Date: 2018-06-07
From: Bald Knob

To: The Priest Summit
Miles today: 18.1
Weather: overcast clouds

It was a cool misty morning. I got myself packed up and divided our remaining water while Cole lay stretched out on his deflated mattress. It had acquired a slow leak and now could not make it through the night fully inflated. We had half a litre of water each. Before I set out, I checked Guthooks and told Cole where the next water sources were. The first one would require him to hike an extra 1.2 miles and I strongly encouraged him to not take that one. If he could make it 3.5 Miles there would be a shorter side trail of only .3 There could possibly be no water directly on the trail for 9 miles.I enjoyed hiking in the mist in the morning, especially when the trail brought me out onto a Bald. We had not crossed a Bald in a while and the change of scenery was nice. It also happened to be on Cole Mountain.When I came down into salt log gap there was a car parked by the road. Not far off I found the same two gentlemen doing trail magic who I had encountered yesterday. They had moved to this spot yesterday upon the advice of a shuttle driver and had served up a barbecue to a group of thru hikers and then spent the night. I told them how Cole had suspiciously passed up the Sprite that they had left on the trail for him and then had regretted it later. They joked about putting another one on the trail and then watching him to see what he would do. They gave me another soda and then they filled my water bottle up for me. Now no side trail trip for water was necessary. I thanked them and continued on.When Cole arrived one of them called out ¢Are you going to take the Sprite this time?¢ Not only did he take the pop, but they filled his water bottles and fed him plenty of snacks too. Thank you guys!!!We stopped at Seeley-Woolworth Shelter for lunch and guess who showed up! Fr¤ulein. She hikes with ¢Roberts¢ ( as in The Dread Pirate Roberts) He is also from Germany. They neroed in Glasgow and just caught up to us. Fr¤ulein is not thru hiking. She is going to Harper¢s ferry. Next year she will return to finish the trail. Someone else showed up at that shelter for lunch. There is another Mountain Goat on the trail, but a much older one. We first met him at Partnership Shelter. He hikes fast and does big miles, so we didn¢t really think that we would see him again. But we did. We found him at the Four Pines Hostel resting a swollen red ankle. It looked pretty bad and once we left, we didn¢t think that we would see him again. Two days later we found him in Daleville. What had taken us two days to hike, he had done in one. His ankle still looked bad. He had seen a doctor and was instructed to rest it for a few days and then return for a second visit. When we left him in Daleville resting his ankle, we didn¢t think that we would see him again. Then the old goat showed up at the shelter today. His ankle looked much better. He was hiking fast and doing big miles. I don¢t think that we will see him again.On Guthooks we saw that there were a few tent sites with excellent views at the top of Priest mountain. We decided to head there. Roberts and Fr¤ulein decided to head there as well. Fr¤ulein and I hiked together for a while and it made the time go by faster. We filled up our water bottles at the priest shelter before going the extra .3 to the viewpoint. We were the only ones there. The view was stunning.