Sunday, July 15, 2001

By Steve Hendrix, The Washington Post

With a groan, the hiker drops his backpack on the porch of the general store. Sweat shadows remain where the 60-pound load hung from his shoulders. It's not yet noon, and Kevin Middlebrooks has already knocked another 10 miles off his 2,167-mile walk from Georgia to Maine.

But these were not ordinary miles. These were miles 1,073 through 1,083. Middlebrooks has just reached Pine Grove Furnace, a pastoral state park in southern Pennsylvania and the midway point of the Appalachian Trail.

"So, like, what's the deal with the half-gallon ice cream thing?" says Middlebrooks, walking into the Pine Grove Store, a one-time livery stable that now serves hikers and park visitors with short-order burgers, fishing lures and canned goods. And ice cream, lots of ice cream. "If you eat it all, you get it for free, right?"

Wrong. The girl behind the counter shakes her head apologetically. Rumors spread fast along the Appalachian Trail, and the myth of free ice cream at Pine Grove is one of the most dogged. No, if you want to join the Half-Gallon Club, you pay your own way -- $5.75 for the privilege of gorging yourself on a brick of Hershey's finest. It's a cold cholesterol jolt, packing 3,520 calories and 496 percent of your recommended saturated fat for the day. Your prize? A small flat wooden spoon stamped "Member of Half Gal. Club," a cold headache that would fell an elephant and campfire bragging rights for about 100 miles. For an extra $10, you get a T-shirt.

"They line up to do it," says Sara St. Vincent, 18, a counter clerk. "The record is 12 minutes and 10 seconds. I watched him do it. There was no spoon. He just opened the carton and started cutting blocks off with his knife. Then he came in and said, 'My mouth is numb. I need coffee.' "

She shrugs. "Most of them just throw it up again."

The Half-Gallon Club has become an AT sacrament, a binge-purge ritual marking one of the great semi-accomplishments of outdoor life. The miles leading up to Pine Grove are filled with psych talk ("Halfway, dude, we're almost to the ice cream!") and strategy (go for bland flavors; skip breakfast). On the miles leaving Pine Grove, however, they talk very little, and they walk very slowly.

"Slipping into ... coma. Arteries ... clogging," says a June 9 entry in the Half-Gallon Club logbook kept by the store. "But I got my wooden spoon, damn it!"

Middlebrooks, 22, a student who goes by the trail handle "Secondhand," is going for the spoon. He pays his money, plucks a block of vanilla out of the freezer cabinet and settles down at one of the picnic tables on the porch. Four hours ago he ate two Pop-Tarts for breakfast. His belly is empty now, but is it ready for 16 helpings of butterfat and sugar? He folds back the lid, eyes the flawless field of white and takes a deep breath. At 11:47, he tucks in.

"About seven out of 10 hikers, they try," says Tony Balios, the glad-handing Greek immigrant who has owned Pine Grove for seven years. "Last year, they ate about 400 gallons of ice cream. We're keeping Hershey's in business."

As Middlebrooks whittles away, the porch grows more crowded. In groups of two and three, hikers come off the nearby trail to lay down their burdens in the store's cool shade: college kids, couples, a grandmother with a black bandanna around her short gray hair. Most will stay all day.

The Pennsylvania stretch of the AT is known as rocky and unforgiving; Pine Grove, tucked under the brow of South Mountain, is a natural place to rest for a day and give the bunions a breather. It's a welcoming spot -- a cool length of valley, bound on both sides by low-rise ridges and surrounded by a state forest. It's the site of an 18th-century iron furnace and foundry, the brick ruins of which still stand within the park's 700 acres of rolling fields, and wooded walking and bike trails. A trout stream bisects the park, and there are two lakes, one a flooded old quarry that is deep and chilling. On a sunny morning like this, the beaches of both lakes are filled with red-footed hikers side by side with picnicking families. In all, Pine Grove provides an easy overlap between the real world of folks who take their nature on the weekends and the serpentine world of the AT, where being outside is a full-time affair.

12:03. Middlebrooks has been keeping a steady gait, but he's starting to slow now that he's downed the equivalent of five bowls of ice cream. There are beads of sweat on his forehead and a white mustache on his lip.

"You go, Secondhand," calls a bushy-haired hiker known as Joker, who has walked up playing his harmonica. He declines the Half-Gallon challenge himself ("That's just gross"), but he's happy to root for his fellow Northbounder. The hikers on the AT -- at least those going in the same direction -- form a sort of Slinky community; it expands and contracts as laggards catch up and fall behind. Hikers find themselves at lunch spots and sleeping shelters in the company of a constantly rotating set of cohorts. The Slinky contracts at Pine Grove.

"You can't believe how important these little breaks are," says one through-hiker as he buys a fistful of Snickers bars. "It keeps the spirits up and gives the people behind a chance to catch up. And cheeseburgers are pretty hard to come by out in the woods."

12:13. Middlebrooks abandons his spoon and uses his quivering fingers for the first time. He pinches off a softening blob of vanilla and slips into it his mouth with all the enthusiasm of a vegan sucking down a hunk of bloody liver. "I'm not sure I can finish," he says, placing his hands on the table and pushing himself slowly to his feet.

The babble of hikers suddenly stops as Middlebrooks walks with pained dignity to the nearby restroom. Joker follows, leaning through the door, playing his harmonica. "He's going to do the bulimia thing and I'm playing him the Hershey Blow Blues."

While Middlebrooks communes with his inner glutton, a group of hikers walks up the short hill to the old ironmaster's mansion, a noble old pile wrapped in verandas and balconies overlooking the ancient furnace yard. The restored house is now a youth hostel popular with weekenders, particularly bicyclists touring the local forests and orchards. The lobby features a walk-in fireplace and a grand piano. The kitchen is vast, the chairs overstuffed. There's pingpong and a human-scale chessboard in the side yard. And more than a few AT hikers use visions of its fabled Jacuzzi to keep their feet moving through southern Pennsylvania.

"I try to put the hikers together," says manager Shawn Magness, tidying up one of the capacious, high-ceilinged bunk rooms. This one has a 10-point deer head mounted on the wall. "It helps others who are sensitive to peculiar odors."

12:23. Middlebrooks resumes his place, averting his eyes from the rapidly dissolving mass in the box. He dabs his forehead with a wet paper towel.

One of the onlookers is Bill Jones of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, the Washington-area organization that oversees the AT from Rockfish Gap, Va., to Pine Grove. Jones is in charge of this stretch of trail and he's seen a lot of hikers take the Half-Gallon challenge. "It's the cold that gets them more than the volume," he says.

Middlebrooks picks up his spoon, shakes his head. "No," he says. "It's the volume."

He begins to eat. It's 12:25. Thirty-eight minutes. He won't be breaking any records; he won't be making any more miles. "I'm staying right here today."

Six minutes later, Middlebrooks leans back on his bench, shoves the carton as far as he can get it and looks around for applause. "I'm done." Almost. An unhelpful reporter points out a few spoonfuls of soupy mush in the corners. With disgust, Middlebrooks picks up the box and turns it up to his lips, letting the milk mustache run Fu Manchu-style down his chin.

"I'm done," he says again, more emphatically. "Where's my wooden spoon?"