On-Trail Update No. 4

Day 66     A.T. Miles: 854.0

Wow.  Where to begin?  It has been almost a month since I've lasted posted an update.  To those of you who thought I may have dropped off, fear no more!  I have just been having a stretch of very bad internet luck.  I'll spare you the details and get down to business.

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I hiked out of Hot Springs, NC on March 21 after recovering from a bout of stomach something-or-other.  Face, Guido, and J.T. Hill pushed on the day before, so it was just me and Delaware Dave hiking together for a while.  At this point I began to gradually up my daily mileage bit by bit, making 15's about the average.  On the second day out of Hot Springs, we came across a sign inviting us to the home of Hercules and Fal, two past thru-hikers, for some wonderful trail magic: hot coffee, Belgian waffles, pork stew, and banana splits.  On the third day out we caught up with White Wolf and Jellypants and hiked with them into Erwin, TN.  On the 24th I did my first 20-plus-mile day, aided by my new secret weapon: the 6th packet of oatmeal for breakfast.  I felt like I had a rocket on my back for the first half of the day.  On the 25th we did a 6.3-mile nero into Erwin where we stayed at Uncle Johnny's Hostel (the site of my last blog update).  We caught up with Face, Guido, and J.T., who were taking a zero there.  From my journal entry for that day: "I'm starting to crave the simplicity of the trail every time I go to town.  Town days are largely spent doing chores (resupply, bathing, laundry, repacking, etc.).  When I go to town I can't wait to eat, but as soon as I'm full I'm ready to leave again for a place where life is simpler.  It's going to be hard to re-enter civilization after I'm finished."


On March 26, the whole gang (Face, Guido, J.T., White Wolf, Jellypants, and I) left Erwin in the late morning.  Delaware Dave decided to stay an extra day in town.  Face and I were hungry for miles, so we immediately began to push farther each day.  Guido and J.T. wanted to go slower, and we haven't seen them since.  Last word on the trail that we heard was that they made it to Damascus, VA.  For the next several days we had very cold weather with daytime hiking temperatures in the mid-20s.  In this weather, otherwise simple chores become increasingly complicated (such as retrieving your bear bag, for example, when the cord has frozen to the tree).  On the 30th we spent the night at Kincora Hostel with Jellypants, White Wolf, Girl with Four Dogs (yes, she is hiking with four dogs), Granny Rocket, Trainwreck, and Two Medicine.  I washed clothes for the first time since Hot Springs (after hiking 140 miles in the same pair of socks).  Face and I left the next morning with White Wolf, but Jelly stayed back to zero.  We continued to hike in cold, snowy, and rainy weather.  In the end, we saw much more nasty weather than good weather in North Carolina and Tennessee.  April greeted us with fresh snow and more daytime temps in the low 20s.  In that kind of weather, just stopping for breaks becomes painful.  I ended up taking my food breaks standing up with my pack on.  A lot of hikers talk about "walking with spring" on their way north, but so far it feels like we have been walking with winter instead.  On April 2, day 42 of the trip, Face and I made it to our fourth state: VIRGINIA!!!  We did a surprisingly quick 18.5 miles into Damascus and zeroed there the next day.  The zero felt good after doing 120 miles in seven days, our best average up to that point.

Face and I had packages waiting in Bland, 120 trail miles north.  We left Damascus on Monday the 4th, and we wanted to push ourselves to try to get there before the post office closed for the weekend (it was open for two hours on Saturday morning), so we set ourselves a goal: 120 miles in five days.  That five-day period has since become known as "The Bland Death March."  On the second day out, we crossed Mount Rogers and the open and exposed Grayson Highlands in the worst weather of the entire trip: heavy snow and sleet, daytime temperatures in the lower 20s, and sustained winds of perhaps seventy miles-per-hour.  On the top of Whitetop Mountain (a bald, no less), the wind was so strong that the snow felt like a sandblaster and it was literally impossible to stay on the narrow trail.  The wind would change directions and hit you in the face and it would literally take your breath away.  Of course, I wanted to get my camera out to document this insanity, but at that point my only concern was safety, and the only safe thing to do in those conditions was to keep moving and get to lower elevation.  I can't even venture as guess as to how cold the wind chill was.  It took over eleven hours to do our 23 miles that day.  Fortunately, for the rest of the Death March we had great weather.



The difficult terrain and consecutive high-mileage days thoroughly exhausted us by the time we reached Bland, but we did manage to make it in time to visit the post office on the morning of the 9th (though we had to wake up at 5:15 and do a bit of hiking in the dark in order to make it).  At the post office, a trail angel named Frances approached us and invited us to her home.  She fed us breakfast, let us shower, do our laundry, and then fed us lunch before giving us a ride back to the trail.  Trail magic doesn't get much better than that, and it came at the perfect time.

After our exhausting march to Bland, Face and I took the next several days easy, averaging perhaps 14-15 miles per day.  We took a nero in Pearisburg (mile 627.2) before resuming our natural pace, which has settled into consistent 17-22-mile days.  Spam, who Face and I met briefly in Damascus, caught up with us a few days north of Pearisburg, and we hiked as a trio until we reached Daleville where we split a motel room for the night.

Ever since Daleville we have been cruising, doing over twenty miles every day except for a resupply day in Glasgow.  We have about 160 miles of trail left before we reach Harper's Ferry, WV, the psychological - if not exactly geographical - halfway point of the trip.