Date: 2017-05-12
From: Hurricane Mt Shelter

To: Marion
Miles today: 19.2

We had agreed to get an early start today, wanting to get to partnership shelter as early as possible to avoid as much rain as we could. We got up at 6 and I was packed and fed by 630 so I hit the trail a little ahead of Classy and Lookout. It was only drizzling a little as I started which continued as I hiked.A couple places had some sparse blazing, but no wrong turns today, thankfully. I stopped by a waterfall, which had a conviennent tree-seat, to do some preventative taping of my foot, which was already wet and had developed some hotspots from the aggressive pace.I hiked through a tunnel of rhotodendrons so thick that the ground underneath had yet to be touched by the rain, crossed a road, and blazed up a gradual hill before reaching a ridge. From the top I could see bright white fog clinging to the valley floor, the looming form of a mountain behind it, and light gray clouds above completing the sandwich.By this time the rain had picked up and as I hiked its gentle patter was punctuated by bigger drops falling from the trees. I passed ImGrateful, hiking south for the day, and be offered that I could slackpack with him next week if I wanted since his buddy was taking a week off and ImGrateful needed someone to run the other half of his continuous shuttle. I politely refused since slackpacking isn't my thing, and continued on.I hit Trimpi shelter not too long afterwards, and had elevensies (even though it was only 930). As I left Trimpi I realized that though I had consulted AWOL on the milage left for the day, I hadn't even bothered to look at the terrain because it didn't really matter... knowing a hill is coming doesn't make it any easier and I'm pretty well adapted to hiking at this point such that the hills aren't bad anyways. Kinda a cool realization.At the shelter, I ate just about the last of my food (and wasn't carrying much water since it was so cool and rainy), which meant that as I got moving again my pack was just about 17lbs, which felt great.I passed SuperBoring, Skillz, and UnoSocko as well as some weekenders (I could smell their soap from several yards away) as I hiked. I got to play Slip-n-slide in a muddy field... these shoes have by far the worst mud traction of any I've ever hiked in, so it makes any sort of muddy hill interesting. Also, at this point I've added several extra ventilation holes in the shoes since I've started... they just have to survive another 100mi until I get my next resupply box but even that might be cutting it close.The rest of the morning passed quickly and the trail wasn't too difficult as it followed a soft ridge and soon enough I pulled into partnership shelter, having competed 19.0mi in 5.5hr and finishing my hiking for the day by noon. The conditions were just right today to allow for such as aggressive pace, cloudy and cool to help me not overheat but not too rainy to make the footing treacherous.Partnership shelter is well known because it's only 0.2mi from a road and so you can order pizza to it. Our plan was to duck into Marion, resupply with enough food to reach Perisburg, and then stay at the shelter tonight and order a pizza (which saves us money from staying in town). Since I didn't expect Lookout and Classy to arrive for a bit longer, I decided to try to hitch into town to get some food, but as soon as I reached the road it started to downpour, so I decided to just wait for the shuttle bus that would arrive in an hour under the safety of a roof.Once Lookout and Classy arrived it was mutually decided that coming back out of town today wasn't going to happen, so we caught the shuttle into Marion, got food at McDonald's (Lookout had a total of 6 burgers... talk about hiker hunger), resupplied at Walmart/Ingles, and headed down to the Travelers Inn for the night. We all grabbed hot showers (particularly nice after a cool rainy day), and then went out for Mexican food at Mi Puerto. We capped the night off by watching the National Geographic documentary on the AT (pretty funny to see their take on the trail from our point of view) and then started watched a bit of the Two Towers before falling asleep.