I wake up at 4:09, but it's way too early to get up. I try to fall back asleep and lay still for an hour but then give up and get up and pack. I say goodbye to the shelter residents as I get on the trail at 6:20 am.
Boy, did it get cold last night! Actually, it wasn't really cold temperature wise: my thermometer reads 47 for a minimum, but the wind up here was howling. I had my tarp almost touching the ground to mitigate heat loss from the wind, yet enough was whipping around to be quite chilly.
The hike down the ridge will lose 3000 feet over 4.5 miles. As I descend I get some gorgeous views off the ridge to the south and east. Lots of farms dot the valley, which is starting to look green and lush.
Once I drop about halfway from the top, I'm delighted to see that the trees actually have leaves! The oak leaves are only a couple inches long, but they get bigger the further down I go. I feel like I'm jumping forward a month as I descend.
I pass a couple of small cascades and see chestnut oaks with leaves larger than my hand. Maple-leaf viburnum are completely leafed out on the side of the trail. A nice explosion of late spring greenery is just what I need to make my heart sing this morning.
I get to the parking lot and fimd my truck intact. I sit on the lift gate, take off my socks and shoes, and eat a snack in the warm sunlight. I chat with a thru-hiker that came down right after me and he is taking a break in some shade behind my truck. I offer to take his trash and ask if he would like some nut bars, but he states he is well-provisioned right now.
I formulated a "Plan B" for the next 10 miles of trail. I hiked the last 25 miles in two and a half days and I'm not ready to go home yet. However, If I hike straight through to Reid's Gap, I may not be able to get a shuttle back to my vehicle. Doing an out-and-back hike is out of the question, because it would be 20 grueling miles with the elevation and 30 pounds on my back.
If I drive to Reid's Gap, I can hike in a couple miles and stay at the Maupin shelter. Tomorrow, I will leave my camp set up at the shelter and hike the Mau-Har Trail to where it connects with the AT and then take the AT back to the Maupin Shelter, where I will take down my camp and then hike the two miles back my car. This way I don't have to carry anything but food and water, making the elevation much more tolerable and I will be able to hike faster.
The only thing is that there's a two-mile section between here and the Mau-Har Trail. So, I throw on my running vest and I head out to hike the 2 miles from here up to the Mau-Har Trail Junction, and then hike back to my truck, where I can then drive around to Reid's Gap. Whew! Did you get that?
I'm about halfway up to the May-Har trail when I pass a gentleman who is hiking the opposite direction down to the parking lot. We say hello and then I continue up until I get to the trail junction. This is where I will hike tomorrow to connect these dots.
I head back down the hill and see the women that were at the shelter last night. They are huffing up the trail, and I step off the trail to give them the right of way. They exclaim when they see me and we exchange hellos and then Happy Trails. About 15 minutes before I get back to my truck I see Carrot hiking up and we also say hello.
I cross the Tye River footbridge. The whole trip took me about 1.5 hours for the four miles, and I am feeling great. The weather is absolutely perfect.
When I get back to my car I see the gentleman that I passed when I was going up the hill. He is sitting on a camp chair under the same tree as the hiker earlier. We get to talking and he tells me that he is carrying way too much weight for this difficult trail. He's not a very experienced backpacker, as evidenced by his ginormous pack and the camp chair he's lounging in. Side note: I have absolutely nothing about camp chairs and I love mine. But camp chairs are reserved for a really short car camping trips or base camps where one just hikes in a few miles and sets up for the weekend. You will not find any long distance hikers on the A.T. with a camp chair.
This gentleman was going to hike Three Ridges Mountain with a friend, but he realized about halfway up at he was going to be unable to do it in a timely fashion. So he turned around and returned to this parking lot where he is waiting on a shuttle to the Devil's Backbone Brewery. I tell him I'm going to Reid's Gap or I would be happy to drop him off at the brewery.
I'm getting ready to leave in my truck when he approaches and asks if I would be willing to take him to Reid's Gab. There, he explains, he can just wait for his friend there and they can both ride together to the brewery. Tell him I am happy to do so and we leave for the 30 minute drive.
On the way I tell him I need to divert to a gas station to pick up some fresh water because my filter broke. He says he has an extra filter that he's never used and he would be happy to give it to me. I gratefully accept but I would like to pay for the filter. He refuses payment and says the ride is payment enough, and he would also like to pay me for the ride which I refuse. I say the filter is payment enough, and I was going this direction anyway. We are both satisfied with the arrangement.
At Reid's Gap, I conduct some last minute pack organization and we say goodbye: me heading south on the trail, while he sets up his chair under some trees at the roadside to wait for his friend.
The weather is super hot and I'm hiking uphill, but thankfully I only have 2 miles to go and the hill is only 600 ft of gain. The trail is really dusty in the heat, and bees and flies keep buzzing my head.
I get to the Maupin shelter and no one else is there. I pick a spot really far away from the shelter to set up my camp, not wanting to disturb anyone who may be sleeping near the shelter when I get up early tomorrow morning. Plus, I plan to keep my camp set up tomorrow while I'm hiking, and with my camo tarp, my campsite blends with the surrounding trees and brush, so it's much less likely to be disturbed while I'm off hiking.
After I get set up I take my new water filter and new dirty bag to the creek. I am gathering water and soaking my feet in the cold stream when I hear people talking on the Mau-Har Trail. I am excited to talk to someone about the trail conditions, because the comments on FarOut about the difficulty of the trail make me a little nervous.
I hear several women chattering merrily, and as they emerge from the trees I see it's the women from camp last night! They yell my name when they see me, and I stand up from the rock I was sitting on.
They explain that they didn't feel like hiking the 7 miles up and over Three Ridges, and decided to take the shorter Mau-Har Trail. They tell me how gorgeous it is, and I am definitely excited to hike this tomorrow.
They set up in and around the shelter, and before long five more people join the growing population of the shelter site. Thankfully, the camping sites around the shelter are numerous and well disbursed. We chat around the picnic table and laugh about how hard it is to use the bear pole to get our food bags hung up, out of the reach of marauding critters.
I say goodnight and I read for a spell, before I go to sleep around 8:30pm.
Today's Stats: 6.8 Trail Miles (and four bonus miles!), 1750 feet ascent, 3700 feet descent
Trail Stats: 836 miles, 190K feet ascent, 195k feet descent
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