The passing of my hiking partner and friend resulted in trying to find other older hikers to hike the AT. I responded to a posting in the AT Magazine and exchanged emails with Lee from TN and Randy from VA and agreed to join them to hike across New Jersey on September 1st through the 7th. Lee was making all the arrangements and he found a NJ State Pa, Swartswood, that was nearly in the middle of the State. Lee and Randy had hiked before but this was going to be my first time to day hike and tent for seven (7) days and sleep in my Coleman Tent for six (6) nights. Their plan was to meet at Swartswood State Park in the early afternoon of September 1st and then do a short 3+ mile hike. I got a lot of ideas from their planning and have used all of it on my future Slack Packing hikes. Our routine each day would be to get up early, around sunrise and drive to McDonald's for breakfast and coffee. Position our end car and drive to our start point and hike either north or south depending on the terrain. They preferred to hike from the lower elevation to the higher elevation at the beginning of the day and head down at the end of the day. We'd have lunch on the trail each day and after we got back to the State Park, shower and change clothes and got into town for dinner. I really liked this plan and have used it most of the time I've Slack Packed.
A couple of days our hikers were in the 8.5 miles range, we had two hikes in the 9 to 9.5 miles range and one hike of nearly 14 miles and another just over 15 miles. I've never hiked more than 10 miles a day so several of these hikes pushed my limit. My feet always get hot and I was concerned about blisters. On one of our hikes I saw Randy applying something to his feet during our lunch break and he told me he'd been using "Body Glide" on his feet in the morning and again during the day to prevent blisters. He shared his Body Glide with me and my feet felt cooler. Since September of 2012 I always use Body Glide in the morning before I start hiking and on some days apply it again mid-day especially if the temperatures are really hot.
Overall New Jersey was a great experience with some ridge walking and a few short climbs and descents. For a new hiker this was an ideal experience. In 2012 I only hiked for 10 days and only hiked 107 AT miles. Between 2005 and 2011 I had only hiked 10 days and only 33 AT miles.
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