Date: 2004-07-23
From: 501 Shelter

To: Pavillion, Port Clinton, PA
Miles today: 23.7
Weather: scattered clouds

I broke my all-time mileage record today, one that was set when I slack-packed, and I think I also had my hardest day ever. We had planned to do 23 today to try to get into Port Clinton before the weekend, and also because we had resolved to try to do no less than ten into or out of town. I try not to talk about mileage out here, because I don't want to think about mileage, but it is impossible to explain how all-consuming it is. It was all-consuming before I met County, and after I met him there was some reprieve, but now it's back in full force. At last count we need to average twelve miles a day to get to Katahdin by October 15. Perfectly reasonable. But not if you talk zeroes willy-nilly and without consequence. Anyway, if we had stopped at the last shelter we would've only had nine to do into town, and I wanted to do more than that. But the day was just brutal. We woke up earlier than maybe we ever have, mainly because I knew how long the day would take, but when we woke up it was pouring rain. Everyone in the shelter dawdled around for awhile waiting for the rain to stop but most people took off eventually. We left next to last, when a British thruhiker named London was still in the shelter, and that was probably our first mistake, because the rain didn't let up all day.Walking on Pennsylvania rocks: not fun. Walking on wet Pennsylvania rocks: really not fun. So the first three miles were really bad. I sort of had a revelation during them, though-----that that horrible morning, in the rain and rocks, was exactly why I had come to the AT. I hadn't come out for the easy stuff that made me realize how weak I was. I came out to be broken. It was a turning point for me. The problem, however, with having spiritual revelations on the trail is that one still has to hike. After having my epiphany of the day, I still had twenty miles left to go. And they were not an easy twenty miles. I definitely was more upbeat, and we stopped at a spring and made ramen for lunch, but eventually the sheer magnitude of the mileage and the unrelenting rocks began to get me down again. The rain had cleared a little while we ate, but it started again in the afternoon. I also just had my glasses sent to me in Duncannon to replace my contacts, which I've used for half the trail, and they are really not working out very well, at least in the rocks and rain. The water fogs up my glasses and I can't see the rocks in the trail, which really slows me down.To make matters worse, the rain was making my shorts wet, and I started to have a world-class case of chafing. We passed the last shelter before town and should have stopped, since my chafing was already out of control. But I was still focused on the mileage, even though in torment. So we kept going. We even came to a spring four miles after that, with camping right next to it, giving me another chance to stop, but I refused it. So we ended up coming to the last two miles down to Port Clinton in the dark, in the rain, in the rocks, and then the trail dropped straight down the side of a cliff into town.It was the hardest downhill I have yet encountered, straight down the side of the mountain. From a mile and a half up I could see the lights of the railway and thought that we couldn't be more than a tenth of a mile away. But the trail kept going down, down, interminably, over huge rocks, with those jarring knee-breaking, toe-killing steps, every step. My feet were already in horrible pain (because, I think, by this point, my shoes are too small) and my thighs from the chafing, and every switchback I thought was sure to be the last, but the lights of the town seemed absolutely no closer. Halfway down the mountain I slipped on a wet rock and didn't fall as much as slide to a stop and sat down and started crying. And we still had half of the way down to go.When we finally got down to the bottom after an eternity, (I actually wondered if I had died and gone to hell), all I wanted was to die. We got to the Port Clinton Hotel at ten thirty, long after they had stopped serving food. We sat outside, I took my shoes off, and bawled. I ended up walking the half-mile to the Pavillion where they let hikers stay in my Thai hospital slippers and County carried my pack. It must have been midnight by the time we went to bed. We didn't cook. So ends my longest day on the trail. A miserable failure, I suppose. But the trail accustoms you to dealing with failure.