Date: 2008-04-20
From: bryant ridge shelter

To: matt's creek shelter
Miles today: 22.7
Weather: light rain

It rained a ton last night. Absolutely poured at times, and at least lightly most the night. Luckily it had pretty much stopped by the time we got up.Took a bunch of pictures of the shelter and its fastenerless construction. Really neat and definitely something you don't see every day. We then hit the trail.The first 5 miles were uphill. It was a little chilly though so it was almost pleasant trucking up it. Went straight up pausing for water twice over the 2200 feet. Took a quick break at a shelter and pushed on.Time for more climbing. Up to 4225 feet atop apple Orchard Mountain. Seems there would be a view but it was cloudy and foggy so there was none. There was a radar station up there, looked like weather but we didn't check it out.The mountain is apparently the highest until the trail gets to the Whites in New Hampshire. Neat little fun fact, and makes all of us happy.Well, we climbed quite a bit to the top of this one from our start at 1337 feet this morning, so of course we had to go down.Mostly downhill and flatish ridge walks for a bit. Crossed the BRP a couple times. Filled up my water at a spring with a few salamanders in it. Not the first time I've done this so apparently the iodine works.Pushed on a little more for operation look like hungry hikers. We stopped at a nice overlook on the BRP and had our lunch. We figured if anyone stopped there was at least a chance they would part with some food. Nice overlook anyways. A couple people stopped but no luck. Oh well, I finished the other half of my jar of PB&J with bagels. A little more than 1500 calories, so it should be sufficient.Onward another 10 miles; an easy afternoon. It is easiest to make it past the half way point of the hike by lunch. We always try to do this. This way we get to the shelter with plenty of time to chill and cook dinner with plenty of daylight to spare.Down a bit so we could climb High Cock Knob. Very steep at times but no biggie. We bumped into Biscuit again, he had jumped ahead and was going to go back later to do what he skipped. We haven't seen many long distance hikers lately so always nice to meet up with someone.We left him in the dust and pushed on. Chilled at the top for a bit and headed down to camel up once again.After we got down there was some lovely flat trail. We got going almost 4mph for a while. Then there was some rocky climbing. Finally, we rounded a bend and there was the James River below. Crossing it tomorrow morning, but this was the first time we got a good look at it. Nice river valley with few signs of civilization where we were.Onward downward. Down, down, down. Hit the shelter at 800 some feet. Very low; perhaps the lowest of the trip. Don't feel like checking.Made dinner and put off our planned swim because it was clouding up.Today was Bad Humus's 23rd birthday. We are 3 days out of town, so we did the best we could. I donated a Little Debbie Cinnamon roll and put matches in it as candles. They burned quickly so we didn't have time to sing the song before he blew them out. He then cut the "cake" with a match stick and we split it. He seemed pleased.About it for today; resupply tomorrow.