Days 89-93: Aragog vs. the Basilisk

Day 89. July 10th. Carlisle to Duncannon – 17.6 miles

Day 90. July 11th: Duncannon to the Kinter View – 13.7 miles

To leave Duncannon, we cross a noisy road bridge across the broad Susquehanna River. There’s a warning sign about peregrine falcons nesting in the area, noting that they’ve been known to dive-bomb hikers. I would love to see a falcon, but the prospect of an attack is a little terrifying. The bridge supports are riddled with spiderwebs where fat black spiders are waiting for the river insects. Between the threat of dangling spiders and swooping falcons, combined with the cars flying past at a volume that is now deeply incompatible with my woodland creature soul, I inhale a sigh of relief when we reach the end of the bridge. We cross railroad tracks and climb up a ridge into the forest. Home.

It’s easy ridge walking for the rest of the day to a stealth campsite listed on Guthook at the Kinter View. When we find the campsite, I drop my pack and sit on the ground, facing a small fire circle built from rocks.

That’s when I see my first copperhead.

One moment, I’m untying my shoes to slip on my camp flip flops, and I hear a soft rustle. The next moment, a snake spills out of the fire circle two feet away, moving perpendicular to where I’m sitting prone in the dirt. I scramble backwards and hop to my feet. The snake is smaller than the rattlers I’ve seen, but it has that same triangular head and slow, oozing movement. It’s clearly a venomous snake, not one of the round-headed, quick-slithering black snakes that we see almost daily. It’s pale, with a soft, almost pastel-colored pattern of hourglasses across its body. I take a few photos as it vacates the campsite and disappears into a pile of rocks about ten yards away.

We have enough cell service that I can do some research and identify the snake as a copperhead. It was certainly frightening to have the snake emerge so close to my feet, but I feel lucky to see such an oddly beautiful creature. I think about how society fears certain animals and portrays them as evil, and how sometimes those portrayals become ingrained and sometimes they don’t, seemingly without reason. Maybe it’s Aragog from Harry Potter or Shelob from Lord of the Rings, or witnessing my mom’s powerful arachnophobia throughout my youth, but spiders frighten me, even though I know they are a vital part of the food chain and harbor no ill intentions. But despite snakes being typecast as villains in the collective conscience from the serpent of Eden to the basilisk at Hogwarts, I’ve never been afraid of snakes. Beyond a healthy sense of self-preservation that encourages me to keep a respectful distance, I actually like snakes.

I fall sleep that night thinking about the strangeness of phobias, but for the rest of the AT, I never sit so close to a fire pit without checking for snakes first.

Our camping buddy slithering off into the sunset

Day 91. July 12th: Kinter View to Campsite MM 1177.5 – 15.5 miles

Day 92. July 13th: Campsite to the 501 Shelter – 17.3 miles

It hasn’t rained since the 4th of July, which on the trail feels like an eternity. The weather has been hot, humid, and sunny, so we’re surprised today when the path starts to get muddy. The mud gets deeper, until we’re walking in puddles that soak our shoes. The woods on both sides of the trail look marshy.

Where is this coming from?

The flooding worsens until we’re up to our laces in water. The periodic wooden bridges (I’ll later learn to call them “bog bridges.”) suggest that this is a low-lying area that puddles easily, but this water is flowing, not stagnant, and the weather has been mostly dry for two weeks. We splash through the mysterious flooding, which lasts for several minutes. Later, we hear trail rumors that it was caused by beavers damming a nearby stream, causing it to spill across a wide swath of forest floor adjacent to the usual creek bed.

The mysterious Pennsylvania Beaver Flood of 2018.

Eventually, our soggy trail runners dry out, and we pick across some rocky terrain. We’re in Pennsylvania now, I think. This is what the trail memoirs were preparing me for: Rocksylvania, everyone’s least favorite state on the trail. But it’s still not that bad, and soon we arrive at the 501 shelter, the second jewel in the Triple Crown of AT Pizza Shelters. We partook in delivery pizza at Partnership shelter back in southwest Virginia, and now we partake again, ordering two large pizzas to the nearby road. A trail angel maintains this shelter, which is more of a dome-shaped cabin than the usual three-walled lean-to, with cots and a skylight. There are even showers. There’s no hot water, so my shower is very brief, but I still feel refreshed and cool for the first time since Carlisle.

Late at night, a young woman arrives, and we chat briefly. She’s the first Mexican hiker I’ve met, and she’s crushing miles—she started three full weeks after us, and she’s already caught us. She hiked the PCT last year and plans to do the CDT next year. She leaves before we do in the morning and we never see her again, but later, I stumble upon her Instagram, and spoilers from the future: she goes on to be the first Mexican Triple Crowner.

Day 93. July 14th: 501 Shelter to Eagle’s Nest Shelter – 15.1 miles

North of the 501 shelter, Pennsylvania becomes Rocksylvania. I thought we were starting the rocks yesterday, but that was periodic, a mere 30-40% of the terrain requiring you to slow down and step carefully. Now that’s more like 60-70% of the terrain.

At the 501, the caretaker told us about a swimming hole, so we pause halfway through the day to take a spur trail, and it is a picturesque spot. The water is clear and deep, dammed by a mossy stone retaining wall with a divot that allows a small stream to cascade down to the creek bed below. A thick, knotted rope dangles from a tree branch, so you can climb up on the retaining wall and swing out over the water. I hesitate for long minutes on the wall in my underwear before jumping in, and it’s cold. Breath-stealing, chest-constricting cold. I emerge and then climb back onto the wall, this time daring myself to swing out on the rope. It takes me even longer to muster the nerve to jump this time, and I’m sure it looks much more awkward and ungainly than the rope swing in a summer teen movie, but I’m happy that I did it. Lately, as the trail has become more physically and mentally draining, I’ve felt like a more sullen, impatient version of myself, but dangling from a rope swing over a crystalline swimming pool renewed the feeling that I can still be the open, adventurous version of myself out here too.

We snack and dry out in the sun, admiring our weird hiker tan lines. Eventually we keep moving, crossing the 1200-mile mark and encountering two more rattlesnakes before ending the day at Eagle’s Nest Shelter.

We have less than a thousand miles to go.