Stone Shelter Camping in a Snow Storm

mid-winter trip instead of deep winter i wasn't expecting to worry about snowshoes or anything like that you can always have a plan and you should but they do tend to go awry well what's underneath me here oh oh god [Music] hey everybody syntax77 here it is mid-december i'm in new york state by a section of the appalachian trail and i am in the mood for a little bit of winter backpacking so that's what we're gonna do for the next three days i'm gonna strap on my trusty kaika 75 pack here loaded to the gills with all kinds of fun food and uh gear and let's have a little fun oh god that's not fun it's a little heavy that's all right we'll get used to it i'm gonna leave the jeep here and uh we'll get down to it that wind is uh a little breezy it's in the low 30s and i'm thinking maybe we'll hit the forecast says the low 20s might see the teens up here in the mountains but we'll see what happens this here is harriman state park that i'm starting out in and we're going to do like a 20 mile loop over these next three days i'd say an average of six or seven miles a day but only like 1500 feet or so of elevation gain total per day which is pretty relaxed you can see over here those roadblocks so in the summer you can come here and drive all the way to the appropriate trailhead in my case uh because of winter uh the road is closed from here on out so i came in as close as i could by the uh picnic area here and i got about a mile of road hike to do but thankfully no traffic because well the roads closed views are nice so far but after about a mile of walking on this pavement i should be at the trailhead that i want to be and we'll get into the woods well if you're going to do a road walk you ain't that bad of a view that's for sure i believe this is where we leave the main road and this little paved forest road here is going to eventually connect us to some actual trails not quite sure what this used to be concrete pad for something interesting the quote-unquote road is starting to fade still some traces of gravel but it's uh fading out decent rock formations to my side there this is it i finally intersected with the actual trail this begins the loop i'll be returning from there but i'm gonna go left to start my clockwise loop with lake i believe it's tiarati or something to that effect as the center point there's a lot of lakes and ponds around here but that'll be the biggest one in the middle of this loop and in this direction is actually where i would have come from if i had parked where i wanted to and we're actually up on top of the rock formation that i was looking up on at the beginning of the forest road hike there a little bit of elevation gain to get me warmed up to get up here and from here probably another five ish miles not too bad i didn't start until like 11 p.m which for december means that i uh you know sunset's 4 30 so short days my plan for this trip though a little out of character for me i usually avoid shelters but around here in harriman state park which don't be deceived i thought state park would mean something a little less rugged but this is the second biggest state park in new york it's about 45 000 acres or something like that and the only camping allowed within park boundaries which we are is at or within 300 feet of the shelters within the park you know three-sided appalachian trail style shelters which the appalachian trail does come through here as well as new york long path which is kind of new york's kind of mini version of the appalachian trail so my plan because it is midweek it's tuesday and it's winter i'm thinking i might actually try or plan to stay in a shelter it depends if i can get it to myself otherwise i do have a small one-person tent from outdoor vitals which i like quite a lot i can pop that up in a pinch legally near the shelter but i think that's gonna what i'm gonna try to do interestingly i was originally planning on doing fingerboard shelter which is about five miles away as well what about halfway through my planning oh look at that view there's the water down there nice halfway through my planting though uh i read that that shelter is temporarily closed and it's not because the shelter's all beat up or anything but i guess for a few years now there's been a nuisance bear that has zero fear of humans has learned to take down bear bags and has some cubs tagging along but she's teaching the ropes for stealing hikers food i don't mess with bears and cubs so i went back to the drawing board and i actually just went on google maps and did search nearby clicked in shelter just as a hill a hail mary pass and uh believe it or not something popped up and it just said long path shelter which is strange to me because most of the shelters on the long path have their own name so i wasn't quite sure what was going on there couldn't find much information on it but i did find a couple well actually one reddit post and some other information out there that said uh it actually shows up on new new jersey trail conference maps at least one of them doesn't have a shelter symbol but just written in that area it says unmaintained shelter and found a couple people that said they stayed there ironically it's completely made out of sheet metal so it's in great condition despite being unofficial and unmaintained um so i'm just going to take the gray area with that and plan to stay there i mean it's a shelter they haven't torn it down even though it's not on the official list for the park pretty sure i'll be okay if i go there and stay and because it's not official or on the main maps in the middle of winter i think it'd be a good start for me to try out going to a shelter hopefully i'll have the place to myself but we'll see then the following night i'll go to one of the listed shelters and we'll see if i have to use the tent or not there but that's the plan for this trip a little snow on the ground following the yellow blazes and uh see if we can get to this shelter make a little fire and his sleeping pad just spread out and live it up i got some fun food with me we'll see but you can always have a plan and you should but they do tend to go awry so i'll be ready for that but i used to have a semblance of an idea of what i want to do wind is picking up it's starting to flatten out and open up though and it's probably a nice place to hang out but the wind is pretty serious right now i see the yellow blazes on these rocks you can see the mountain ridge down there and that's where i came from we'll go down here and tuck out of the wind it's only been a couple miles but like i said it is midday i may look for a place to make a quick bite to eat get a little calories in me to push on towards camp if those clouds continue to break that sun might just warm me up a little bit so i think this might be where i'm gonna take my lunch break right here i'm gonna do a hot lunch why not it's a little after 12 30. sun feels great took my gloves off got them stuffed in my jacket my wife packed me like i said some grilled cheese and tupperware containers she made a couple different kinds this one looks pretty standard i'll start with that i'll save the special ones for later pulls right back oh and there's my fry pad so we'll put that together make some uh grilled cheese looks like fresh cracked pepper now one thing i've learned about this uh little eight dollar canister stove is uh the flame pattern's pretty narrow so we got to keep this thing moving oh yeah fresh cracked black pepper and sea salt grilled cheese in the middle of the woods pretty sure i can deal with this with extra butter oh hot and delicious little aged cheddar too wow this would be amazing under any circumstance out in the middle of the snow even better so this will get me fueled up i'll soak in the sights a little bit and then uh get back on the trail i guess we're up top now should be mostly downhill from here maybe we'll tuck out of this wind too definitely makes a difference in the cold red markers now two of them cocked to the right so we're going right this area is cool i mean it's just a wide open kind of rock balled kind of vibe going on very cool area and another cool thing is this is only like two and a half under three hours away from my house i i um i live kind of outside or south of philly if you're familiar and i gotta give a big shout out to dan d who's a viewer of the channel him and his daughter watch and i just happen to be messaging back and forth with him [Applause] about some logistics about new hampshire and just happened to be figuring out or trying to figure out what i was gonna do for my next trip and he wrote hey thanks for the info and uh by the way have you ever tried the west point new york area and i said no i haven't really uh looked at that but he gave me some more info and i said i think i'm gonna do it this week so i did so here i am so thanks dan uh this is pretty cool it's probably one of the closest places to new york city that you can actually go to has well stuff that looks like this and shelters and whatnot but it's a good find and i was able to get here within a few hours of course since i've been blabbing and running my mouth i'm not sure if i lost the trail no there's another one right there and i think we're off the rock now back into the woods and we'll keep on moving towards home for tonight i suppose a few more miles of careful footing [Applause] got to give them credit for their trail markers we switched over red and white to blue and white with an l we'll be uh hanging out on that for a little bit just kind of enjoying the uh sunshine it's breaking out of the clouds but nonetheless it is uh after two o'clock so i'm down to two-ish hours of sunlight that sun is getting lower you kind of dip back into the trees here which is nice it's cutting the wind down now we're on a red and white triangle blaze accompanied by a teal blaze the long path a little slippery plenty of snow but i'm feeling pretty good there's some water there too but i got about three liters on me so i think i'm good to keep moving got some water treatment tablets with me to make any water i find safe instead of using a filter when it could freeze but i'm just gonna keep on moving hopefully we can beat that sun before it uh dips down too low come to an intersection we're gonna go left and this should bring us through the woods and downhill towards the appalachian trail definitely getting colder but i feel pretty warm because i have a decent pack on a mile to go a little bit uphill that's for sure look at that rock face and there's the sun taunting we're on a ridge now the top of island pond mountain i believe [Music] snow is turned from white to a lighter shade of blue the sun is going away it is sunset now it's still got some light left but it is about 4 30 8 or so the good news is i'm within an eighth mile radius of where the shelter should be remember i have two spots that it could be one from google maps and then one from another map i found online kind of coming off this ridge here following these teal blazes but there's a steady breeze temp is dropping feels like it's cracking into the 20s now upper 20s but it's going to go lower i'm sure but i'm just going gonna start scouting around at this point uh my first kind of mode of search will be to my left and then if i don't see it by then i'll hit an intersection at which point i'll go left and it might be on my right but i just got to scout around and see what i find and hopefully i'll stumble upon it soon before i lose too much sunlight because that is going away we'll see all right you know what i'm not even gonna lie that was supposed to be a dramatic scene because i really thought i was gonna have to search i swear i was looking up at the camera at the sky i looked down and right there is a metal roof i don't think this shelter is quite so hidden after all perhaps the trail i'm on is less traveled but that is a shelter i mean it's a roof it's right here i that's crazy right when i was gonna start thinking i really had to search i might not find it it is right there that's corrugated steel and a roof and uh dramatics aside i guess i won't have to look too far now i have read this is a lesser used portion of the park but this is right on the teal trail so i don't know why this shelter isn't talked about more if not for the fact that most people don't do this trail i guess and i only chose it because i thought this shelter would be along it but look at that made out of metal now a lot of the ones around here and the one we'll see tomorrow is like made us um stone which is very rustic and fun but this thing should last forever it seems i'm not sure when it was built but look at that [Music] oh we're here and nobody else is so this is ours there's a main fire pit there and yep there's a closer one that i'll be using to try to reflect some heat into the shelter right here wood floors old can of uh cream of mushroom soup apparently get my flashlight out let's see what we got here my hands are frozen somebody socks a couple pots dennis sullivan 1972 may look at this an old painting mounted on the wall impressionist style i guess oh my hands are freezing all right so what i'm gonna do right now is uh drop this pack collect some firewood set up my sleeping pad make some dinner although it's only 4 30 or i guess quarter of five i'm hungry so let me get on that we'll see that where that takes us all right got some small scrap wood laying around with some leaves on it i'm hoping this will uh give me a nice base didn't build much of a uh fancy no teepee or log cabin just a pile of random wood and some leaves we'll see what happens so see if that catches if it does hopefully i'll head around here i have a um saw with me where to go right here my silky f-180 that a viewer sent me very nice so i can cut apart some dead wood that i find laying about which will help quite a bit but i don't think many people compared to the other shelters stay here so i think my chance of getting wood here is going to be better so we'll see if this catches i'm gonna feed it some little twigs and stuff like that and uh hopefully that'll give me some warmth that'll radiate right into the shelter and then i'm gonna cook some dinner a little pork and rice [Music] peak refuel stir that up let it sit for 10 minutes shut back got the fire going night sky is dark all right a shredded pork with brown sugar rice and vegetables it's only about 6 30 but it feels like midnight oh wow maybe because i'm in the middle of nowhere but that tastes like some legit pulled pork with a little brown sugar i'm gonna enjoy this um probably i mean nobody's here i don't think anybody's coming so i'm going to blow up my sleeping pad and just pretty much camp right here inside this shelter and then a little campfire a little barbecue and then we'll hit the hay and wake up and see what happens next good morning everyone oh that air is cold you see a fiery pink on the horizon there and it's about 7 12 in the morning and the sky's lighting up i fire yeah i put a pretty big log on there last night that i caught up with my saw big thick guy like you'd have a new fireplace at home and he burnt for hours just that single log and it definitely made a difference this corrugated roof that hangs right over top it radiated and you're pretty good and kept it uh definitely several degrees warmer than it was out side of the shelter but i don't feel that heat anymore that's for sure was burnt out or burnt down but i had to place hole to myself nice little fire like i said two dinners i had that pork dinner last night which was awesome and then i had a regular old-school mountain house uh spaghetti and meat sauce ah always good to have plenty of calories uh because you do burn more calories when you're cold so that was nice for sitting around last night i have a double dinner but now i guess i'll make a cup of coffee um may not eat breakfast quite yet i'm not really hungry yet but maybe i'll have that on the trail we'll get moving pack my stuff away i don't have to break down a tent or anything i just have my pack over there of course my stool i didn't really need because i was sitting on the edge of the shelter here my water was staying thawed out sitting next to the fire but now it's burnt down it looks like it's uh starting to freeze over so it's in the 20s right now for sure and um it should pop back above freezing at some point during the day today so that'll be a nice that'll be nice but yeah i'll just enjoy this sunrise here and uh have a cup of coffee and convince myself to get back at it get these boots back on i have my dutch wears synthetic uh booties i went ahead and selected those but i had those when i was sitting around in the shelter as well these are [Music] slightly frozen boots get my balance here all right let's go get the food back [Music] so all right got my food it's pretty easy to get it up there because i got this ledge here that i could throw the rock from so it was a straight shot to the branch shelter right back there and it's just my cook set stuff sack for my cook pot i left the rock in there because i was lazy but just shoved the rock in there and that made for an easy throw bag basically but we're done with that pull tonight you know i got my bag of grilled cheese in my bag of quote unquote right now tell you what this is a nice area though really cool little shelf down there and shelter right there pretty nice all right well i'm about ready for coffee all right a couple more moments we'll have some hot coffee i think i changed my mind might make some ramen noodle soup as well that'll be my breakfast i'm not hungry like i said but um i have learned from experience that for hiking and backpacking at least just ignore that impulse and force myself to eat some breakfast because i got some hiking to do today cheers a little hot coffee some hot noodles and and i'll get packed up deflate the sleeping pad shut off my sleeping bag back in the stuff sack throw it all back in the backpack put it on my back get back on the trail see where today goes all right all packed up everything is back in the bag and as usual i've spent way too much time at camp it is 10 o'clock but i've been just enjoying the view listening to an audio book and uh just enjoying myself but we still do have six miles to go so i should like probably get on it uh the next shelter won't be a metal one it'll be more of a stone design now some of the shelters around here actually have uh fireplaces built into them which is really cool so i'm looking forward to checking that out i don't know if i'll have that next shelter to myself or not but speaking of shelters and routes got my paper map down there now i will be the first to point out that you should always despite all the technology we have at our disposal nowadays you should still carry a paper map that being said i have to admit um this was a last minute trip like i said shout out to dan for giving me the idea but it was last minute i didn't have a paper map for this trip i downloaded um and printed out some trip descriptions and trail reports and stuff like that that i have over in my pack but i didn't have a paper map i actually found this one laying in the woods surprisingly and uh i guess fate bestowed upon me a map but sure enough i do see uh right there unmaintained shelter is marked with a dot and it says unmaintained shelter and this is the new york new jersey trail conference map and like i was uh saying before shelters are marked with an s on here as you can see but uh this one's not it's just a dot but surprisingly it's in great shape uh no fireplace but it's in great shape so anyway based on my new map here i'm right here and just give you perspective yesterday we started here at the kennewoc picnic area and that's just about right where the road was um closed so we hiked up the road little road hike did that uh fire rogue kind of thing hooked up with the real trail here it's the yellow trail with the y we came around to bald rocks and then over here and made our way up this way long path here we are at unmaintained shelter the bulk of today we're going to stay on the new york long path keep cruising all the way up that to stockbridge mountain stockbridge shelter not going to stay there i don't think but maybe we'll check that out see what it looks like then we'll take the yellow trail or medamine trail around here past silver mine lake and on down to my target for today which is brian memorial shelter right there that's my target my plan for today is to get there tomorrow we'll hop this yellow trail some more to red cross and right on back down to oh there we go red cross to the picnic area once again i think i'm going to hop across here and then kind of backtrack probably some of the same road hike that i had to do yes yesterday to get back to the vehicle but i may be getting ahead of myself right now i need to get my pack back on and get at it um i am realizing now i still have my puffy jacket on now probably a mistake it feels good now but i'm probably going to heat up instantly once i get all that weight on my back but we'll see all right let's get it on and let's do it this is odd you think this is yeah i know that pipes they don't go anywhere at least this one doesn't it's got a teal trail marker on it and there's several more of them what did this used to be or what is it still i don't know well these ones are going somewhere universal type r water line it's weird i've never come across something like that before now you can see it going all the way up the hill there all right relatively mild trail so far i'm assuming ah there it is all right anyway plugging along tell you what i definitely think i forgot to bring my little thermometer on this trip i have my casio smart watch but it's on my wrist so that won't do any good but i don't know exactly how cold it is or was but based on how my hands were stinging this morning i'm thinking it might have been closer to 15 degrees in the teens got a little bite out here it doesn't seem to be warming up not yet at least now there's an actual long path marker finally got some uphill here pretty much the first time today oh starting to get a little hungry i'm thinking that stockbridge shelter if nobody's there already might just do a lunch break there see what my other uh surprise grilled cheese is one more push in front of me here i think i see a roof poking up right around there it might be the shelter up top i can't tell i think i might have heard a voice too so if it's occupied we'll keep moving but let's see one more push oh oh here we are that's it there's actually some smoke over there there's a group down there i don't know if they're camping for tonight or just here for today i'm surprised they're not up here double fireplace right there with the chimney and another one with the chimney soccer ball interesting well i think i'll go ahead and set up here make a grilled cheese and then at this point we're going to leave after this we're going to leave the long path behind and hit the orange trail towards our shelter we'll see what that looks like the brian williams this is a stock bridge but let's see what it looks like from up here okay tin roof not bad it's actually brighter out here might be better off to uh cook my grilled cheese right here out in daylight see what my wife packed me all right take the seat right here i guess let's see what we got [Music] a container from yesterday this one oh boy looks like it has pepperoni and two frozen pickles that i'll have to fill out maybe i'll do that tonight it'll be a little quicker right now this one oh boy plenty of butter some dried that i grew in my own garden look at that nice these are caribbean red peppers remind me not to rub my eyes anytime soon and a little like mustard she does like mustard on grilled cheese and that oh man is chinese spicy mustard so do a little chinese spicy mustard and caribbean red grilled cheese [Music] oh she put bits of caribbean red in the grilled cheese and then i have these ones on the side if i'm feeling daring these are hotter than a habanero but not as hot as a uh carolina reaper which i try a little bite right now they picked up a little rehydration from being in there with the bread that's a big chunk oh i shouldn't have done that oh okay i'm awake now i'm gonna cook some grilled cheese see if these clouds blow out or not oh my mouth so far hmm well i believe an executive decision has been made i think i want to stay here i'm definitely not at my target for today but that's all right we'll do a little more miles tomorrow but for some reason this place has grown on me i got 360 views some trees in the way but either way probably get sunset sunrise pretty good up here of course i have the clouds but i'm not worried about that but personally i've never had the opportunity to stay in a shelter that has a built-in chimney and a fireplace let alone two built-in chimneys and fireplaces and uh granted the wood around here is probably pretty clean but to my advantage i got the saw and i can cut up some stuff that most people wouldn't mess with even this thing right here i think uh ain't got nothing better to do i could probably cut that up into some real big chunks and really fuel these fireplaces um once i get it started with some smaller sticks so i think that's what i'm gonna do last night was the first night that i ever stayed in a shelter i think solo at least i think i did it once uh eight years ago with some friends but tonight i'm gonna take the opportunity to do a little fireplace shelter so my first uh order of business i believe there's a bunch of rocks in this chimney here i don't know why but luckily i got my work gloves and i got a separate pair of worm gloves so i'm not worried about messing these up nice milwaukee work gloves so i'm gonna work on reorganizing these rocks and stones here and i'll go probably down this way collect some firewood and just make a home for tonight i mean part of me thinks i'm being pretty lazy which i am because it's uh early afternoon and i'm already ready to stop for the day but then again it is mid-december so early afternoon still means there's only two hours or so until sunset not long at all so i can either hike until dark again or i can just make a home out of this and hike a little harder tomorrow at which point i'm going to get back to the car and uh go back to society and hot showers and all that stuff anyway so i think i'm going to make this my home the voices i heard down there look like some group of younger people having a good time good for them but um as i suspected they were doing just a daytime thing so i watched from my vantage point up here they actually headed out so as of right now i got the place to myself and if not whoever shows up next if they come in late hopefully we'll have a pleasant surprise and i'll have a nice chimney in the fireplace going but anyway i'm going to work on reconfiguring this chimney and the rocks collect some firewood and see if i can't get some uh warmth in here i got a couple fire starters left but if i don't have to use them ideally i won't so that's a start at least so my goal is get this going with small just sticks that are laying around here maybe go out with the uh saw and hunt down some slightly larger ones get this guy established and then once i have that going good i can uh build another one right underneath where you're looking from in the other fireplace and uh use some fire from this to get that one started at which point it'll probably be getting dark and then i could use the uh chunks of wood from that log over there if one goes out i can feed the other one and vice versa this is more enclosed than the other structure last night it's also built of stone so it'll take a while to heat up but once it does these rocks will actually hold some heat that's my reality right now build fire keep it alive uh probably put my water up here on that okay i even got a mantel so i'll fall my water out it is frozen that uh temperature is dipping back down again uh that's the one thing i have to worry about or i should say i should be conscious of is um there's no water up here so i'll let that sit up there and it should slowly fall [Music] out and now it's just uh the hunt for [Music] firewood [Music] so [Laughter] uh [Music] [Music] that's some firewood right there it should have some staying power [Applause] there we go big chunk over here a little fire in the other earth we'll see if this can catch but now we have at least for now two fires got about a half hour until sunset just basically been uh spending my time collecting firewood tell you what though it is definitely a lot warmer in here than outside part of that is just the fact that the wind is cut down but double fireplace is pretty nice too and these rocks are starting to warm up water's not quite thawed out but they'll get there i hope i'm gonna have to use that to cook some dinner not bad though i can dig it night has fallen quickly somehow or another it's uh after seven might as well be midnight luckily i got both fireplaces going i'm playing it patient slow burn on some thick logs that i cut up from that guy over there same over here with my water bottles staying thawed out got a little cup of noodles right there i'm gonna hit that before i go to bed i got one more piece of wood right there it's a big boy so i'm gonna jam him into the furnace right before bed but we got some snow coming down pretty intense for the last hour hour and a half i hear the coyotes in the distance again i don't think you can hear them on camera but uh they're uh pretty vocal around here last night they were pretty close to camp embarking which was strange um or a new experience i'll say but i'm high up on the mountaintop we'll see what happens the snow is actually blowing into the shelter a little bit because of the wind so i'm going to tuck myself back in the corner there and uh try to stay out of the snow and hopefully manage this wood and keep it warm in here and get through the next uh well there's more snow right there get through the next uh i don't know 10 hours or so stare at the fire and try to stay warm see what kind of snow we have in the morning [Applause] [Music] i certainly got some nice fresh coat of snow out there as well as on myself uh it's been blowing pretty heavy winds and uh my sleeping bag is covered would have been a good time to have a bivvy sack but thankfully this um hammock gear uh quilt sorry i'm just waking up is um it breathes pretty well and the um down is treated with a water resistant or dwr coating but there is a dusting of snow on everything and like i said the wind's whipping pretty good uh so it's about 7 15. i'm gonna start getting up i suppose see what i want to do here boots are on snow is pretty deep i think we picked up geez i don't know over six inches maybe eight inches out here it's hard to tell because of the drifting how much really came down but i mean that didn't look like that last night now did it let's see my log completely burned out as expected but that went pretty good i woke up around 2am or something like that to answer nature's call and it pretty much died out so i took a chunk from over here combined it with a chunk over there and it uh kicked back off again until i went fell back to sleep so that was kind of nice um i'm pretty much all packed up now close to it and then i haven't eaten breakfast i'm just going to get right at it today maybe stop at um the shelter i was supposed to camp out for breakfast break or something um this new pad i'll show you that it's working good it's by a mock um which is the people that make my really crazy um cool hammock um that i've shown before the dramar for hammock camping but anyway this pad is actually designed to be used in the jamar xl hammock but they sent it to me it's the winter version um and they just said thanks for featuring us in the videos so here you go try out a new sleeping pad it's rated to negative one fahrenheit um and this is the xl there's also a long wide and i guess i don't know if they have a standard size but i like the xl because it's ridiculously long i think it's like 85 88 inches long i don't know i'll put the stats in the video description but yeah it's nice and cushy cushy pardon me tongues frozen this morning and my butt was not cold at all so we probably went into the teens so i haven't truly tested it to negative one but i'm digging the new pad i know my wife likes um really thick pads too but she won't come out in the winter but maybe i'll let her try it uh when spring comes along man it is not spring out here is it random pro tip by the way if you're gonna put on or take off a canister stove in winter make sure you're wearing gloves because sometimes they spray a little bit of gas and believe me yep there we go it wasn't that bad that time believe me it will give you some serious uh frostbite or a burning sensation that you'll never want to feel again definitely done that to myself before anyway pack this guy up and head out into the wind all right say goodbye to my home there as i trudge into the snow i'm packed up i'm back in the wind and whoa maybe i should be wearing gators or rain pants right now that's a good foot and a half right there drift all right i can't even remember well what's underneath me here if it's rocks or roots oh god well at least i'm going back to the car today hopefully if i get a little wet it's not the end of the world but oh my god i should put rain pants on that is a drift in half all right yeah we've got a good couple feet on the ground here and i'm just going carefully because i can't tell uh what what my feet are landed on top of so taking it slow i guess today's gonna be a little slow should i have factored that into my decision yesterday to stop a couple miles short yeah maybe that's all right yellow blazes or was it orange looks yellow to me but this is where we leave the long path and uh slowly trudge along towards brian williams shelter where i was going to stay yesterday but it should be a couple miles from now and i'll probably have breakfast there see how i feel got to re-up on water at some point too there was a slight trickle back there but i still got a little bit of drinking water with me and there should be another stream before we hit that shelter so i'll just keep the weight off my back and uh load up on the water a little closer hopefully that's the right decision [Music] so [Music] that snow is unrelenting it's continuing to come down and add a ton of fresh powder fresh bow pal trail actually goes over there but look here we've come to our first lake of the day i'm gonna mispronounce it but i believe it was something to the effect of lake nawajunta and after that will be the larger silver mine lake and also another road crossing and from what dan pointed out to me um there should be restrooms there with water although when he was telling me about this trip it was from the perspective of going in spring so i feel like the bathrooms might be closed um and that there is a frozen lake so won't be getting any water out of that oh look there's some flowing water maybe i'll grab that but it's just been slow going um with this deep snow and not knowing what's underneath me speaking of which uh a little wary of this because i could break through into the water i wouldn't want to do that i do have obviously waterproof gore-tex boots on but i don't want to go over the ankle and avoid it so we'll go carefully across here maybe pick up a little water so see what this road crossing looks like [Music] there's silver mine lake some file trucks in the distance i don't know if you can hear them for the silver mine parking area snow is deep so i hope i'm not plowed in too bad luckily i do have the jeep i can muscle my way out i'm pretty sure whenever i get there that is at this point i am cracking past 11 o'clock i'm just sludging along and then honestly i should have just taken the time to eat breakfast at camp this morning i think that's messing with my energy level and uh probably mental clarity too should have just eaten but i'm really just trying to push it through because i'm i got some pork fried rice and that leftover chinese mustard from uh my grilled cheese last night i think that would be amazing to have some chinese food for lunch my dinner last night i didn't show you but i had the third and final grilled cheese that my wife made me and let me tell you it was amazing uh it was a pepperoni and cheese pizza grilled cheese basically she took mozzarella cheese shredded and used that to make the grilled cheese with pepperoni slices in between and i think it changed my life and if you can't tell i'm hungry right now i'm fantasizing about all kinds of food and burgers and hard to believe today i'll hopefully be getting out of the woods and as is customary i do a nice cheeseburger somewhere man i'm hungry i'll make it to this shelter and we'll see if it was um how cool it looks if i should have stayed there or not we'll see i did like that mountaintop spot last night but you never know keep on moving we're into some uphill here have been for a little bit since i left the lake behind took a little sit down there by the lake which was nice but i'm burning daylight and i'm not even to where i was supposed to originally leave from today that's okay looks like the ridge kind of opens up here so i'm thinking the uh shelter should be right up here and get myself cooking some lunch hi how's it going all right well they sound like they're having a good time that was brian williams shelter a little full right now so i just plop down somewhere and cook my noodles this is the direction although i don't see any blazes looks like i am breaking trail completely now nobody has used this since the fresh foot and a half of snow that we got but it's not the end of the world if i have to night hike i'm not really worried about that just mentally i think i'm ready to be back at the vehicle before that but we'll see it's time to do lunch so i got my chicken fried rice mountain house meal there a little snow that i kicked in there by accident a couple of my caribbean red peppers well actually it's two halves so i got the equivalent of a whole one in there i'm gonna let that rehydrate with the meal once the water starts boiling of course on my stove there just dug a little trench out in the snow to serve as a wind block i've got my little folding sit pad there let's keep my butt dry and warm and yeah i'm going to let this rehydrate just sit here and kind of soak in the views um set myself back even more on time that's okay i got i got a few hours at best of daylight left and uh eight point something let's just call it eight miles to go um yeah i forgot my last day was the highest mileage which of course is now added to the mileage that i did to get here today but i think i will say i'm not regretting my decision um something told me that mountaintop campsite shelter two fireplaces having it to myself just go for it and i'm glad i took it i don't know if somebody would have been here or not last night but they might have been and i did like the view up there better so no regrets and i'll certainly i'm assuming have no regrets once this chicken fried rice with hot peppers and hot mustard rehydrates eventually i can't wait for that so all right longest 12 minutes of my life let's see what we got going on there's uh onions carrots mushrooms green peas oh man yup that that is amazing has a little bit of heat a little mustard dab that in there stir it around as needed oh yeah that's nice so i'm just going to enjoy this that is for sure stare at the woods in the snow drifts and uh just relax and eventually although it's hard to picture it um start moving again and breaking trail through the snow we're on the red cross trail now and that sun is threatening the horizon i am miles from the car not even to that next intersection yet it's uh gonna get dark soon here that's for sure this snow is just um now it's slowed me down i thought this was going to be my and it has been but this is my relaxed mid-winter trip instead of deep winter i wasn't expecting to worry about snow shoes or anything like that i was going to maybe do that next month but uh just doesn't seem like much maybe but pushing through constant snow and drifts um it's just uh time and energy consuming so i got a bag of trail mix left i can chomp on to get me to the car jeep but yeah i don't uh think i'm gonna escape the night hike on this one it's been pretty steady gradual but steady uphill uphill that normally would probably be fine but with the snow and the weight on my back it's a little slower so i'm just taking it easy don't want to over exert myself and i'm not terribly far from home so i'm not that worried about it in terms of um driving back home and everything so that's what i'm doing just waiting for this intersection and i can see a sliver of the moon up there ahead too caught in the trees maybe it'll guide me to the next decision i have to make all right well the red cross trail takes a sharp turn here but i'm going to switch things up um looking at my maps on my phone and the paper one i found rather than go back over this next mountain and then back down and then hiking back out the same way i hiked in and retracing my road hike i'm going to take this trail ahead of me you don't even remember the name of it but it's straight ahead that'll eventually link me back up to the road it'll save me a little bit of mileage but more importantly what i'm going for is it should be primarily downhill and then once i get to the road um i'm just tired of slogging through this snow so it'll be nice to that the road's gotta at least be better than this because i did see some plows going earlier so that's the plan because i am running out of energy i'm about ready to see that road [Music] [Applause] the jeep is still there i can't wait to get in it and turn the heat on hopefully you can see me it is uh well about 8 30 pushing up on nine o'clock that last quote-unquote trail was um if there's blazes on it i didn't see them so i didn't have any marks to go on no visible trail because all the snow on the ground and some pretty deep drifts so pretty much just set a heading luckily with the gps app and um basically felt like bushwhacking and i got down to one of the roads quote unquote road that was not plowed and finally back to this picnic area road which is plowed thankfully so a little late so probably not going to get the fanciest burger on this trip might be a fast food one but that's okay i'm looking forward to that so i think that about wraps it up three days and some heavy snow here in new york so until next time i'm syntax77 and right now it's cheeseburger time [Music] you

Channel: sintax77

Views: 1,814,368

Rating: 4.7370429 out of 5

Keywords: sintax77, backpacking, hiking, camping, winter camping, winter backpacking, camping in winter, lean-to camping, solo camping, outdoors, solo overnight, harriman state park, harriman state park ny, backpacking harriman state park, New York Long Path, snow camping, snow, winter, camping in snow, hunker down, shelter, solo camp, winter camp, snow camp, trail shelter, appalachian trail, mountain hut, Stockbridge Shelter, camping in snow storm, cold weather camping

Id: v2GY36kh78w

Length: 80min 25sec (4825 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020