[at-l] re: Thruhiking - Are you ready? le bleu blaze

[Michael Henderson <mikeh@royalrobbins.com>]

bald eagle wrote:
>>>
Once you start blue-blazing, every blue-blaze decision after
that is a little easier - 
<<<

this is so true.  my first blue blaze was the trail from gooch gap shelter
back to the AT.  my first major blue-blazes were on either end of the
smokies: i hitched into fontana at the road crossing, and then hiked back
to the shelter on the roads, and i hiked the road from mtn mamas along the
pigeon river to I-40.  didn't really do much more until harpers ferry,
going to the ATC (this really should be made the AT).  

but from PA to CT, blue blazing became a game for us.  it started by trying
to avoid the nasty PA rocks, and we found excellent old dirt roads that
were the old AT ('brown blazing' cos they paint over the old white blazes),
straight as an arrow, nice and smooth.  i'm thinking in particular of the
road on top of the ridge before port clinton.  our rationalization?  'if it
was good enough for grandma gatewood, it's good enough for us.'  :)

on our third consectutive 25 mile day in NJ/NY, we hit tiorati circle.  it
had been 95/95 the last couple of days and we were beat.  3 of us yellow
blazed to bear mtn.  sitting at greymore monastery that evening, we didn't
feel all that good about what we had done.  we had been seduced by
shortcutting.  i made a conscious effort to stick to the trail after that,
and while blue blazing was too tempting sometimes, i felt much better about
the rest of my hike.

it is completely different out here on the PCT.  in fact, the guidebook
itself will often say something like:  'the official PCT goes here, but why
would anyone want to go that way?  much better is to go...' in much the
same whimsical fasion.  this occurs A LOT in the guidebooks.

i have no problem with blue blazing for supplies.  often, at least as far
as *distance* is concerned, it can be further than the proscribed route.
blue blazing for cool hiking areas, like gulf hagas, is also fine in my
book (my book is very much akin to the PCT guidebooks).  but as jim said,
ya gotta watch what you do, it can warp your thinking.

with any luck, i'll hit the bear mtn - tiorati circle section with felix
this fall...


mike
ke kaahawe   AT92 TYT94 PCT2000
mikeh@royalrobbins.com
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