Date: 2003-06-03
From: Calf Mountain Shelter

To: Loft Mountain Campgrounds
Miles today: 20.5
Weather: moderate rain

I slept pretty decently last night in the hammock. Put my little radio on and fell asleep. Woke up a couple times during the night but not much. I basically saw that it was starting to get light butI stayed in the hammock for quite a while there. I really didn¢t want to get up. I looked at the clock it said 6. I looked at it again. It said 7. I finally decided to get out even though I really didn¢t want to. I started packing up my stuff and I see by the shelter there is another guy who is also packing his stuff up. So I go over to see who it is and it turns out to be Serge, Ultreya, who I had hiked with earlier on the trail. He was an elderly gentleman. He¢s a retired Chief of Detectives from Quebec. He had also slept in a hammock last night. It was his first night. He had switched to a hammock and he was having some problems with it, so I showed him how to put a knot in the line to tighten it up more. But I didn¢t really talk to many other people who were at the shelter. There were 5 other people who were there. Two of them were sleeping, one guy was starting to get up and then there was this woman and the girl, I think they were mother and daughter. It didn¢t seem like their spirits were very high. I don¢t know what was going on with them. Especially the daughter seemed to be unhappy. Just small talk. I said to them ¢Gee, I hope you guys didn¢t get hit with all that poison ivy coming out of town, out of Rockfish Gap¢. The lady she just gave me this¢¦it wasn¢t a happy smile¢¦just a smile and said ¢Oh, I sat on some last night¢. Anyway, I got packed up and started heading out and I didn¢t have any water pumped. I had some of the electrolyte stuff that I make up to drink on the trail. So, I didn¢t have any water and I didn¢t really want to take the time to hang out and filter water so I could mix it with my milk to eat my cereal and I wasn¢t about to try to make milk with the electrolyte. So, I just popped out my little pills and ate a bar of almond joy and then went ahead and took off and hit the first spring that was there¢¦close to the shelter. I filled up with water while I looked at the maps and stuff. The walk today started of course with a drizzle. 54 degrees is what my thermometer said. The drizzle wasn¢t too bad. But it drizzled pretty much non-stop for the first hour and a half¢¦maybe 2 hours. I¢m staying pretty dry at this point. Got my shell jacket, which I put waterproofing on. Although the water still does come through. It¢s not a water jacket. I got the water done at 8:30. Started hiking again and about 9:30 I came across a Blue Eagle cooler on the trail. Somebody must have left it there with some beers and cokes and oranges and carrots and I helped myself to one of each of them and hiked on. I¢m not wearing my radio today. I usually hike with my radio on full blast. Already since yesterday..I¢ve seen so many animals. I¢ve seen several deer just last night at dusk in different places. I saw little chipmunks and I just kept having a bizarre feeling as I¢m walking through here that I¢m being followed. I keep turning around to see if there is a bear or a person or somebody there. The trail through the Shenandoah so far is exactly as I expected. Actually, even nicer. It is extremely level for the most part. More grated. It reminds me of a trail through the part in a city. Not really rough. The trees aren¢t really big. There¢s a lot of dense undergrowth. Mostly mountain laurel, I believe, in full bloom. So, it¢s very pretty. But it¢s got a weird feeling. I guess because there are no high trees and you see a lot of sky which is something I¢m not used to for most of the time walking on the trail. I¢m trying to be more leisurely. I'm trying to act more like a tourist, so I¢m walking slower and more deliberately. In fact, the road pops out a lot on skyline drive apparently, wherever there¢s something to see. The trail popped out here and I¢m standing here looking at Sawmill Run Overlook. I guess maybe I¢ve gotten pretty used to overlooks. Especially since being in North Carolina and having gone through the Blue Ridge Parkway at the highest peaks there. It¢s a pretty overlook. I don¢t know if I¢ll take a picture. This turned out to be the worst day I¢ve had on the trail in terms of weather. The drizzle from the morning at about 11:30 started to turn into heavy rain¢¦.then a pounding rain and heavy winds and the fog, or the clouds, or whatever it is dropped down and so did the temperature. I ran from Calf ? Mountain Shelter to the next shelter which..I can¢t remember what the name of it is..but it was 13 miles off. I sat there and ate some Ramen Noodles. I had a hard time moving again, but I got moving with the intention of getting to Loft Mountain Campground because I understood there was a restaurant there that you could have dinner. They also had a store. The trail itself started turning pretty rapidly into a creek once again. It was flooded with water and that slowed things down just a little bit and the fog was just horrendous. You couldn¢t see for 50 feet in some places. Every time you popped out on Skyline Drive, ( the trail kept crossing Skyline Drive ) you¢d have to look to see where the hash marks, the blazes were, for the trail to continue on the other side. It was never very evident to begin with and it was even harder with the fog and the high winds and the rain and all that crap. Anyway, after a lot of confusion, I finally did make it to Loft Mountain Campground at about a quarter to 6. Unfortunately, the camp store had closed at 5:30 and the restaurant had closed at 5 o¢clock. I managed to beg the guy in the store to ate least let me get some food in there because I had no real extra food. I had a couple extra candy bars leftover and I had some cereal and one dinner but not enough to run the next day. He let me go in and get some stuff. I got a pack of bagels and a pack of meat that was Italian cuts. Various Italian cuts. Enough to make 4 sandwiches with. I also got Coronas and two Pepsi¢s. I sat there and munched on it in the laundry room while I tried to warm up and threw whatever clothes I had wet into the dryer. I hung out there until about 7 o¢clock. Got all that taken care of and then started booking again. The trail ran quite a ways from the campground and I had to pay to stay at the campground. So I figured the best deal would be to just go ahead and hike down into the trail and hike the 1/2 mile but not too far because I had totally dressed up in dry clothes that I was planning to sleep in tonight. I didn't want to one, get them wet or two start sweating. I hiked about 12 mile on the trail looking for a couple of trees to set up the hammock. Several good places here. I also took out the little tarp that I was carrying to make a makeshift tent to keep some of the other stuff dry. I sat some of it up right in the poison ivy. I¢m trying not to touch it or anything. But it is kind of unavoidable. Poison ivy is everywhere along here because the whole area is pretty disturbed. The good thing i I have my rain gear on. The bad thing is I¢m gonna sleep in my rain gear. For today, the final statistics were Calf Mountain shelter to just north of Loft Mountain Campgrounds. About 20.5 miles. Elevation changes unknown.