Appalachian Trail Day 82 - Reid's Gap to Mountainside Tentsite - Wind and a Six-Pack (Mile 845 to Mile 856)

 I arranged a shuttle from Luray, Virginia to Reid's Gap.  I left my truck at Open Arms Hostel in Luray, which is off of mile 945 of the trail, 100 miles from my starting point on this leg of my journey.  Preacherman Wayne and his lovely wife picked me up and dropped me off here.  The trip took about 2 hours, but he regaled me with lots of funny stories about some of the hikers he experienced over the years.  He also gave me some great ideas for slack pack opportunities, as well as a recommendation to get off the trail at mile 910, where hikers can get a ride into town.

I get dropped off at Reid's Gap at 2 pm, which is earlier than my last start, but still late to get many miles in today.  At least the weather is beautiful!  The trail is also relatively easy, with only 1700 feet of elevation gain over the next 7 miles.  My plan is to hike until dark and stealth camp where ever the mood strikes. 

Appalachian Trail Day 81 - Maupin Shelter to Mau-Har Trail, Three Ridges Wilderness, Reid's Gap ( Mile 836.8 to Mile 845.5)

I planed to wake up really early but I slept amazingly well, snug in my hammock.  I am so comfortable and cozy,  until I realize I can see some light filtering through my buff, which I pull down over my eyes while I sleep. I look at my watch.  It reads 6:30 am. Eek!!  I wanted to be on the trail a half-hour ago!! I jump up and get dressed and get my pack organized, then run over to the shelter and get my food bag off the bear pole. 

I mix up a protein shake and say goodbye to the shelter folks as I walk down the Mau-Har Trail, drinking my breakfast, the women once again admonishing me to be careful, which I promise I will do.  I am a little over an hour late getting on the trail. 

The  Mau-Har starts easily enough with a gentle downhill slope.  The trail is well marked with bright blue blazes on the trees.  The slope increases quickly and I zig-zag down into a ravine on switchbacks and parallel a small stream.   

Appalachian Trail Day 80 - Priest Mountain Shelter to May-Har Trail Junction, Back to Tye River, and Maupin Shelter (Mile 830 to Mile 836.8)

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

Appalachian Trail Day 79 - Campsite at Cole Mountain Trailhead to The Priest Shelter (Mile 815 to Mile 830)

I forgot to turn off the alarm on my watch, so I was up bright and early at 5:40 am.  After ten minutes of laying in the hammock I just got up.  

I didn't mention this yesterday, but when I tried to filter water last night, the filter was barely dripping drops of water at a time, even when I squeezed the water bag more than is prudent.  I try it again this morning and same thing.  The filter is a Katadyn Be Free, which doesn't need backflushing like the Sawyer.  I used this all of last year and was very impressed with the flow, but to have this occur at any time would be in the catastrophic gear failure category.  One shouldn't hike in the wilderness with unclean water. I could go rogue and drink water without treatment, but that's not an option in my book. Too many people get sick from protozoa out here. Giardiasis is pretty common with un- or mistreated water. 

Ah well, this is exactly the reason why I did a short shakedown hike this week.  At least I have a full fuel canister.  I will have to boil my water and hope I have enough fuel to last until tomorrow, when I will have to come up with a plan if I want to keep hiking. I fill my cook pot from the small, piped spring next to my campsite.  A round cement sink is under the pipe, catching the very clear water in a foot wide and deep depression.  A salamander is swimming in the sink.  This is why I need to filter my water!

Appalachian Trail Day 78 - US Route 60 to Campsite near Cole Mountain Trail Parking (Mile 809 to Mile 815)

 I am doing a short shakedown hike this week before I set out in earnest next week.  I have no work commitment for the summer, and my intention is to hike all the way to Maine, almost 1400 miles, before the mountain closes for the hiking season due to weather in September. 

I haven't used my equipment in a long time, so I plan on a short section to make sure everything still works for me, and I have my gear dialed in for a months-long hike. 

I dropped off my truck at the Tye River parking lot on the other side of Priest Mountain (mile 835), only 25 trail miles away.  I had an extremely difficult time finding a shuttle, but after calling literally every single shuttle driver on every list I could find, I finally found someone to agree; there may have been a little begging involved on my part :-)

I didn't get on the trail until 4 pm, so I am not sure how many miles I can go tonight.  Right out of the gate I have a 2,000-foot climb.  The weather is pleasant enough: 75F degrees, overcast with a slight chance of rain this evening, but the clouds to the west look a little dark.  

Almost as soon as I get on the trail, a swallowtail butterfly flies ahead of me for a distance. I take this as a good omen!

Appalachian Trail Day 77 - James Hollow Shelter Southbound to James River Bridge & Glasgow (Mile 789.3 to Mile 787.5)

 9/17/24

The rain poured last night but right now the drops are intermittently hitting the tarp; dripping off the leaves of the trees high above.  I am awake at 4:30 am, but I lay in my hammock for another half hour before getting.  There is not a drop of ambient light so I dismantle my camp in the dark.   At least it's not raining right now, but I put everything inside the empty shelter and load up my pack there in case it starts again.  I leave the shelter and pick my way down the trail by the light of my headlamp.

I only have to hike a couple miles to the James River Bridge.  I am thankful the trail isn't too steep or rocky, and by the time I reach level ground the sun has risen enough that I can turn off my headlamp. 

Today is my anniversary!  30 years together, but my husband didn't take off work until tomorrow, so I decided to come out here instead of sitting around the house.  I'm glad I got a few more miles in, but I'm ready to get home and cleaned up.  

I get confused with the white blazes and take a wrong turn at a public boat launch at a road crossing.  Thankfully I realize my error within minutes and I am on the right route almost immediately.  

I emerge out of the woods back at the James River Bridge.  I have a thirty minute wait for my pick-up when a woman older than me comes walking off the bridge from the opposite direction.  She identifies herself as Whisper and she is section hiking alone.  

The women have totally outnumbered the men on this section! 

A few minutes before 8, a red car pulls up.  We are on our way back to Glasgow, where my vehicle is parked.  

It wasn't until I got home that the driver texted to let me know I forgot my hiking poles in his car, but he is going to ship them to me. 

Today's stats: 1.8 miles, 92 feet ascent, 469 feet descent

Trail stats: 809 miles, 183K ascent, 187K descent

Appalachian Trail Day 76 - Stealth Site Southbound to James Hollow Shelter (Mile 799 to Mile 789)

Before setting out on this section, I intended for this to be a fun time in the woods.  I'm going to hike and look up plants in my book, set up camp in a beautiful spot, and enjoy watching a movie at night.  That's a dandy plan, but I fell asleep almost the second I climbed into my hammock last night.  I slept until 7 am!  10 hours for not even ten miles of hiking.  Geez, I am getting old.  My hammock wasn't even hung perfectly, but my body didn't care.  I pack quickly, and 40 minutes later I am hiking away from camp. 

A little damp hangs in the air, but it feels so warm and comfortable.  The thermometer is reading 57F.  The forecast is for rain tonight, but even if I didn't know it was going to rain,  I would be expecting it from the feeling in the air.   

I absolutely love hiking when the woods are waking up.  The sun is just starting to illuminate the trees, the birds quietly chirp here and there until they all get the memo to chime in for the chorus.  The wind is gently blowing through the canopy.  A woodpecker rat-a-tat-tats on a tree.  A squirrel stops to its running to look at me as I walk by.  

Less than one mile into my morning, I am greeted by an artful "800" made out of pinecones on the side of the trail.  I imagine at this time of the year the sign isn't for the Nobos marking their progress, but rather for the Sobos counting down the miles; only 800 miles to go before you are done with this trail!  I actually have to hike another two miles before I can claim 800 miles complete; my mileage is screwy with this southbound section.