Date: 2004-05-19
From: Blackburn Trail Center, VA

To: Day 60: ATC @ Harpers Ferry, WVA
Miles today: 12.0
Weather: light rain

Since the plan for AT Day 60 was for me to eat lunch with my wife at the ATC headquarters building in Harpers Ferry, a distance of 12 miles from the Blackburn Trail Center, it was important for me to get up before 4:00 a.m. so I could be on the trail by 6:00 a.m. ¢ no matter how sleepy I was. Given that it was raining as I awoke and given that I did not want to wake the other through hikers, I was glad that the hostel/shelter also had a separate covered eating area with a picnic table so I had some place to load my pack and cook and eat my breakfast.As expected the early morning trail was muddy, the rocks slick and plants lining the path wet, so my socks and shoes (which had not dried out overnight) were soon oozing water with every step. I tried to reduce the pain of the friction and compression sores by covering them with ¢moleskin,¢ but this proved to be of little help since this padded material was quickly dislodged in the water. I also discovered that trying to stick the moleskin to your skin with duct tape doesn¢t work since the duct tape also becomes dislodged even though it somehow manages to remain attached to your hair resulting in a very painful situation indeed. At one level the pain was helpful since all morning long I found myself fighting to stay alert and craving a strong cup of coffee. I felt like I was completely out of gas and needed to take a nap, a strange and unusual sensation for a backpacking trip when you usually get much more sleep than you do back home. Clearly I need to cut my mileage (or walk faster) and get more sleep!Added to this challenge, given yesterday¢s dehydration scare, I made sure that I was carrying plenty of water when I left the hostel/shelter, a precaution that I probably overdid as there were a number of stream crossing en route to Harpers Ferry. On one of these crossings, I slipped on some rocks and jammed my left foot deep into a crevasse. Boy was this painful, but luckily I did not fall over so I did not add any torque to my leg and as such I managed to extricate my foot without twisting an ankle or worse yet breaking my leg. Thinking that if I stopped my foot might swell up even more than it already had, I pushed on with as much speed as possible.In the end, I reached the ATC headquarters building at 12:15 p.m. and was pleased to discover that my wife had arrived no more than five minutes earlier. At the ATC headquarters building, I filled out the registry, got my picture taken for their scrap book and I also had the good fortune to once again meet up with Lucky Star (who left the Blackburn Trail Center less than an hour before I got there), Haiku (who had just returned from ¢Trail Days¢ in Damascus, VA) and Unfinished (a through hiking buddy of the Wrens). Even though the plan had originally been for me to just eat lunch with my wife and then push on to the Ed Garvey Shelter for the night and eventually two days later to the Pen Mar Park at the MD / PA border, I told my wife of my injuries and we decided to return to Hagerstown, MD for a short break at my son¢s house after which I could return to the trail, hopefully injury free.Obviously, I¢m disappointed by my persistent injuries, but I¢m also confidant they will heal and that I should be on the trail again, maybe with more conservative mileage goals, in a day or two. In the meanwhile, I¢m going to see if I can get caught up on my sleep ¢ a problem I sure did not anticipate when I started this hike.