[at-l] Night Hike

[janl2 at mindspring.com (Jan Leitschuh)]

> Liteshoe and I night hiked in Vermont....   In order to make it work we had to hike about six miles after dark.  I would have walked off a cliff if Jan hadn't been leading the way.  Watching car lights winding down roads was pretty neat.  The city lights below twinkeled like stars.  I know it is not a wilderness thing but with out the lights below it would have been walking around in the dark.
Uh, it WAS walking around in the dark!
;-)

Excerpts from my version:
http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=21260

"About 6 PM, we decide to risk the weather, hiking the next five miles 
it will take to get down to Lincoln Gap. One of the items on Clyde's 
wish list was to night hike. He will get his wish.

 From the start, the hike went splendidly. The air had cooled off. The 
slanting, setting sun lit a golden light in an amazing paper birch 
park - stark white soldiers underlaid with bright green fern.

As dusk fell, we were atop Grant's rocky summit, a scoured stone top. 
As I rested there, standing with crossed arms, taking in the deep, 
dusky view, Trail Princess mutated into Indian Princess. There was a 
powerful sense of what it must have been like in a more primitive 
time, looking at green mountain after green mountain rolling away from 
the summit.

To the east, a stunning golden half-moon rose, lighting the scene. All 
that was missing was the call of a wolf.

What a great energy. There came an overwhelming sense of space. I felt 
the most peace up there of any single moment on the hike.

What followed was Jan and Clyde's Excellent Night Hike Adventure. We 
switched our head lamps on about 9PM, and proceeded down some stony, 
hairy-ass trail in the dark. Often, we would lose the trail in the 
dark, or run up against the edge of a drop-off. But we were working as 
a team now, and always managed to bring the Trail to heel.

We went down a number of sheer rock faces that left us incredulous: 
"What kind of people would put a trail THERE?" It was challenging. And 
it was ...great!

We finally found the parking lot and made camp, switching off the 
headlamps as cars went by so as not to attract unwanted road 
attention. But it was a Thursday night, and the drunks were limited to 
the regulars. We slept unmolested, or at least Clyde did. My feet and 
legs throbbed so badly it was hard to sleep."

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     	AT Journal:
	http://www.trailjournals.com/Liteshoe/
	Jan Leitschuh Sporthorses Ltd.
	http://www.mindspring.com/~janl2/index.html

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