the AT was
needlessly
routed through rock fields, all I could see anywhere, both on and to the side of the trail, were rocks everywhere. I had never, ever had any idea that the wilderness could be so rocky. It was daunting, almost overwhelming.

In Pennsylvania’s rocky section hikers also hit the driest forty-mile stretch on the AT. On a Sunday afternoon everybody was trying to hike all the way to Palmerton, where hikers are allowed to stay for free in the old county jail. This, of course, spurred many jokes, but the lack of water was no laughing matter. After ten miles that afternoon, with no water in sight, several of us arrived expectantly at the aptly named Bake Oven Knob Shelter. The data book listed a water source here, but the spring was a steep two hundred yards down from the shelter. “I’ll go check it,” Ug said. Fifteen minutes later he came back with a grim look on his face. There wasn’t much anybody could do but quickly hoist our backpacks and start the forced march to Palmerton.

Nobody said anything for the next seven miles. There was no need to. We were all thinking about only one thing: water. At least it got everybody’s mind off the rocks. Nobody was ever happier to enter the Palmerton jail than our hiking group of six. I don’t know about prisoner standards, but by hiker standards it was actually quite lavish. There was a basketball court, showers, and bunk beds. Hikers began referring to it as the Palmerton Hilton.

And it was nice that it was so hospitable, because the hike out of Lehigh Gap outside of Palmerton is the most difficult quarter mile south of the White Mountains. It is also one of the most dangerous places on the AT. In places the trail ascends straight up the face of some steep and treacherous rocks at about a fifty- or sixty-degree angle. This rock scale had not been part of the AT when Earl Shaffer did the first thru-hike in 1948. “It really shouldn’t be part of the AT,” Shaffer wrote in his notoriously laconic style when he hiked it again in 1998 on the fiftieth anniversary of the first thru-hike.

For a few anxious moments when I couldn’t figure out how and where to heave myself over a particular boulder, I would have agreed. Princess, a mountain climber from Colorado, scaled up with me and said, “I had no idea the AT had any climbs like that.”

At the top of Blue Mountain the trail is flat as a tabletop for several miles, with one great peculiarity. The vegetation on the mountain is completely devastated from eighty-two years of zinc smelting in Palmerton. The EPA finally shut down the plant in 1980. “This is eerie,” Anchor said.

“Yeah, it looks like the day after a nuclear attack,” Troll agreed.

“And they told me back at the jailhouse to not even consider drinking any water around here,” I said.

“You haven’t got to worry about that,” Troll said noting the rocky, dry conditions.

Indeed, I had brought three liters (more than six pounds) of water onto the trail this day, but was carefully conserving it.

When we descended into Wind Gap, hoping to find some water, we saw some cartons lying on the side of the trail, placed by trail angels. Our hopes soared as we approached with anticipation. But it wasn’t to be, as they were all empty. Troll and Oblivious walked twenty more yards, when Troll gasped, “It’s a bear. Look.”

I looked all right, and in the open area, under the power lines, was the biggest bruin I have ever seen. We stood there as the bear concentrated on its line of scent. Then it seemed to perk up at the notice of us and galloped up the grassy hill and into the woods.

Troll was screaming back to Anchor, “Hurry, hurry, honey, get a picture,” but she was too late.

Unlike the two standoffs I had in Shenandoah National Park, this happened so fast there was no time to panic. And, for the record, tenyear-old, 4’10,” seventy-five-pound Oblivious stood directly between the bear and me.

“Was that bear looking at your head, Oblivious?” I asked.

“No, Skywalker,” he replied, “he was looking at your stomach.”

We walked fifty more yards down to the road, where the veteran trail angels—twenty years of doing trail magic— Gordon and Sue were waiting with their van and cold Gatorades. “This stuff is the nectar of the gods,” I said savoring a cold, sixteen-ounce bottle. “I’m putting you in my will, Gordon.”

“You better have a will,” Troll said, “the way that bear was looking at your head.”

“Ha, after your bravura attitude toward them the other night in the shelter,” I responded, “I was disappointed you didn’t run up and try to pet it.”

“Not that bear,” he replied. “That sucker weighed almost five hundred pounds (By the time we were in our sleeping bags that night we had that same bear weighing ‘easily six hundred pounds!’).”

“It was probably a male,” Gordon said. “They’re much larger and have ho-hum attitudes. I saw a smaller cub cross this road about a half hour ago.”