Date: 2023-04-04
From: Elkwallow Wayside

To: Panorama
Miles today: 8.8

The weather continues to be nearly perfect. I feel so blessed to be here! Did you see my mileage for today? Woo hoo! Of course, I'm still slackpacking, which makes a huge difference. My little daypack only weighs around seven pounds, although it gets heavier each day as I keep adding stuff to it, which is probably good as it's getting me ready for the real, 25 pound pack. And, for full disclosure, I broke today's hike into two sections, taking a break in the middle to go back to camp for a bit. This is really hard, you all! I sweat like crazy, suck up Gatorade like a sponge, and fight for breath the whole time I'm hiking. And I love it! My numbers for distances, etc, aren't always lining up perfectly because I'm using three different sets of figures: my trusty Awol guidebook, which I've used from the beginning, the park trail markers, which seem to be very specific, and my new Far out phone app. Sometimes they don't all line up perfectly, so I'm posting using the numbers from the Awol guide, even though that's probably the least accurate because it's from 2019. But the differences are slight, and I'm most familiar with the guidebook. The numbers do actually change a bit from year to year as portions of the trail are rerouted slightly for various reasons. The trail actually grows a bit longer every year!  I climbed over two mountains today, Pass Mountain and another one which doesn't seem to have a name, although it should because it deserves that respect. Downhills are still harder for me than uphills, and also slower. Uphills are only hard because of my heart and lungs, but I can always stop to catch my breath and let my heart rate return to normal. Downhills are hard because I just know I'm going to stumble and sprain an ankle, or fall off the trail entirely on soon of these steep, narrow slopes. So I walk very, very cautiously. Authorities say that the biggest danger to hikers on the trail is ticks and the diseases they carry (no, bears are not even close to the top). I personally think downhill slopes are the biggest potential danger to me. Here's how I walk downhill: I have to have three stable points of contact (two trekking poles and a foot) with the ground. When these three points are established, the other foot is free to come ahead and look for its own safe landing point. When it finds a good spot, the trekking poles can move forward, one at a time, and once they're secure the trailing foot can then come up. Now, it's not quite as cumbersome as that sounds written out because each of those steps takes place in a fraction of a second, but it's still a slower and more deliberate gait than anyone else I've seen. Children fly over these rocks, young hikers even with full backpacks skim across them, but me? Well, I plod. I'm ok with that. I've had remarkably few falls up to this point!  Here's a story about one fall I had, in the fall of 2019, while hiking on the AT in Maryland. It was in the fall and the trail was covered by dead leaves. My foot hit a rock under the leaves and I stumbled and fell forward. The weight of my backpack felt like I was being shoved toward the ground, which came at me amazingly quickly. I didn't even have time to try to break my fall and my face hit the ground. I sat up to assess the damage and realized my glasses were completely broken but I was otherwise intact. I tried to walk holding one lens up, but with only one good eye I had no depth perception, which of course invites another fall. Fortunately, I came to a road crossing and was able to get an Uber to the nearest optical shop which was in a Wal-Mart in Hagerstown. I put my backpack in a grocery buggy and pushed it into the tiny, spotless shop. The two employees looked at me funny and hastened to fix my glasses, perfectly, and declined payment. I was out of the shop very quickly and left the store. It was now a bit late in the afternoon to return to the trail but there was a motel in the parking lot, and they had a special hiker rate! When I looked in the mirror in my room I realized the reason for the optical shop employees' reaction. Not only was I a big, dirty, probably smelly hiker who had been pushing a big dirty backpack in a buggy, but I had blood on half my face, and scratches, with a knot on my forehead and a black eye which was rapidly swelling shut! No wonder they wanted me out of their tidy little shop. I was otherwise unharmed, but that fall on a downhill slope fed my trepidation about walking downhill. Plus, I'm extremely uncoordinated!No falls today, on a lot of downhill slopes. Onward I go, at my own (slow) pace!