Date: 2015-04-05
From: Virginia Creeper Bike Trail / Crazy Larry's

To: Lost Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 15.8
Weather: overcast clouds

4/5, Lost Mountain Shelter, 15.8Happy Easter! We, Maverick and I, woke early this morning to jump start our day. Crazy Larry made eggs, fried potatoes, biscuits and served them with coffee, fresh fruit, fresh avocado and juice. After breakfast, which I amazingly could not finish, we finished packing our packs, said goodbye to Larry and headed up the trail. Our plan today was modest, to hike 15.8 to Lost Mountain shelter and settle in kinda early. We both have commitments in Marion 60 trail miles away so we planned to hike four 15 mile days together. It only took us a few hours into todays hike to alter that plan. We hiked to the half way point, by 11:30, and decided 15 miles was almost too few. But we kept with todays plan for today. Our hike took us onto the Virginia Creeper (VC) bicycle trail twice today. The first time was an AT detour due to a bridge being out. We found our way onto the VC trail and hiked along talking such that we missed the detour back on to the AT. About 3 or 4 miles further down the VC trail there was a side trail .2 to the AT. We jumped back on the AT from there in time for our lunch stop.The weather today was very nice for hiking with sunny skies and temperatures in the upper 60's so we hiked most of the day in shorts and short sleeves. A gentle breeze at times kept us nicely cooled. After lunch the hiking rolled pretty moderately up and down a few hundred feet until we found ourselves back on the VC trail for a couple miles. The old railroad grade makes for a nice walk and the river it rolls past is picturesque to say the least. As we neared the turn off to return to the AT we took a rest on a trail bench. As we were resting Felix, think Odd Couple, came along. He is on his third thru hike, having completed his first in the 90's. We hiked along after him and soon we were all three talking about the trail and where and when we were stopping. Felix was going to push on to a further campsite but decided to stop at the shelter and tent nearby, sharing our dinner picnic table. It is a nice evening but the skies are clouding and we expect rain may come before morning. The forecast includes rain for the next four days at least. For tomorrow we have modified our plan and will hike all the way past Mt Rogers, through the Grayson Highlands and on to Old Orchard Shelter, some 23.5 miles in all. From there we can hike another 23 to Partnership shelter, which has a shower, and leave ourselves a couple miles for Wed AM to make our goals. This allows us both the additional time to resupply and launder in a relaxing manner to minimize mistakes while in town.My future planning will involve some logistics for moving Dave's vehicle and us via some kind of shuttle service to stage ourselves for the next five days. I am looking forward to Dave joining me and it will be interesting to see how quickly he wants to extend himself. My plan would be hike a couple of 8's and evaluate so we will see what Dave wants to do. I calculated roughly a few days ago that I had 120 days to the end of July, and 1800 miles to go. That translates to an average of fifteen miles per day, no zeros. Each time I accumulate three 20 mile days, I can take a zero without hurting my completion goals. Additionally I only expect to cover 100 miles over the ten days Dave hikes with me so I will need to figure ten twenty mile days after that to get back on schedule. I relay all of this as a way of saying I am on my hiking schedule and see a successful completion as a distinct likelihood. Silverback