George Steffanos

Next to a lake, looking over a small thicket of wildflowers with clusters of dark pink blossoms. The lake is covered with clusters of lily pads and other aquatic vegetation. The tip of a peninsula to our left, a small island to our right and the far shore are all densely forested, the trees partially silhouetted in the fading evening light. The sun has set behind the far shore, staining the thin hazy clouds orange, gold and pale yellow, mirrored on the lake below.

Wildflowers and lily pads sunset, Scoville Reservoir, Wolcott, Connecticut. July 15, 2021, 8:11 PM.

#sunset #hiking #forest #lake

A lake sparkles in bright early morning sunshine beneath a soft blue sky. A thin mist hovers over the water near a wooded shoreline. In the foreground a man in gray shorts and a bright green hoody is bent over in water up to mid-calf, holding his water bag below the surface. Rings of concentric ripples encircle him in the otherwise placid waters.

Water for breakfast, Tirrell Pond, Northville-Placid Trail, Adirondack Preserve, New York. September 11, 2024, 7:56 AM.

#hiking #forest #mist #lake

You can read or listen to my book for free if you are a Kindle Unlimited eBook or an Audible Plus audiobook subscriber. Both options are available from Amazon, where the paperback, eBook or audiobook can also be purchased.

Then the Hail Came: A Humorous and Truthful Account of a 1983 Appalachian Trail Thru-hike Then the Hail Came: A Humorous and Truthful Account of a 1983 Appalachian Trail Thru-hike [Steffanos, George] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Then the Hail Came: A Humorous and Truthful Account of a 1983 Appalachian Trail Thru-hike

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Somewhere beneath these shimmering stars tonight, Katahdin awaits a solitary pilgrim. 392.8 miles to go.

From my book Then the Hail Came (A Humorous and Truthful Account of a 1983 Appalachian Trail Thru-hike). Available on Amazon in paperback, audio and eBook: www.amazon.com/dp/B09QFG4ZR6

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The connecting trail is all behind me, now. Tomorrow, I begin hiking the Whites. Beyond that range lies the promise and fulfillment of Maine. The unattainable dream.

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It was a magnificent sight, and one which I was able to savor for a good long time. My mother took a wrong turn on the way to pick me up and came out somewhere in Vermont. By the time she got straightened out and managed to reach the trailhead, it was 9:00.

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I wished my friend Mark from Shenandoah could have been there tonight. I fell deeper and faster through the vast universe as my forgotten body slowly froze beside a little-used mountain road on a tiny pinprick of light far above. Infinity.

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My eyes would shift to the empty black beside them and gradually lesser lights would emerge, eventually flaring with frozen fire approaching the intensity of their more spectacular cousins. My eyes would shift to another “empty” portion and more lights would eventually swim up from the depths.

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I lay on my back alongside the blacktop, oblivious to the fact that I was freezing my butt off. The entire universe flipped over, and I was staring down into a huge black abyss. The few stars with which I was familiar from southern Connecticut skies blazed like beacons here.

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It was a beautiful night — unbelievably clear. The sky gradually donned the velvety-black mantle which city and suburban dwellers so seldom encounter. Constellations began to appear, and the Milky Way spanned the firmament in a blaze of glory.

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Darkness was falling and the evening was becoming rather chilly. I put on my chamois shirt and sat down to await my ride. I had brought with me no long pants, and my legs rapidly became chilled as the body heat generated by hiking subsided.

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The AT crossed a marshy area and climbed over a wooded hill before dropping down to state road 25, another small two-lane highway, just past the outskirts of a little New Hampshire village known as Glencliff. I arrived at the trailhead at 7:30, 15 minutes early, thanks to my nonstop walking.

I'm disappointed, but I learned a lot for the next hike. I have lots of great pics and some stories to share. This will put off my sequel AT hike until 2027, but there will be new hikes next year.Beneath a bright overcast sky, we are standing in a narrow dirt road alongside a forest on our left. The right side of the road has a grassy shoulder several feet wide. To its right is a rustic wooden post and wire fence with flowering shrubs and tall weeds growing along it in spots. To the right of the fence is the corner of a green field of grass several inches in height and white wildflowers. A single line of trees borders this field. The dirt road and fence continue past this wind break to a very large grassy field with a small tilled rectangular patch near the road. The forested slopes of mountain rising several hundred feet above us borders this field.

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September 2, 1983: The trail descended past a water source called Hairy Root Spring (I know — sounds yummy, doesn’t it?) to the shores of Wachipauka Pond, the mountain tarn I had just seen from above.

#backpacking #hiking #AppalachianTrail

A brownish gray rock covered with blotches of light gray lichen. On top is a small toad whose body is reddish brown with streaks of light gray. He is standing still and doing a pretty good job of blending into the background, which is an almost vertical portion of a mountainside. This is covered with more rocks, a fallen tree limb, bits of moss, a couple of small, leafy shoots and long strands of green and golden brown grass.

Toad on a rock, Sleeping Giant State Park, Hamden, Connecticut. July 1, 2024, 6:27 PM.

#hiking #forest #toad

In a small glade in the forest, a single massive craggy boulder left foreground projects upward from the ground. The rock is a light reddish brown, but most of its surface is splotched with light gray and green lichen and patches of green moss. The ground around is mostly barren, with patches of scraggly grass and many smaller rocks and boulders. The forest encircling it is green and leafy with closely packed smaller trees and dense undergrowth. Beneath the foliage canopy it is shady with splotches of bright sunshine.

This upthrust wedge of rock always reminds me of an ancient pagan monument.

Natural standing stone, Sleeping Giant State Park, Hamden, Connecticut. August 16, 2024, 3:38 PM.

#hiking #forest #rocks

I'm disappointed, but I learned a lot for the next hike. I have lots of great pics and some stories to share. This will put off my sequel AT hike until 2027, but there will be new hikes next year.

Note: I'm finally starting to work on my hiking blog for my aborted August hike. I'll have a link soon. A hard fall on the steep descent from Jug End did some damage to my right shoulder. I'll be fine eventually, but it did cut short my plans for a 6-week hike after 1 great week.

Places I've Been | Then The Hail Came George Steffanos My 1983 Appalachian Trail Hike in Photos. There are around 750-800 photos here scanned from my 1983 slides. I believe this to be one of the oldest thru-hikes on the Internet to be documented in photo...

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An old trail axiom states that the further away from roads one travels when backpacking, the nicer and more considerate the people one encounters.

More of My 1983 Appalachian Trail Hike in Photos at www.georgesteffanos.com/places-i-ve-...

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Shelters accessible by vehicles always seem to attract the truly classy people — for instance, those who see nothing wrong with washing their dishes in the next person’s drinking water.

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Someone remarked in the register that they had found the nearby spring filled with fragments of scrambled eggs.

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Several stretches were on dirt roads passable by car, including the segment that went past the last shelter on the trail today. Not surprisingly for a shelter located on a road, the place was a dive.

The scene is bathed in the slanting, golden colored late day light. The clear sky has lost its color and is almost white. We are looking out above the tops of some fir trees across a narrow valley towards another mountain. The mountain and its slopes are also covered with a dark green spruce-fir forest. A dirt road with grassy shoulders climbs gently across its lower slopes. It is the only sign of man in the picture.

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August 25, 1983: After the shelter, the Appalachian Trail passed through private lands for the final seven miles of the day. It remained, for the most part, in the woods, but crossed a few open pastures.

#backpacking #hiking #AppalachianTrail

We are walking a trail along a rocky river bank. The ground along both banks is mostly bare dirt, rocks and tree roots, but the first shoots of grass are appearing. Shrubs along the banks are either throwing out small green leaves or bright green buds. A small tree on our left is covered with white flowers. The larger trees are also in bud. At this early spring moment the trees are not blocking much sun from reaching the river and forest floor.

Young springtime. Mill River, Sleeping Giant State Park, Hamden, Connecticut. April 20, 2023, 4:24 PM.

#hiking #forest #river #springtime

Beneath a clear blue sky we are standing on a light gray granite outcrop atop a mountain, looking out over the tops of a mixed forest of evergreens and leafless hardwoods running down the mountainside before us. Just beyond the trees on our left and just below us is a rocky crag with only a few stunted pines growing from crevices along its crest. A large deep blue pond dominates the view below in front of us. To our right a small rounded mountain rises from the pond's shore. Beyond the pond is a narrow, flat wooded strip of land backed by a long ocean inlet and then another relatively fat piece of land with a range of mountains to our right and scattered mountains along the horizon.

"Where the Mountains Meet the Sea". Echo Lake and Sommes Sound from Beach Mountain, Acadia National Park, Maine. From April 1981.

#hiking #seacoast #mountains

You can read or listen to my book for free if you are a Kindle Unlimited eBook or an Audible Plus audiobook subscriber. Both options are available from Amazon, where the paperback, eBook or audiobook can also be purchased.

Then the Hail Came: A Humorous and Truthful Account of a 1983 Appalachian Trail Thru-hike Then the Hail Came: A Humorous and Truthful Account of a 1983 Appalachian Trail Thru-hike [Steffanos, George] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Then the Hail Came: A Humorous and Truthful Account of a 1983 Appalachian Trail Thru-hike

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upon the summit of the highest mountain in Virginia and experience its dusky and beautiful spruce and fir forest.

From my book Then the Hail Came (A Humorous and Truthful Account of a 1983 Appalachian Trail Thru-hike). Available in paperback, audiobook and eBook: www.amazon.com/dp/B09QFG4ZR6

A rugged green landscape of rolling grassy meadows and large rock outcrops and boulders with a few leafy green shrubs. The slopes of a rounded knob on the ridge above us is also with a swath of fir trees. A spur ridge descending to our left has swaths of fir and hardwoods. Beyond that, increasingly ghostly ridges cascade to the misty horizon.

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Green farming valleys carved an intricate web through mountains and foothills stretching out into the distance with Whitetop, Mount Rogers, Wilburne Ridge, and all the surrounding peaks rising in the foreground.
A little while later, I took a one-mile round trip from the AT simply to stand

A summery day beneath a clear but very hazy white sky. We are overlooking a overgrown field filled with dense thickets of leafy shrubs and scattered fir trees and gray rock outcrops running down a mountainside into a valley hundreds of feet below. The valley and the rolling hills beyond it are densely wooded and a bit indistinct in the summery haze.

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as so many open areas in the Smokies have become since that area was made a National Park. The fences prevent these cattle from wandering off. I spent the best part of an hour wandering that field taking photographs and enjoying the views.

A summery day beneath a hazy baby blue sky with wispy white clouds. We are on a high plateau following a footpath through an overgrown meadow covered with thickets of low leafy shrubs and a few trees. Several are hardwoods sprouting emerald green new spring leaves, the rest are fir trees. The mostly wooded flank of a knob rises slightly above us to the right. To the left rises a grassy ridge with swaths of scrub. A taller wooded summit rises above that. On the left a more distant ridge is barely visible on the misty horizon.

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Despite the presence of the fence, the field was also on National Forest land. The United States Forest Service allows farmers to graze cattle in these fields in the summertime in order to prevent them from becoming overgrown

A summery day beneath a clear but very hazy white sky. We are on a high plateau in a meadow of lush grass broken by a few leafy plants, lots of scattered boulders and large gray rock formations thrusting out of the ground. Beyond a fence line to our left the forest begins. Straight ahead the slopes of a knob rise above us, covered with large swaths of forest and a few small fields. Across a narrow valley more distant wooded and grassy slopes are barely visible through the morning haze.

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My first side trip of the day began less than a mile from the shelter. The Appalachian Trail began following a long, rustic post and wire fence line, on the other side of which a sprawling, grassy field slanted far down the mountainside.