I couldn’t believe I was here again: I pulled in to checkpoint 6 as the gloaming was beginning to settle in. I had pushed hard all day to get past the Cliffs of Insanity, the trail along the edge of Bonticou Crag, while there was still light. I had arrived at the checkpoint around 6:45, a full 30 minutes earlier than the previous year, but it made no difference. As I hit the Crag Trail, I was once again forced to turn on my headlamp. This year, it was a combination of the approaching dusk and a persistent mist that had been following me for the past hour and a half. Moreover, this time there would be no one to work with; not like last year. Then I had 4 other people with me, and we all helped each other through. Today it was just me, from the Cliffs of Insanity to the Rail Trail. Well, just me, the woods, the hunter, and that half-seen beast.
The day had started off in a mad dash. I had decided to camp out at the Shawangunks Gateway campground, to save money, and to spend more time outside. The campground is nearly linear, tucked in to a small piece of land along route 299 as it climbs from New Paltz up to the ridge. I checked in, set up my tent, and set out exploring the campground some. Across the street was a connector trail that led up to the Mohonk Visitors center, and I walked up to it before turning around and heading back to the campground.
Afterward I cooked and ate dinner in the common area, puttered around near the communal fire for a while, and was in my tent by 9:30. I fell asleep quickly, but around 11:30 I was awakened by a cacophony of voices; it sounded like there was a party going on outside my tent. This continued until after 1, when I finally left my tent to pee. The sound of my zipper made them suddenly realize it was late, and with a disparaging remark at another neighbor, they hastily made their camp ready to sleep. They lit up the night with their flashlights and car headlights pointed directly at me, making it impossible to find privacy in the woods, so I decided to make the short walk up to the camp bathroom. The moon was shining so brightly that I didn’t need my headlamp as I walked the short distance.
In the morning I struggled to wake up, but when I did regain consciousness, I found that it was over an hour after my first alarm was supposed to go off. I had roughly an hour before the bus would leave for the start line. As quickly as I could, I got ready and headed out. I was so panicked that I followed my GPS’s instructions, following back roads, instead of diverting slightly to hit one of the two Stewart’s on route 32. As a result, I arrived at the starting line without coffee or breakfast. I decided to make a breakfast of three caffeinated gels; I had brought extra gels and chews with me in case I decided to make a last minute nutrition adjustment, so I was at least prepared enough for this.
The bus ride seemed shorter than it had been the year before. I sat with Anna, whom I had met on last year’s bus ride, and we got caught up in conversation, joined at points by other racers. Ahead of us were Bill, whom I had also met formally last year, though I had seen him before, at local races, and Jake, the winner of last year’s 30 mile race, and the eventual winner of this year’s 30 miler.
After we all arrived at Sam’s Point, Ken, the race director, gave us a short briefing, and then we went off in waves. I was part of the second wave, and I power hiked up the first hill with Erick, a runner I had been chatting with at the start line. He was hiking as part of his pre-run warmup. I was hiking because I was nursing an injured hamstring, and running the entire 30 miles was completely out for me. My plan was to hike as quickly as I could until the Undivided Lot Trail turned into a carriage road, and then try to run/hike the rest of the race. I hadn’t bothered to look to see what mile I could expect that to be, and, frankly, my memory of that stretch was wrong. The Undivided Lot Trail doesn’t turn into a carriage road until the very end, but I had pictured it happening shortly after leaving the Old Minnewaska Trail.
Nevertheless, I was hiking, and I was hiking well. The entire field passed me, as far as I could tell, so that by time I had hit the Verkeerderkill Falls trail, I was DFL. So be it. I pushed on, and eventually caught up with a 70 miler, whose name I forget. He said he was doing better than last year, and as I pulled away, I said, hoping to be encouraging, that I would see him soon. A moment later I tripped and cut my leg on a rock. I said something along the lines of, “but not that soon!” and pushed on. The cut was bigger than any bandage I had in my kit, so I ignored it, and hoped it would scab over quickly.
When I got to Verkeerderkill Falls, there were two runners filtering water. I realized that I probably should have grabbed some water from the Sam’s Point Visitor Center. The water in the stream feeding the falls was low, a strong indicator that the dry conditions I had found on a visit 3 weeks earlier were still present. I decided to grab some water now, because I had no idea when I’d find another stream. The fact that water was so scarce, and that this particular water was a bit green, made me decide to toss a chlorine tablet into my water filter’s reservoir, and set a mental timer for 30 minutes.
As I passed through the area near the falls and then headed up the hill to the junction with the High Point Trail, I thought about running with Anna the year before. I had stopped not far from the junction, to put on sunscreen, and I didn’t see her again for a year. This time there was no reason to stop for sunscreen, because I had learned, and put it on before the race.
The rest of the Scenic Trail was, for the most part, a blur. A wet, bear-scat-infested blur, featuring several other runners who were not in the race, coming the other way. I remember stopping to put on my jacket near the top of Murray Hill. I remember slipping on a few of the exposed bedrock sections, polished smooth by the glaciers. I got to the point where I started treating all of the bedrock like it was coated in ice. After that, the climb down off of Margaret Cliff, which may or may not be called Wolf Jaw, was especially fun. Even the talus field at the bottom was a bit more exciting than usual. Fortunately, the scramble up to Castle Point was uneventful, and I stopped near the top to refill my bottles with the water I had picked up at the Verkeerderkill aid station.
As I stood there in wind strong enough to push me around, trying to refuel my soul and refill my bottles, a 70-miler named Raymond came up. We chatted a bit, and he headed off ahead of me. The water tasted like pine, or balsam, and was both intriguing and a bit horrifying.
I pushed on.
Not far down the carriage road, I saw Raymond looking out over one of the views. He commented that there was an SRT marker on a tree nearby, and he had his app out, checking. He said the trail went this way. “That can’t be right,” I thought, “I’ve been through here dozens of times, and I don’t remember that being anything more than a herd path to a view.” I said something like, “maybe it got turned?” He indicated that he was following it, and I stuck to the carriage road. When the switchback switched back, I looked, and sure enough, there was another SRT marker, at the other end. I shouted to Raymond that he was right, then waited there while he joined me.
A few hours later, on the Peters Kill trail, I would kick myself for not hiking that bit of trail. I thought about dropping out, because I hadn’t hiked back up and then hiked down that 30-foot stretch of trail. I was hurting by that point, and searching for every excuse in the book to drop out, but I pushed on, and resolved to go back and check out the trail I had missed.
Back on the Castle Point Carriageway, Raymond and I ran down the last few switchbacks to the turn off onto the Rainbow Falls Trail. I found myself checking the herd paths that cut off the switchbacks for more SRT markers, but I found no more. As we turned on to the trail, I saw that Raymond was wearing Spyridons, and we chatted about FiveFingers for a bit. Eventually he pulled away from me, and I wished him a good race.