Bert’s opened at 7 for breakfast. The seven of us ate then got a ride to the trailhead across the bridge. Thunder Belly had picked us up on the south bank of the Lehigh River. Everyone else had already crossed the river but agreed to cross it again to save Olive’s Human from having to make two stops.
Endlessly, we have been hearing what a monstrous climb it is out of Lehigh Gap. As is the case with PA, this is another in a long list of exaggerations. It was a little difficult in one short section (only because we were wearing backpacks). String Cheese hung back to help Bunny out since she knew Bunny was nervous about the climb. It was a bit of a scramble, but it was fun. If it weren’t for the direct sun, it wouldn’t have been bad at all.
Two girls, Iggy and Maggie , and their dad, Daddy Steve, came towards us on the trail and asked us if we wanted food. They were so cute. The youngest was only around 4. We graciously accepted some applesauce squeezes which really hit the spot on such a hot day.
The top of the ridge is a superfund site because of the zinc factory located in Palmerton, below. Apparently the prevailing winds carried the exhaust from the stacks up the mountain where the particulate accumulated over the decades eventually killing all of the vegetation and contaminating the water supply. There has been a massive cleanup effort by the government (once again, the tax payers foot the bill for irresponsible corporations—the plant is still in operation). 20 or 30 years ago, this was supposed to be like walking on a lifeless moonscape. Today, the cleanup has been successful and the ridge top is lush and green once again.
Nearing a road, Fuji and I passed a couple of guys walking in for an overnight camping trip. After they passed, we saw a cooler in a wheelbarrow and thought “trail magic!” We opened the cooler to find a couple cases of beer, a bottle of rum, and some wine. Bunny had fallen behind because she was on the phone with her son. I decided to drop my pack and patiently wait here with the beer until she caught up. The two guys came back and saw us rummaging through their cooler and gave us the bad news that this wasn’t trail magic after all. The pitiful, disappointed, looks that Fuji and I gave were enough to garner us each a Rolling Rock beer. We had successfully made our own magic.
Fuji and I headed onto the road with our beers to wait for Bunny. It was my intention to take my last sip just as she arrived, but she wasn’t as far back as I had thought. She got a full sip of my hard earned beer. We say goodbye to Fuji here because he was staying at another hostel and we had 3.5 more miles to hike to the next shelter.
We thought this was going to be a full shelter tonight, but most people h8ked on since the trail was so much easier than everyone had told us. The source for water here was from the depths of hell. It was a half mile downhill to the first trickling spring. I filtered and carried 8 liters of water because I had no intention of making this trip a second time.
The only other person in the shelter tonight was Running Griz. His company had operated the Deep Water Horizons rig in the Gulf of Mexico. We had a long discussion about the oil industry, corporate responsibility, and CEO pay and the damage that our national economy is receiving from these greedy bastards. It was not an uplifting conversation. I went to bed in a slightly unsettled state. It’s been a while since I’ve been this close to a political conversation and my stomach couldn’t handle it. Maybe I’ll pay homage to corporations with a middle of the night privy visit.
EFG
The first picture on this entry…is that a church? What town is it?
They say it isn’t the heat, it’s the humidity…it is both here and has been for the past 10 days or so.
Supposed to break on Saturday – all the way down to 84 with only about 50% humidity – a great day for the summer soiree.
Be safe.
We didn’t go down and check out the onion domes. There were two of them in Palmerton, PA. We assume there must have been a Russian immigrant community in the past.