hardcore hiking

So I do a lot of things in the outdoors, but one of my favorites is hiking a nice brutal trail. There is something cathartic about exhausting all your energy until all your stress is no longer important. You end up just living and not thinking about the world around you. The pain you experience the next day is a reminder that you lived well. I'm not bragging too much here, but I've got some considerable experience hiking and therefore it takes quite a bit for a trail to become brutal for me. What makes a trail brutal in my mind? It definitely helps to have steep pitches and no interruptions in the pitch. Rocks help. I was originally going to do this as a top ten list, but hiking is not about competition, so the list is simply in random order.
Skyline Trail in Blue Hills park south of Boston. What, never heard of this trail? The Blue Hills are an urban wonder of rocky hills. The Skyline Trail makes no apologies and tops as many of the summits as possible. Switch backs do not exist. I hiked most of it in one day in a true epic hike but enjoy hiking it whenever possible.
Little Hermit Trail in the Grand Canyon. This trail is concidered the third easiest trail in the park. Calling it easy is just not fair however. It is as remote of a trail as you can get. Rock and dirt slides engulf the trail multiple times leaving you a 6 inch path on loose soil with a very scary slide and a probable fall your your death if you loose your step. Combine with a backpack and the elevation of one of the biggest pits on the earth and you have a wonderfully miserable trail. Garnet Rapids at the bottom are a sweet reward before you get to hike the trail in reverse order back up to the top. Concequently this was my first backpacking trip.
Rea Lakes Loop in Kings Canyon. After spending a summer as a campground ranger in the summer of 2001, I hiked this trail before leaving California. As the name implies, its a loop that goes up one canyon, crossing the crest of the Sierras before coming down another canyon. Most people do this trail in 5 days but I missed the memo and hiked it in four days. Wonderfull Sierra terain at its greatest.
Middle Teton in Grand Teton NP. Its a long story how I got myself involved on this hike, but this "trail" tops the list. Middle Teton is called the "easier" of all the summits, but that does not make it easy. A trail leads you to the basecamp for Grand Teton. The trail officially ends and you take a left towards the saddle between Middle and South Teton. A steep rock stramble to the summit and you are on a small rocky sumit looking up to Grand Teton and down onto South Teton. What makes this adventure the most brutal was the panic attach induced by my fear of heights. I did not hike down from the summit but slid down on my butt, missed the correct path and ended up sliding down a long, dangerous ice feild to safety. The assholes who hiked with me left me behind even though they knew I was panicing. Great story none the less.
Lineville Gorge in North Carolina. Linveville gorge is known as one of the most rugged trails in the east and it deserves the reputation. A steep "V" shaped canyon with a raging creek/river in the middle with no sections of flattness is what makes this trail so burtal. Starting at Lineveille Falls is the easiest way down. For my hike it rained and my glasses got fogged over. Whenever the trail encountered a boulder feild, I lost track of the "trail" and had to refind the trail. I lost and re-found the trail a couple of times. Of cource its hard to get lost in the gorge. You only can hike down gorge or up gorge, there is no where else to go. After camping in one of the rare flat spots, a long and steep hike to the top finnishes this incredible trail.
Rim Trail in North Carolina. While Lineville has the reputation, The Rim trail is a harder hike. Missing the memo again, I hiked a three day loop in two days. Keeping with its name, the Rim Trail follows the ridge of a large bowl, never leaving the top of the jagged ridgeline. You begin wishing for switch backs or at least going around a summit opposed to going directly over the top of it. The second day was much less brutal and very beutifull. A wonderfull waterfall ends an incredible hike.
AT... I spent an entire summer hiking the AT, so of cource I'm going to include sections of the AT.
Mahoosic Notch and Mahoosic Arm. Mahoosic has the reputation of being the hardest mile on the AT. I completely dissagree. It was the most fun mile on the trail. The notch is a steep gorge with house sized boulders lying in all degrees of confusion. You hike over boulders, around boulders, and under them. Very fun. After the notch, you get to hike strait up to the top of a mountain called the Mahoosic Arm. The climb out of the Notch was probably harder than the hike through it.
White Mountains. Even after hiking 1500 miles, we were scared of what we going to encounter. Moosilauke was the first bump and a wonderfull introduction. Kinsman Ridge was not any easier and of course the Presidentials were the crowing jewel of the mountains. Lots of elevation, lots of trail above treeline and no switch backs. As an unfortunate note, the lone death of 2002 happened in the Whites as a nice older gentleman basically let himself succome to hypothermia. I can't immagine a better place to spend all of eternity.
Lehigh Gap, Pa. While a short (comparitively) climb, it was very steep and exposed. It was the only spot where I was scared of falling off the trail. It ends on the baren ridge of Blue Mountain. Blue Mountain is the site of a SuperFund site as a result of zinc smelting. My favorate quote of the entire trail happened in Lehigh Gap by Sunshine. "I told myself I would not cry until I reached the top. When I reached the top, I decided I would either cry or eat my cupcake, so I ate my cupcake".
Mt Katahdin. Mt Katahdin was the hardest mile of the AT. Its the longest and highest (change in elevation) summit on the trail. Bouldering was a neccesary skill in many places, but the reward was the greatest of the trail. After spending over 2000 miles to reach Katahdin, the pain was not noticeable.
So thats it. My list of wonderull hikes that will make you happy to be alive once you take an ibuprophen and a hot shower.

Life AS TurkeyBacon

So it would seem from reading my first three posts that I still obsess over my time on the AT. Its really not so...
So this past week was really hard on me. I had a bad mental event (what ever that means), had to rethink the way I'm looking for jobs, and got sick with the stomach virus my lovely wife passed on to me. It was time for a little AT therapy. I pulled out my old Priority Mail box crammed pack full of AT photos (I hiked just before digital took over photography) and most importantly, my trail journals. When someone decides to do something as extreme as hike the AT, they want to remember it and most to all of us journaled quite a bit. The greatest gift I gave myself from the AT was my journals. I haven't read them in quite a while, in fact the box was still taped up from when we moved to Boston. I definitely noticed a few trends. First and foremost, I have forgotten just how unhappy I was before I started. The other obvious thing I noticed about reading the journals was my desire to find a serious relationship. I can laugh now at how much I tried to "hook up" on the trail. It definately makes me beleive that the AT simply cured my unhappiness. Meeting Jess is what polished me off and made the person I am today.
I was a lot of fun to read them. I have forgotten how many blisters I got. I mostly remember getting heat rash on the soles of my feet (yes, it hurts), but the blisters are not on the top of my memory. I constantly complained of a knee or ankle hurting. The same knees and ankles that I have to be gentle with today. But the reality of the AT is that is all about surviving the suffereing. If you can take pain, you are more likely to do well. My emotional transformation was also apparent. It is often said that people learn the most from suffering. New Jersey and New York were bad for me. I thought I developed Lymes disease and got treated with anti-biotics for it in New Jersey. I got a fever, even though it was constantly in the high 90's in New York. And after all that suffering, things changed. My first few days in Conneticuit is when my journals turned into "therapy sessions" as I called them in my journals. I could read the transformation from a pessimist to a optimist. And then the calling of Katahdin took over. New England was a wonderfull place for me. I definately felt like I was out there to become a happier person and definately felt like I was accomplishing my goals. Ironically, I also thought I was going to be a biology teacher in Maine. So I am in New England, but happily a med tech.
The two things I tell people I learned from the hike was patience and not to sweat the details. I never mentioned either one of these things in my journals. These apparently were learned in retrospect of my hike.
So what did I learn from this trip down memory lane? I've come a long way since my time before the AT. This will help me recover from past week and help me in the next coming weeks as I start to interview for my next job. Of cource all the jobs Jess and I are looking at are pretty close to the AT. So maybe the AT will stay an important part of who I am for many years to come.
Scott (TurkeyBacon NOBO 02)

anniversaries

So today is the seventh anniversary of starting the AT... And the thirty first anniversary of birth.

Lars Anderson Ride

So today was gorgeous and I got to go biking. Even though I commute most every day by bike, today was my first solid, long ride of the year. It was time to dust off the road bike, put pedals back on it (I have three bikes and two pairs of pedals... long story), change a flat tire and take it for a spin. Since this was the first time on the road bike for the year, there is one instant realization... The road bike is much much faster than my commuter bike. Its like driving a Ferrari after spending all your time in a pickup. My road bike is a fifteen year old Speciallized Epic. It is an old school carbon fiber frame that was too flexible for larger riders, but a joy for lightweight shits like myself. It has aged very well and still feels like the same bike I bought with money from my paper route as a teenager in Illinois.
Boston is fortunate to have the Charles River Wheelmen. The CRW is a wonderful bike club with very regular rides planned. Today was the Lars Anderson ride (named after the park it begins in). Its very close to our house in JP and I get to ride to the start of this ride. The Lars Anderson ride is roughly 20 miles long. While non-cyclist would concider this long, its just an early season warm up. Perfect for building miles for longer and harder rides later in the year. The best part of the Lars Anderson ride is we go through numerous traffic rotaries. While this is normally a very dangerous thing to do on a bike, there is power in numbers and we get to take over the road, for just a few fleeting moments. Shorty after the rotaries is a super fun downhill through Stony Brook Reservation. After that, the memory fails me and the rest of the ride is just relaxing and enjoyable.
Last years ride was a very large ride with maybe 50 if not more riders. We took over the city streets of West Roxbury in a long fast line of cyclits. When I sleep and dream about riding, I am often re-living last years ride going through the rotaries and barreling down through Stony Brook. This year however... There was confusion as to where it started but eventually about 15 riders left Lars Anderson Park. One of the riders was one of my heros... Century Joe Repole. Joe is an older cyclist who has the odd habit of riding a 100 mile ride once a month, every month for a few years now. Joe can definately not be described as fast, but he is super freindly and carries a lot of respect. Unlike most CRW rides, no one actually remembered the exact route this year and we needed to use paper cue sheets. Needless to say, we got lost a few times. The ride definatly felt like a scavenger hunt. We stayed together as a group, mostly because no one wanted to get left behind and lost. Every now and then someone would point out we missed a turn and we would turn around. Ironically, the best hill was an "oops" up a dead end street followed by a relaxing spin down the hill we just climbed. The ride ended very anti-clamatically and as far as I know everyone made it back.
While the zenlike nature of last years ride was simply not there it was a nice ride and I will not complain about that. I'm looking forward to another enjoyable season of biking and today was just the beggining.

the first post; explaining TurkeyBacon

So I really have no clue why I am suddenly deciding to create a blog. I guess I figure its a good place to ramble about my thoughts. So what's up with the TurkeyBacon reference? It all starts back many years while at Southern Illinois University (at Carbondale, of course). Up until this point, life was full of bad memories, horrible anxiety, low self esteeme and general lack of people skills. I was not very happy. I realy do not know how the world around me saw me, but I do know it wasn't spectacular. I needed to find me. The Appalachian Trail is what I decided I needed. I needed to explore the territory between Springer Mt in Georgia and Mt Katahdin in Maine. I needed to suffer through 2168 miles of mountains, ridge lines, rivers, creeks, freezing cold and horrible heat, dehydration and a week of non-stop rain, blisters, sore muscles, hiker hobble, "the hunger", bugs, sunburn, chaffing and even heat rash on the soles of my feet. I was hoping that somehow through all the suffering and living the good life I wound find inner happiness through the whole experience. Fortunately for me, I did.
One tradition of hiking the AT is the trail name. Some people choose their own and others let it come to them. Mine was given to me and regardless of how goofy it sounds, its very special to me. I am the only TurkeyBacon (the "B" is capitalized and no space between words) to have ever wandered the woods. I received it by lugging at Subway turkey with bacon sandwich for two day so that on the very first night on the trail, I would not have to cook. It sounds real simple, but while someone was suffering though his first trail dinner, he gave me my trail name. It stuck and I cherish it.
I started on my 24th birthday in a symbolic re-birth of sorts. Roughly five and half months later, I stood on top of Katahdin. I could not let myself get off the mountain. I had worked so hard to reach that point that I did not want it to end. So I decided to stop hiking but continue with my journey. For a couple of years after getting off of Katahdin, I lived and breathed the AT. I moved to Western North Carolina to be close to my beloved trail. But as years have passed, it leaves me with confusion. Has the journey ended by now? I can very easily argue that when I returned to Springer Mountain a couple of years later to propose to my wonderfull wife, I started another journey that has been equally rewarding and my journey started on the AT ended. But then again, I have never returned to the despair of my life pre-AT, so I feel like I am still living by what I learned that incredible summer and that journey still goes on. Regardless, I have not been called TurkeyBacon in years. I have moved on to other big plans, like a carreer, marriage, soon to be home ownership and even a child. I am ready for my life after the summer of 2002 when people did not know me as Scott, but TurkeyBacon. I am ready for even bigger and better things. However, if anyone were to call out TurkeyBacon, I will most definately respond.