Date: 2011-05-12
From: (52) Seeley Woodworth Shelter

To: (53) Paul Wolfe Shelter
Miles today: 36.5
Weather: overcast clouds

I planned on doing as many miles as possible today in order to get to Waynesboro early the next. I had told my brother Kyle Downs to meet me at the Pizza Hut downtown at 12pm, and intended to be on time.I felt excellent. My feet had toughened up a great deal, and my paper thin shoes (held together by duct tape and super glue) no longer bothered me. Making great time, I climbed the last of the high peaks in Virginia, including The Priest with around 36 switchbacks, and then later a 2,000 foot ascent to the top of Chimney Rocks. The fog was extraordinarily thick at the summits, so I did not get to see any views, rendering the heart pumping climbs annoying and utterly pointless.On the side of one of these mountains my foot began to rub against something in my shoe (wait, didn¢t I just say that they no longer bothered me?), so I took it off to find a large hole through the insole. I patched it with duct tape and continued with no issues. Almost halfway done the trail and still no blisters! As my hike wore on it began to get dark again, but the thick fog in the area made me not want to camp, and I was also still far from town and the next day¢s rendezvous, so I pressed on. As it grew even darker, I filled my 2 Liter Platypus with water at what I assumed was Bear Stream, so that I could stop and camp as soon as I was out of that wretched fog. I never got out. I walked through the dark some, but after a couple of stumbles decided to turn on my photon flashlight and use what little battery it had left to either reach the next shelter or make one with my tarp. I pinched the sides of the light with my fingers to unclip it from my pack, and it shot out like a bullet into the woods. I stood dumbfounded, trying to comprehend what had just happened. ¢Oh¢¦.No¢¦.¢I strained my eyes through the night and the fog to reveal¢¦nothing! I was stuck there, stranded in a sea of darkness! I dropped to my hands and knees, feeling blindly for my lost piece of gear, but found nothing. I grabbed my phone out of my pack to turn on and search with. When I did the phone¢s screen informed me that I only had 15% battery life left, so I could not look for long. I did a quick sweep with it over the ground in front of me, saw how thick the leaves were, and made the choice to move on.Phone off, I traveled through the night much like a blind man, waving my hiking poles in front of me to search for obstacles. While I did this, a long list of the bad things that could happen to me began to run through my mind. I could walk off a cliff, step on the tail of a mountain lion, break a nail... Then I began to hear a roaring sound, and soon after my hiking poles struck water. I had been led to a river, and the trail did not turn, meaning I was to cross the rapids. I walked up and down the bank for a good half an hour, but could not see or feel a crossing. Racking my brain for ideas, I realized I still had a light source. Excited, and surprised I hadn¢t thought of it sooner, I tore through my pack and pulled out my iPod mini. I turned it on and used the dim screen to search over the water. I found some rocks, and started jumping across.So there I was leap-frogging rock to rock through the rapids, in the middle of the night and surrounded by fog, with nothing but the soft glow of an iPod to guide me. (Ha, awesome). I made it to the other side after jumping short of the bank and getting one of my feet wet, but was reunited with the trail. Having hiked for so many hours through the dark, I was certain that I had passed the shelter long ago, and was probably close to the town. I was too exhausted to continue, however, and was about to lie down in the middle of the trail to sleep, when I looked up and saw that I was standing in front of the shelter. I couldn¢t believe my eyes (or how ridiculously slow I must have been hiking).Not wanting to wake the other hikers, I lied down on the shelter¢s porch and went to sleep. I had hiked for 16 hours, 36.5 miles, and I hurt everywhere.