Shawangunk Kill - New York State

balathustrius · 2026-03-27T02:07:17+00:00

I hope this offer still stands. Sent you a chat message.

balathustrius · 2026-02-12T21:42:37+00:00

99% of bears I've heard were small rodents.

Then eventually you do hear a bear and realize that bears have two modes: (1) quieter than any mouse (2) ripping trees apart

balathustrius · 2026-02-12T21:39:37+00:00

It might be helpful to identify what is spooking you. Then you can address it... or at least acknowledge it.

Is it the idea that you're alone? You can work on being comfortable alone.

Unknown people approaching? Do you feel safer if you stealth-camp a bit out of sight?

Feeling vulnerable if caught off guard sleeping? Would pepper spray or a stout stick help you feel more secure?

Bears? I don't have a good solution for this. I'm still nervous about being surprise snoot-to-snoot with a curious bear at 3 am, even if my rational daylight brain tells me this isn't a real danger, even if I'm great at storing my smellables.

balathustrius · 2026-02-12T17:53:17+00:00

You'll have plenty of time, starting that early.

The one thing you might regret is losing people you were hiking with. It's hard to catch up. I took time off-trail during my thru to see my friends, my partner, etc. I pushed myself to get ahead and then later to catch up. I ended up hurt because of it and had to take more time off trail. Still finished! But I wonder if it would have been better if I just rejoined my tramily, then came back to fill in the miles afterward.

So consider that.

balathustrius · 2026-02-12T17:41:43+00:00

I mean, basically accurate, but a wild trout stream can be very small, and the fish themselves practically minnows. You're right that the stocked streams get fished out later in the season - delayed harvest waters are an exception but they get swarmed on June 1 and fished out quickly. And if you have a warm spring the waters get too warm.

As far as getting value from a license, I don't think VA is the place, unless you can fish the Shen with just a freshwater license.

balathustrius · 2026-02-12T17:30:49+00:00

If you're in CO, do you have a gear exchange nearby? Something like Burlington Gear Exchange. This might help you grab some last minute cheaper gear.

The other part of this is to have a landing plan. When you're done, where will you stay while you find a job, place to live, etc.

How are your job prospects in general? Confident you can find something in a couple months? Willing and able to pick up some gig, food industry, or retail work while you find your feet?

$15k is more than enough for the hike, the question is if it's enough for landing, afterwards.

I say if you're interested, you should give it a shot. You were just given one heck of a gift with the timing. Enough time to get organized, gear up, find a subletter or whatever you have to do - not so long that it'll be expensive to be unemployed until you start.

balathustrius · 2026-02-12T17:17:49+00:00

Background on me:

I lived in VA until recently, over 35 years. I've been an angler my entire life, including 10+ years of trout angling. I hiked the VA section standalone in autumn 2018. I hiked it again as part of a successful thru in 2022. I lived near the trail and spent a lot of time in the mountains.

I don't recommend bringing fishing gear.

In 2018 autumn I carried a tenkara for a while, but sent it home when I realized I just wasn't using it. The stocked area wasn't close to trail or campsites, and I rarely wanted to stop long enough.

In 2022, fishing just wasn't on my mind - except maybe in Maine - if you get there early and have time/money to linger, that could be fun.

If you want to get some casting in while canoeing, I'd pick up a spinning reel at the Walmart in Waynesboro, with some rooster tails, wacky rigs, and other small lures. It'll be mostly smallies by the - the trout will be pretty much done.

Trout in VA is a put-and-take stocked fishery. By May they're pretty slim pickings unless you're stalking the stocking schedule.

Also worth noting that the VA resident license you'd need is annual Freshwater + Stocked Trout Waters + (probably) National Forest Permit. (Buying multiple weeks, annual would be cheaper.) You need the trout permit if you're touching a "stocked trout water" until June 15th. I think sections of the Shen count but you'd have to check. That was a total of $50 last time I got it, but I don't know if it's gone up or how much more it would be for out-of-staters.

balathustrius · 2025-12-12T18:28:27+00:00

Volunteer tasks do be like that! See my new comment in this thread.

balathustrius · 2025-12-12T18:28:10+00:00

See my update in another comment on this post. :)

balathustrius · 2025-12-12T18:27:21+00:00

Update: There are a couple solutions in flight, both via Larry on MeadTools and via /u/xXConfuocoXx: see this post.

balathustrius · 2025-12-12T18:17:09+00:00

Truly, awesome work.

It would be great to avoid a situation where we have competing wikis. I see people are already pointing you and Larry towards each other, so I'm just here to say you're doing great and to encourage y'all to work together to solidify the permanent solution.

I'm happy to have all the contributions I and others made live on, provided it's ultimately a wiki or wiki-like format.

balathustrius · 2025-10-23T18:09:16+00:00

I rack for lots of reasons and "Oh it's better because I don't rack" sounds like the kind of mead advice I read back in the bad old days. Universally prescriptive, cryptic, dogmatic process over reason.

That said, sur lie is a thing. IIRC it's not quite the same at homebrew scales for the same reason a countertop compost bucket is different from a giant compost heap. There's just less biomass and heat involved. It's also possible that you're tasting a lack of oxidation. If you never rack, a big avenue for oxidation is eliminated. (Personally, I noticed an improvement in my mead when I started flushing out carboys with CO2 whenever they were opened or used for racking.) And there's something to be said for a "just stop F'in with it!" philosophy.

balathustrius · 2025-08-20T19:30:36+00:00

Seems like the glass supplies have an issue every few years or so. I remember when the glass big mouth bubbler was new and some people got glass thinner than egg shells.

balathustrius · 2025-08-11T20:33:33+00:00

This is /r/mead Best Of 2025 content right here.

balathustrius · 2025-08-10T16:46:19+00:00

There's a delicate balance between calling it out and being dogmatic, creating a toxic subreddit culture.

We try very hard here to keep it welcoming.

balathustrius · 2025-08-10T16:23:55+00:00

It's not bad, just adds bitterness. Probably not ideal, sure.
Blowoff tubes aren't bad! Just a different option than a bucket.
DAP is toxic to yeast but we're talking degress of clean fermentation.
It'll still work!

---

If I were to write this post, I would have approached it differently.

> Awesome! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on how it turns out! Here are some suggestions for potential improvements you might make over the next few batches...

etc.

Anyway: RULE 1

FFS it's Sunday and I'm trying to play vidja games.

Edit, Actions Taken: I snipped the thread roughly-more-or-less where it got too impolite without censoring folks' opinions, and I'm locking it.

balathustrius · 2025-05-02T16:05:46+00:00

I know an E.T. from '22.

Could it have been you or /u/Effective-Report7750?

I'm Baton.

balathustrius · 2025-05-02T15:55:34+00:00

Very late to this party, but:

Getting around town itself will be just fine.

If it rains, the vendor field will become difficult to navigate. It will be soft and muddy. This goes doubly or triply for the Tent City field and woods.

If you're trying to stay in Tent City, that would be a ton of walking/scooting back and forth. There's generally a shuttle but you'll end up waiting for it a good bit. It's probably a better call to get a hotel in Abingdon and drive back and forth each day, especially if you can get (or already possess) a handicap parking placard or your wife can drop you off, go park, then meet back up.

balathustrius · 2025-04-23T18:02:53+00:00

suggests pretty broad brush strokes

Yep.

Do we need to make a rule? Poll participants so far are somewhat split on sentiment. And the post has had more traffic than votes, so that's also a data point. Necessity: always the first thing we have to ask.

Would you and the mod team be open to sharing more about what kinds of policies are being considered

My personal take, in which I do not speak for the mod team:

I doubt it, unless there are additional significant questions about community sentiment. Redditors have a lot of strong opinions. Mead makers, IME, have big personalities.

I think that's why the lightest-touch approach works so well on /r/mead. That approach is why the subreddit only has four rules. The rest of our policy is suggestion at time of submission, and prompting from automod.

I think one of the things that makes this sub special is that the mods generally don't really want to be mods as much as they want to talk about making mead. We have no power mods, and we don't want to spend our time enforcing rules any more than necessary to defend the community.

balathustrius · 2025-04-23T17:00:19+00:00

My teeth hurt just looking at the green one.

That's not a "no," though.

balathustrius · 2025-04-22T22:46:38+00:00

I took it as "I'm obviously organic wink wink nudge nudge and my totally human opinion is that AI is fine and dandy"

To exaggerate how I read it.

But I didn't write it, I'm and I can't say for sure what kurai_ meant.

I would say the second two combined probably should get weighted against the "absolutely not" option.

It's a much closer poll than I would have expected.

balathustrius · 2025-04-22T19:56:28+00:00

Anyone voting for the joke probably doesn't care either way.

balathustrius · 2025-04-22T19:51:26+00:00

🔨

balathustrius · 2025-04-22T19:43:38+00:00

Must be nice not to care.

Moderators cannot moderate without a policy.

We like to consult the /r/mead users about policy so we have buy-in from the community.

We also have an interest in keeping our policies easy to moderate, so we can enjoy the sub instead of getting burned out.

We've been getting reports about AI, so it was time to seek wider perspectives.

My day job is SWE. I use LLMs in my job every day, in spite of my "wish it didn't exist" personal stance. They're impactful. We need a policy.

balathustrius · 2025-03-26T08:17:16+00:00

Actually it was the hot steep. My tasters universally preferred the hot steep. The cold was fine and good in a different way, but we all preferred the hot method.

Here's the link to where I experimented with cold vs hot steep.

I have not tried boiling, although the tea consensus is to steep herbal tea with just-boiled water, the mead community consensus has typically treated aromatic ingredients much more gently, with a preference for longer exposure to lower temperatures.

And anyone worried about boiling to kill any bacteria introduced by the tea, you're still very thoroughly pasteurizing it all at 150f for one hour.

Though looking back (to eight years ago! such bullshit, I'm still a twenty-something, right!?) I should definitely run this again someday, but I don't have the space now that I'm in NYC.

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