Do you remember the weather two weekends ago — how it rained almost constantly, and heavily, until it felt almost as if it was raining inside your head?
How would you have liked to walk over 47 miles, up hills and down, in dark and light, over rocks and through streams, in 19 hours during that mess?
Matt Barley, who lives in Columbia, and Jeff Dagen, of Landisville, did that. They say the trek often was miserable. But they wouldn't have missed the experience for anything.
“We wanted to test our physical and mental limits,” explains Barley. “To me, it’s amazing how fast you forget the misery of the experience and joy takes over.”
Their objective was to conquer the “Four-State Challenge,” an Appalachian Trail segment hike that begins at the Pennsylvania-Maryland border and ends in Virginia, about five miles south of Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia.
The hike must be completed within 24 hours for the challenge. Barley (trail name “Funk-29”) and Dagen (trail name “Nails”) did it in 19. That included four hours of “pit stops” to change soggy footwear and repack food and water.
Barley, a 45-year-old interior designer at RLPS Interiors, and Dagen, a 50-year-old RLPS project manager, trained for eight weeks, hiking trails in Lancaster and York counties.
David (trail name “Ice Man”) Martin, of Leola, drove the two men to the Mason-Dixon Line, met them at key points along the way so they could change into dry shoes and socks and resupply food and water, and then transported them home from Virginia.
“My past experiences sort of set me up for the four-state challenge,” Barley says. He rock-climbed walls in Yosemite National Park as a teenager and hiked the entire Appalachian Trail in 1998.
Dagen also is accustomed to challenging himself. He has run a marathon and a half-marathon. He has biked long distances.
The two men admit the four-state trek was no frolic. They started at midnight and used headlamps to thread their way through “miserable” rocks on the first section. Then they climbed up and down, up and down, hour after hour, in the rain.
Knowing the end was near, they ran the last several miles into Harper's Ferry.
“My feet were feeling it and I was really ready to bail, but then we began running and my feet felt better,” Dagen says.
“Adrenaline took over,” Barley recalls. “Eventually, it felt like we were unstoppable.”
The two are already thinking about the next challenge.
Barley plans to hike to the top of New York’s Mount Marcy with his wife and four children. Dagen has ideas but is keeping them close. “The ability to get outside and walk anywhere,” he says, “is a gift.”
More armament
Two weeks ago the Scribbler discussed artillery in Lancaster County. He surveyed only parks and cemeteries, so he understood he might miss some guns. Turns out he missed several.
The Scribbler must have walked right by the cannon in Lancaster Cemetery.
And tanks are located on the Amvets property in Ephrata, at the VFW post in Millersville and on the grounds of the Christiana American Legion.
Two machine guns guard approaches to Amato’s Woodfire Pizza and Italian Restaurant (formerly The Watering Trough) in the Florin section of Mount Joy.
There are probably more, but that's enough of the big-gun stuff.
Jack Brubaker, retired from the LNP | LancasterOnline staff, writes “The Scribbler'' column every Sunday. He welcomes comments and contributions at scribblerlnp@gmail.com.
