Date: 2017-05-24
From: Four Pines Hostel

To: Angels Gap
Miles today: 20.7

4 pines has roosters... Roosters wake up very early... This is what ear plugs are for.I got up at 630 with everyone else and got packed up. We were chatting as we got ready... It seems like everyone is itchy or has a rash from something, be it plants, bugs, clothes, or wetness. Welcome to living mostly outside.I finished my cheese sticks and pint of ice cream for breakfast (Lookout laughed... apparently that only passes for breakfast on the trail).Outside the sky was still very gray, the mountains around still obscured by clouds, but it wasn't actively raining. A couple people decided to zero and started working on convincing their hiking friends to zero with them, claiming that we were supposed to get as much of 1in of rain today. That's not what my forecast said, but in any case, rain isn't worth a zero in either Lookout or my opinion, so we headed out.Not a mile into hiking I lost grip on my pole and accidentally left it behind sticking out of the mud at the 45deg angle I had placed it at. Lookout, not expecting it, walked right past it before realizing and I had to go back for it.We walked along a river cascading down a series of rock steppes, the slanted layers of rock causing the multitude of waterfalls the same as that which formed the mountains and prominent rock formations we're hiking through. We came to a pasture and got pretty close to a couple cows before they yielded the trail and let us on our way. Though we had managed to dry our shoes overnight, walking through the grass they were soaked again immediately.Cross road, walk through field, over bridge, we came to a part of the trail almost swallowed by the river that it paralleled... a couple more inches and the trail would be under water.We climbed up through a field, the hill not as steep as I remembered it from my last trip here and then ran a ridge which wasn't as flat as I remembered it. We popped out into the parking lot for McAffe's knob and continued hiking on the widest trail we had yet seen, this section being so popular.Even though water looks very sparse on this section of trail (and it is in certain seasons), with all the rain we had (and were continuing to get) water wasn't an issue and we didn't have to carry much with us.We finally reached McAfee knob, probably the most iconic place on the AT, and found it, as expected, completely fogged in. At least our pics will be unique? You don't normally see pictures of one of the more popular views on the AT fogged in...We took a few pictures and moved on, our next goal Tinker Cliffs. Once again the trail wasn't as flat as I remembered as we climbed several sizeable hills and crossed a couple tricky rock faces (that I fell on twice). As the morning wore on, the lack of views, dirth of other hikers, challenging terrain, and neverending walk through the misty forest had me increasingly introspective until we finally reached the cliffs. I had a well deserved reward fruit snack.No view. We took hiking the cliffs a bit slower but soon enough we were past them and descending. We passed Scorched Earth Gap, the turnoff I had taken last time I had hiked here, but this time I continued heading north into new territory. Perhaps as expected, Lambert's meadow shelter wasn't in a meadow and we only took a quick break there before continuing on, eager to finish today's hiking before the rain, which had up to now been very mild, picked up.Though there wasn't any indicated in AWOL, we decided to bet on there being water on the trail in the next 4mi rather than carry it all the way from the shelter. We kept hiking, my feet hurting by this time, potentially from some blisters I may have developed from the wet day, and came across some water running down a rock face. Upon collecting it the water was yellow/brown in color, likely from the leaves it was running through, but we filtered it, which was the best we could do, and moved on towards camp.We ended up finding better water running down the trail a little ways on. While it's usually better to stay away from trail water (who knows how many cow pies the previous hiker has stepped in), in this case there weren't many hikers on the trail at this point in the day and it was flowing well, so we dumped our urine colored water and filtered some new water.We found a place to camp slightly sooner than we had intended but had to move on because of the preponderance of widow-makers in the trees above. We finally reached angels gap to find a large (obviously temporary) stream running through it and a couple campsites, which we appropriated for our use. We both managed to get our tents up just before the real rain started and hung out for the rest of the afternoon in our tents. While I chilled in my tent I was eyeing a wall of water slowly creep towards my position. During a break in the rain I got out and dug a little trench uphill to divert the water, but it was for nought. The past few hours of rain had been enough to create a river that ran directly under my tent. Though the floor of my tent kept me dry up until now, it wasn't going to last all night.During another break in the rain, just as dusk was falling I moved my tent up onto the embankment that Lookout had intelligently setup on. Though not a freestanding tent, I managed to move it with all my stuff inside in one piece and get it setup again, which I was pretty happy about. Unfortunately, my tent was now setup on a ~20deg slope... Oh well, I'd rather be dry than flat.While I had been excited to revisit some places that I'd seen before, it didn't exactly go as I had expected. This section was tougher than I expected it to be given my trail legs compared to last time I hiked it. It was interesting seeing these landmarks in rainy conditions (I can see why B~~~ did this section in all 4 seasons... The weather/season has a huge effect on how you perceive the trail). We missed out on the HomePlace restaurant (which is only open Thurs-Sun) and the views, but this is within weekend driving distance of DC so I can come back if I want to see them again.