Hello!

Welcome to The Journeys of Soulslosher!  Thanks for popping in!  I created this site sometime ago and it has more or less morphed into backpacking reviews of the trails that I hike.  Occasionally, there will be something non-hiking related if the trip is epic and long enough.  The links to these adventures can be found on the immediate right.  I hope you enjoy!

Happy Trails!


~Soulslosher

What's In Store for 2011?

That's what most people that know me are wondering! Soooo... I am going to attempt a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail (AT) this year. I am hoping that it goes well.. if not, at least I tried. I have nothing else "better" to do. No commitments here at home. No house/apartment, no significant other, no job, a select 5-7 friends that I will miss, and 4 family members. Not a whole lot keeping me planted here in DE.. I view this as a prime time to attempt a thru-hike.
With that said, I always post my adventurous tails on this blog, but for my AT hike I will be keeping a blog on trailjournals.com for short entries and you can follow my posts about how my hike is going here: www.trailjournals.com/soulslosher
Also, I will be updating another blog as much as possible with more lengthy entries here: http://appalachiantrail-2011.blogspot.com/

Taken in NJ (believe it or not) on the AT

Recap for 2010

Well, yet another year has gone by.. Where does time go?! 2010 was an awesome year for me! Chronologically, these are the highlights of 2010:

• Study abroad in the UK (mainly London), Scotland, & Paris for 1 month
• My first drag show
  
• Road trip Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, & California to visit Mexico to ride in Baja
  
• Graduated from University of Delaware with my B.A. in Political Science & History
• Road trip to Tennessee to ride four-wheelers & camp with Jimmy & Christine
• North Carolina to sight-see & hike
• West Virginia to sight-see & hike
• Pennsylvania to water-ski & hike
• Skydiving
  
• My first AT hike in MD & WV
• My second AT hike in NJ
• Road trip Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, & California to visit Mexico for riding in Baja
• Hike & white water raft in West Virginia
• My third AT hike in VA
• New York City
  

Sure, there were tons of other highlights, but those are the ones that stand out to me. And, of course, there were the not-so-great times.. However, they were minor road bumps during the course of 2010. I can only hope that 2011 is just as awesome!!

New York City

Myself and Howie, who is a friend of mine, went to NYC for the day. I always wanted to see NYC around Christmas time. It was definitely cold but we still had a great time. We saw Rockefeller Center and the Christmas tree there, Ground Zero, Macy's all 'done up' for Christmas, Wall Street and the Stock Exchange, Times Square, and ate at an upscale sushi restaurant called Sushi Zen. I had been to NYC a couple of times before this trip and had done all of the standard things like the Statue of Liberty and go up in the WTC...when it was still there.
We got around the city easily enough.. we only had one error on the subway. It was good to visit the Big Apple again!

WV & The Gauley

Dad and I went deep into the southern heart of WV around Summersville and Fayetteville. We spent some time at the farm before going to Summersville to raft on the Class 5 rapids on the Gauley River. We also did some hiking the day before. What a time that was.. Dad left it up to me to pick the destination. I chose the old abandoned Kaymoor coal mine because it seemed super interesting. We started at Kaymoor Top and hiked down into the Gorge to Kaymoor Bottom. Over a 1,000 foot decent in about a mile. We no sooner left the parking lot when it started to rain--hard. We had donned our synthetic wicking layers so we decided to press on because we had A LOT of time to burn before we could check into the hostel (that I also picked out). Once at the bottom, the old coal car rails, coke ovens, building structures, and conveyor belt to transport the coal were eerily present in the increasingly low hanging fog. The New River was swiftly moving along in the distance.

Hiking up out of the Gorge was a challenge-- at least I made it one. It was over 800 steps of stairs to get back up the trail that switchbacked the rest of the way up the mountain to the parking lot. I went all 800+ stairs AND continued to hike up the switchbacks to the parking lot WITHOUT stopping! Fuck yes! I was a hot mess once back to the car though.. my synthetic shirt was all wicked out and the rain was starting to penetrate. Oh well, still a fun time! :)