morvasaaty/AppalachianTrail-LD-Hikers-Blogs-and-Weather-20-years huggingface dataset:
Date: 2013-06-02
From: Uncle Johnnys Hostel

To: Clyde Smith Shelter
Miles today: 27.0
Weather: heavy intensity rain

Day 19, uncle Johnnys hostel to Clyde something shelter.Decent night of the sleep in the hostel. The train likes to sound it's horn as it trundles through at 3am but that's life. eventually our fourth bunkmate, Wiccan witch, went to bed after a few Budweisers. He was quite the character, an old vet who thruhiked last year and was hiking the smokies this year to spread his brothers Ashes.started hiking at 7 30 and made some really good miles today as we rolled into camp at 6 30 after 27 miles. Not bad. It poured rain all day, everything was thoroughly soaked thru. My toes were pruney messes by the end of the day, and all my blisters grew a bit. At one point me and crank were just laughing at silliness of it as the trail turned into a river that we just hiked through.Because of all the rain there were no views today, but there were lots of funny orange salamanders out chilling in the middle of the trail.At the shelter we meet raven, a shy German girl who is thru hiking before she starts work in the winter. Bearbagging was an adventure as hogs nalgene got stuck up in a tree for a bit. I can't wait to not have to deal with them.Tomorrow is a big day as the shelters are at 18 and 32 miles. We're gonna get an early start and see if we want to go all 32 but we'll reassess at lunch and see how we're feeling. After 11 pm last night we'll be out by 9 30 tonight.My bag did get a bit wet which sucks, but most of my clothes stayed dry. Hopefully tomorrow isn't another full day of rain so I can air out my wet stuff.
Date: 2013-06-03
From: Clyde Smith Shelter

To: Mountain Harbour Hostel
Miles today: 24.0

Day 20, something shelter to mountain harbor hostel.What a shitty night. I did a very poor job of managing my own wetness and the result was a wet quilt and a cold night. down just soaks up water and refuses to dry. By about 4am I could feel my body heat finally drying out the quilt so I slept in till 7 just to dry it out more before starting the day.We started hoping to do a 32 mile day but by the time we climbed roan mountain after a foggy morning that was looking less and less likely. there would have been some great views from the top of the mountain but it's known for being up in the clouds and today didn't disappoint. Saw lots of salamanders, over 42 by my count. We did get some trail magic from the ridge runner as she gave us all apples! the rest of the morning hike was good, the weather cleared out and the sun started shining. some great views from round bald and later small and big hump balds. In the early after noon we decided to cut it short and aim for mountain harbor hostel at 24 miles rather than whatever shelter at 32 miles.Early in the afternoon my left hip really started hurting. It feels like something is really wrong in the joint. It's not muscle or anything, but I'm not sure if it's the ligaments or something in the socket itself. I can feel it on flats and downhills, but it's super painful on uphills. Like, slow down to less than 1 mph, grit the teeth, and hobble type slow. I'm hoping a night of sleep will do it good, but we'll see in the morning. good: I can do 27 tmrw no problem. Bad: I take a zero here at the hostel to rest up. Ugly: this thing forces me off trail and I'm back to Pittsburgh for the rest of the summer.Morning should be good, there's a massive breakfast buffet with crazy awesome food so I'm looking forward to that. Chilling at the hostel had been nice. Got to meet Dr suess and macgyver, two brothers from new Hampshire who are thru hiking. Swapped lots of gossips and stories with them. Really hoping this hip gets better. There's nothing glamorous about the hip compared to an Achilles or knee. Weak.It's close to bedtime here even though we'll be sleeping in till 7 30 tomorrow. Tonight me and crank are sharing a bed, though it's a king so I doubt we'll be doing much cuddling. One thing I do want to write about at some point is all the stuff I've casually mentioned that is quite trail specific, like shelters, privys, bear bagging, blazes, hostels, trail food, blisters, gear, everything. There's such a unique world and community out here on the trail!
Date: 2013-06-04
From: Mountain Harbour Hostel

To: Laurel Fork Shelter
Miles today: 27.0
Weather: light rain

Day 21, mountain harbor hostel to twin laurel shelter. 27 milesish.after sleeping in and enjoying the super good buffet breakfast which I'm not going to try to describe because I won't do it justice, we set out On our long day of hiking. The hip was feeling good and not bothering me at all. After a short hike along 19 to get back to the trail itself the walking began.Soon after seeing out we ran into a nobo thru who was headed back south to 19 to hitch a ride into town to get to a hospital to get some infected spider bites checked out. They were looking really nasty. I offered any sort of help but he refused. I found out later from talking to macgyver and Dr suess and their friends happy feet and axle that apparently he had been sitting in the shelter for a few days hoping they would get better. Dumb.Also ran into an older section hiker from Arkansas who liked waterfalls and gave me a shoe that some fellow named turtle 13 left behind. he might be ahead of us on the trail or we might have passed him already. If we don't see him tomorrow I'll drop it off in some shelter by the trail and hopefully he finds it.The weather was beautiful and sunny all day, and the trail was mostly nice and gradual with a few rocky sections. At the end of the day we got to see the twin laurel falls and dip our toesies in the river at the base which was nice, but that was the only bit of scenery all day.The body is feeling good, the blisters on the heels are getting bigger but everything else is alright. I changed my stride a bit on the downhills so now I'm doing more of a heel first strike then a roll to the forefoot. The result is less sore forefeet and slightly more sore heels, which is good because they weren't getting sore at all. share the pain! it didn't bother the knees too much either.Tomorrow is the day I lose my 30 mile cherry. Oh boy. Atleast we'll be starting earlier than we did today, which leaves time for a better paced hike and more breaks. Tonight we didn't pull into the shelter until just before 9 which is almost unheard of.There's a shitton of bitey bugs in this shelter. I hope they go to bed soon.
Date: 2013-06-05
From: Laurel Fork Shelter

To: Double Spring Shelter
Miles today: 30.0

Day 22, laurel forks shelter to double spring shelter.Crappy night of sleep. Damn biting bugs were everywhere and it was too hot to go all the way down under the quilt. None of us slept well, which didn't bode well for the 30 mile day.The weather was nice and warm with a good bit of wind too keep things from getting too hot. The trail was pretty smooth and well graded with only two bad climbs. We got to grab brunch on the shore of wannahockaloogie lake which was nice.Following that was a frustrating section of trail where we climbed over a thousand feet up to a ridgeline but got no views of the lake below us. Stupid trail. We finally pulled into the shelter at about 8 30 and chatted a bit before crashing.The blister on my right heel keeps growing but isn't quite yet at a stage where I need to deal with it yet. We'll see how it holds up with some duct tape and an easy 20 mile hike into Damascus tomorrow.
Date: 2013-06-06
From: Double Spring Shelter

To: The Place
Miles today: 20.0

Day 23, Double Spring Shelter to The PlaceGot a good night of sleep and woke up to some very easy trail hiking. Well-graded dirt kept us moving at a nice fast pace. We crossed the border into Virginia and not long after made it into the trail town of Damascus where I was able to use the computer at the library, eat a ton of wings and pizza, introduce Hog, Crank, and Nigel to poutine, eat a milkshake at Dairy King (Dairy Royalty), and do some laundry before heading down to The Place, a cheap but pleasant hostel run by the Methodist church. Also took the chance to stop by the outfitters and pick of a 20L food bag. That might be too big but whatever. It'll be easier than trying to keep track of the half-dozen ziplock baggies I use now, and will also make bear bagging a lot easier.Finally caught up with Ron Burgandy who had been writing some really funny entries in the shelter journals. Hes an interesting dude, really clever and funny and quite the jokester. Also decided to take the jump and pop the blister on my heel at the urging of Chop Shop, another thru hiker who works as a nurse up in Anchorage. Slapped a whole bunch of duct tape on it after draining it and well see how it holds up during the easy 17 miles tomorrow.Tomorrow morning we'll do breakfast, I'll wrap stuff up at the computer, resupply with 3 days worth of food, then its off to the trail again. Theres supposed to be a big storm moving up the coast and right now we're only forecasted to get a few inches of rain over the next few days as we get the spinoffs of it, but fingers crossed it doesnt decide it wants to visit the mountains and so turns west straight towards us.
Date: 2013-06-07
From: The Place

To: Double Spring Shelter
Miles today: 16.0

Day 24, Damascus to double spring shelter.After a leisurely sleeping in and massive breakfast at cowboys (I do love biscuits and gravy!) we started our town chores for the day. Lots of social media updates and emails at the town library and some food shopping at the dollar general before hitting the trail at 1pm.I totally bungled my food shopping for our 3 day hike to Marion. I bought enough stuff just all the wrong stuff. basically I just bought too much candy and no oatmeal. Whoops. I'll have to do better at my next resupply. The one thing I did do right was stopping at subway on my way out of town and getting a footlong to go for afternoon tea break.Hiking was good, pretty steady and uneventful with no views. got to hike with spooky a bit who's a real funny, interesting outdoorsy dude who wants to work as a game warden down in new Mexico. After 16 miles we made it to the shelter where we set up and chatted with spooky, many sparrows who was with us at the place the night before, an older long section hiker named jaywalker, and a quiet short section hiker named Tim. Hog and crank began compiling their thru hikers odd recipe book, and I'm anxiously awaiting it's publication.My knees felt a bit sore during the hike today but it was all in the joints rather than the ligaments. I'm hoping they'll feel good in the morning. the blister has felt great after popping and draining it last night. Tomorrow should be a pretty easy 23 mile day so I'm not worried.
Date: 2013-06-08
From: Double Spring Shelter

To: Old Orchard Shelter
Miles today: 23.0
Weather: scattered clouds

Day 25, double spring shelter to old orchard shelter.oh my, what an awesome day. The Grayson highlands are amazing, right up there with the smokies as my favorite part of the trail so far. Rolling Meadows with cool rocky outcroppings, interesting flora, trail that was rocky yet still pleasant, beautiful sunny weather, and great views all around.The only bad part was the wild ponies, which are rabid voracious carnivorous beasts. One particularly vile one bit me as I was trying to make friends. Never again! I thought for sure my arm would need to be amputated following the horrific injury, but after 5 minutes the mark faded away. No bruising, no blood, still plenty of trauma. Don't trust wild ponies! Also got to hike with chop shop for a while and got to hear about Alaska (she's been up in Anchorage for a while) which made me really want to go there as well as hearing about her hiking style which is very ray Jardine and not too far from mine.Also got to meet Juno, an older thru hiker from Pittsburgh who lives in sq hill. It was a holy shit small world moment as we swapped stories. Also also meet bomber, a thru from cincy, so we trash talked for a bit because fuck the Bengals.After a day of slow hiking enjoying the views I tasked myself with racing ahead to the sleeping shelter to set up fire so we could toast the marshmallows I had in my pack. super challenging in the rain, but with the help of glacier, another thru at the shelter along with some weekenders we got a fire going despite the damp wood. Marshmallows were roasted and enjoyed. Everything feels good for a less scenic 25 miles to tomorrows shelter. Definitely want to come back to the Grayson highlands some time, absolutely gorgeous.
Date: 2013-06-09
From: Old Orchard Shelter

To: Partnership Shelter
Miles today: 25.0
Weather: light rain

Day 26, old orchard shelter to partnership shelter.Probably the easiest 25 mile day yet. Thank you Virginia. Even the uphills are well enough graded that you can take them at a full 3 mph. After more than 500 miles on the trail it's gotten to three point where powering through the uphills is the only part that gives me any real aerobic or muscle workout. 10 hours of cardio a day will do that.In exchange for easy trails there were no views and the weather kept changing up. After it poured rain last night and hog learned what ground cloths are for it was dry most of the day, but not long after getting into the shelter the skies opened up and it's been raining ever since.Partnership is a baller shelter. Double layer with capacity for 16, though I'm pretty sure we have more than 18 in here tonight. It also has a shower, and is right next to the visitor center which has full bathrooms and a curtsey phone for ordering pizza, which means last night there were 10 pizzas at the shelter and some older guys were kind enough to send some slices to me and crank. from the shelter you can also get real cheap shuttles into Marion for resupply. Marion is probably the best stocked town so far, with an outfitters, a half dozen fast food places, a few grocery stores, and a Walmart. Looking forward to some good shopping. grocery list so that I don't forget oatmeal this time:SnickersClif barsOatmealPOP TartsramenEasy MacTortillasProtein barsTrail mixPeanut butterOlive oilduct tapeAfter a bland day of hiking apart from passing trimpi shelter the shelter at partnership was much more exciting. Lots of people, including bomber who hitched up. lots of chatting, and I got to play trouble (complete with little dice bopping thing!) and later learned how to play cribbage. Once I figured out the rules and a bit of the strategy Colorado and I teamed up to beat bluebird and bomber in a two games. Quite exciting!Tomorrow will be sleeping in followed by a 9am shuttle for resupply then an 18 mile day in the afternoon/evening. It'll be tough with full packs and 4.5 days worth of food to get us to parisburg, but we'll manage. It's Virginia.totally unrelated, I've decided to cut my hike short. Rather than pushing to do a whole thru by August 17th instead I'll cut my pace and hike til August 10th to give me some more time to readjust to normal life. Doing the while trail by August would require me to start hitting 30 to 35 mile days. I've been enjoying the social aspect and the sharing of stories, life views, and experiences with all the other hikers. it's much easier to do that with 25 mile days. With that pace I should finish somewhere between new York and Vermont, and I should be able to knock of the rest of the trail next year. Maybe even do some winter hiking during winter break or something. We'll see how it all goes.
Date: 2013-06-10
From: Partnership Shelter

To: Campsite
Miles today: 18.0

Day 27, partnership shelter to random campsite.What a crazy night. As we wrapped up cribbage so late and I had failed to secure a spot, I Wound up sleeping on the bench of the picnic table. My precarious perch was made even more exciting by the fact that bomber left 3 pizzas sitting on the table and in the middle of the night a wild cat jumped on the picnic table and stole a piece of pizza. By 5 am people had shuffled around enough that there was room for me to squeeze in and I managed to get a decent hour of sleep before people started waking up at 6.After moseying around for a while at 9 the shuttle came and we were all able to do done shopping in Marion. I definitely overbought on food, and missed out on clif bars but otherwise got everything I wanted. After wrapping things up at Walmart we dashed over to McDonalds where I put down more than 3000 calories worth of breakfast in half an hour. When the shuttle took us back to the trail and we started hiking I felt miserable. Massively over-ate. Despite that the hiking was relatively easy add the trail was smooth and the weather was nice and sunny. We made good time to the barn, a restaurant on the trail that offered poor service and average food. They did have a 1 pound hiker burger, and the 3 of us each ordered one which we then put down with ease.That left us with an easy 6 miles to camp after the early dinner. While we moved fast the hike was pretty brutal. Lots of surprisingly steep terrain for Virginia, and very dry. I also stepped in a core turd. Shit. When we finally pulled into camp after our 18 mile day we all immediately hit the water source then set about getting camp and tents and dinner set up. Note: take one at cold macaroni was not successful. At all.Hopefully the rain holds off because I don't want to deal with a wet tent the morning of a 27 mile day
Date: 2013-06-11
From: Campsite

To: Jenkins Shelter
Miles today: 27.0
Weather: broken clouds

Day 28, random campsite 6 miles from Atkins to Jenkins shelter.a midnight thunderstorm made things interesting. Our locations weren't super good and the condensation in my tent was getting knocked off by the rain onto my stuff in the tent resulting in some dampness. one of my water bottles had to make the ultimate sacrifice during the storm and become a piss bottle, reducing my capacity to 1 liter, which is pretty low for these Virginia ridgelines. My worst decision came when I opened my tent in the morning before packing up the inside, resulting in things getting even more wet even though the rain had stopped. I also tried to be all cute about setting my pack in the vestibule, so it got wet and muddy. Dumb.after a slow start we got to hiking. The weather wasn't bad, fog and clouds in the morning opening up to sun in the afternoon. The trail was pretty good with a few super steep and a few rocky patches. No major complaints, though some switch backs would have been nice. At lunch I was able to dry everything out and give away my easy Mac to some other thrus.I spent most of the afternoon hiking with sunshine, an mother of 4 from Austin who did 700 miles on the trail in 2011. She was hiking with her little dog Tessa who was a baller dog. We hiked for close to 6 hours as her pace was a touch slower than mine and we were through a long dry stretch with no water. She hadn't done any night hiking before and we weren't going to be getting to camp until 9 45, so I wanted to make sure she made it in okay.After a long 27 mile day it was unfortunate to see the shelter was full so tents went up and hopefully it doesn't rain. I'm planning on picking up a cheap blue tarp in parisburg and having my family mail me an old ENO hammock I'm pretty sure we have lying around and I'll be giving that a shot next week. I'm just sick of condensation and getting wet.
Date: 2013-06-12
From: Jenkins Shelter

To: Jenny Knob Shelter
Miles today: 24.0
Weather: scattered clouds

Day 29, Jenkins shelter to Jenny knob shelter.Not a bad day. Broke camp slowly but hit the trail by 7 30. Made good time in the morning despite a break to wash my feet in the river and another break for a slow brunch. For the first half the day the trail was the easiest it's been so far. very gently graded and almost entirely packed dirt. it was a hot and sunny day which became a problem in the afternoon as the water sources were few and far between. I got very dehydrated towards the end of the day to the point where I saw a garter snake and I'm slightly ashamed to say it but my first thought was "if I catch it and kill it I could drink it's blood and not die of thirsts". I guess the trail is bringing out the mountain man/bear grylls in me, though I'm still yet to drink my own piss.during my brunch break I met iris and rattlesnake Jane who shared some really spicy jalapeno deer jerky with me. Also ran into Gump today! We've been following his journal entries for a while so it was fun to meet him. He helped me avoid taking a wrong turn so later when we were at the shelter I hooked him up with some extra wood for his cooking campfire.The most exciting news of the day was the decision to get a hammock. I had service at the shelter we lunched at so I called REI, placed my order via phone, and it should be waiting for me to pick up in Daleville. It's the basic Hennessey model, but it should do better than my tent which I might pass on to hog as a bit of condensation is way better than the tent problems he's been dealing with. I'm excited to give it a go next week.My body has been holding up well, particularly the feet. While the soles did get sore towards the end of the day I'm not sure how much of that was real vs the dehydration talking. what's more worrisome are hogs and cranks feet, both of which are in pretty bad condition. they both like to leave their shoes on all day, even during long breaks whereas if I'm stopping for more than 20 minutes they're coming off and everythings gonna air out. I think it's helped keep my feet in better shape, but the sample sizes there are small and very anecdotal.Tomorrow should be a pretty easy 23 mile day through more hot sunny weather. The first half is very wet with tons of sources while the second half of the day is bone dry so I'll need to camel up as best I can.
Date: 2013-06-13
From: Jenny Knob Shelter

To: Docs Knob Shelter
Miles today: 23.0
Weather: light rain

Day 30, Jenny Knob Shelter to Docs Knob Shelter.Pretty uneventful day. The morning was definite smooth Virginia trail, through lots of valleys filled with gnats. Rolled into the lunch shelter and set about chatting with Trail Walker and eating lunch (2 ramens!). Crank rolled in not long after and almost immediately a huge storm came through. Massive winds, big rain, thunder, lightning, hail, etc. Poor hog got caught in it and was not pleased.After the long 2 hour lunch break we hiked the last 10 miles to Docs Knob Shelter where me and hog stayed while Crank pushed on to get a bit closer to Pearisburg. At the shelter were Prime and B Bumblebee, section hikers out for a week or so. Prime graduated from VT recently, while B Bumblebee is his nephew, about 10 years old or so, sleeping away from his parents for the first time. The kid was a trooper and help up really well, even as the night got dark and cold. We did have to tell them about cleaning and hanging out their stuff to avoid mice, which they appreciated as we found fresh mouse droppings in the morning but nobodys stuff had been chewed through.Tomorrow is an easy 8 mile trek into Pearisburg then lots of time hanging out in town, doign laundy, resupplying, showering, etc. Looking forward to the easy day.