Gunks - Traversed!

[Tom Rankin]

Well, it was a long and winding road, to quote a song.

We all made it from Sam's Pt. to Spring Farm, 23 miles! There were a few blisters, and sore muscles, but everyone stayed together and we had a great time. We got a 1/2 hour late start, but we arrived at Spring Farm after only 11 hours. If we had gotten the 6:00 start, the deluge would have not soaked us all to the skin! Oh well! It was refreshing!

There were TONS of views along the way, in spite of the haze. Matt chose a great route!

Blueberries are out!

We saw a baby porcupine, I hope someone got good pics of it!

The heat and humidity were pretty bad, but we stopped several times to cool off in streams, and by lakes. Aaaaaahhhhh!!!

I could write a book about this hike, but I won't. Others can fill in the details.

At the Gilded Otter, where we had excellent food and beer, we had a surprisingly good musician sing us 'Country Roads', as we improvised it into:

Carriage Roads,
Take me home!
To the Car,
I will drive!

Maybe Matt can improve on that even more!

A great hike with great people! Nice to meet the_swede, a young man with endless energy!

 

[WinterWarlock]

Nice job Tom - quite a stretch for one day...

Who has the pics??

 

[Doodles]

Gunks Traversed indeed. This was a great hike with great people. Something I wanted to do for a long time. It's funny how we travel to all corners of the country looking for mountains and trails and sometimes overlook what we can see from our front porches.

The laurel was breathtaking and the first few blueberries were tasty. A hazy day robbed us of the views we knew were in the distance. Oh well, we will see them on future hikes and exploration.

Shortly after starting out, we identified ourselves as TEAM GUNKS. The team as seen in the first picture from left to right are George, Tom, Laurie, Cindy, Matt, Ronnie, and Eric. Nice meeting and hiking with you Eric.

Matt was the tour guide and resident expert of our traverse. Thanks Matt.

Tom, thanks for putting the trip in motion and working out the complicated logistics of the perfect plan.

A few pictures from the day.
http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2896646790093435686gQXImH

 

[WinterWarlock]

Wow - nice pics...love the l'il porker.

 

[Tom Rankin]

Pics:

http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04795.JPG - Sunrise
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04797.JPG - First Climb
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04800.JPG - Looking back down
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04801.JPG - Off we go
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04802.JPG - Lost already?!
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04805.JPG - Falls
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04807.JPG - Laurels
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04809.JPG - More Laurels!
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04815.JPG - Laurels in front of Awosting
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04821.JPG - Awosting Beach
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04822.JPG - One more time!
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04833.JPG - Nice View!
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04837.JPG - This guy was waiting for one of us to drop!
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04839.JPG - Summit Marker
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04842.JPG - NY NJ TC Hard at work
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04843.JPG - Beautiful Stream
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04846.JPG - Burn area
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04851.JPG - Da Gang!
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04853a.jpg - Yes, we ate it!
http://viewsandbrews.com/temp/DSC04865.JPG - Baby Porky!

 

[una_dogger]

Great crew!
Love the gilded Otter!
Sorry to have missed this one!

 

[the_swede]

It was a pleasure and an honor to meet all of you very accomplished hikers yesterday. You folks have inspired me to continue to pursue my hiking endeavors, full speed ahead.

Nice to meet the_swede, a young man with endless energy!

If only I had gotten more than 3 hours of sleep the night before. Man, was I tired!

Here are just two pics from yesterday. The lighting conditions were not in my favor but I did what I could. I'll post some more if I'm able to fix them up.

 

[TEKHiker]

Hey Tom,
Good to see a familiar face from the past (remember me from vball?), as well as a familiar place from the past. Those pictures bring back great memories, although I only did minimal hiking at the Gunks along with some friends who did rock climbing there. I didn't get into hiking much until I moved to New Hampshire where I live now.

- Troy

 

[Tom Rankin]

Hey Tom,
Good to see a familiar face from the past (remember me from vball?), as well as a familiar place from the past. Those pictures bring back great memories, although I only did minimal hiking at the Gunks along with some friends who did rock climbing there. I didn't get into hiking much until I moved to New Hampshire where I live now.

- Troy

Yes, I do!

Too bad, we were just thru Nashua a few weeks ago. Look up MarcHowes (on this board) and tell him we have a mutual friend!

We'll be up in the Whites at the end of the month. Interested in getting together? PM me...