Date: 2017-08-29
From: Tom Floyd Shelter

To: Elkwallow Wayside
Miles today: 16.2
Weather: broken clouds

Welcome to Shenandoah National Park I hear the first ping on the shelter roof. It¢s 4:21 am. My alarm goes off at 6:00 am. The fiberglass panel roof has been banging loudly, a raucous chorus shouting for over an hour. None of us move. How unusual is that? At 7:00 am Franky gets up, a woeful look on his face. The privy is 200 feet away. He starts to reach for his rain jacket. ¢Franky,¢ I call. I hand him my treasure. If you stood in front of me and waved 100 Benjamin Franklins, $10,000 in cold hard cash, I¢d just laugh. My umbrella is not for sale. As he heads out under it¢s silver cover, Franky¢s as joyous as the children of Israel when the Red Sea waters parted before them. There is a scene in front of me that I can only imagine is misery. Five guys who are out backpacking for a few days came in late last night. Two squeezed into the shelter, two are in tents, but one chose to cowboy camp on the shelter deck. When it started raining he draped a tarp over himself. It does not look like fun. I shot this photo as he started to get moving. http://www.trailjournals.com/j...I am the first one to head out on the trail. I step off the shelter platform, pack on my back, enter the rain and raise my umbrella. I must be beware of hubris, and I admit I¢m chilled in my running shorts and short-sleeved shirt, but I pop that umbrella open, hear the wet pings bounce harmlessly down its sides and I feel like a backpacking comic book superhero. I am Umbrella Man. We have sixteen miles that we¢ll likely hike without taking off our packs. All three of us are in shorts and light shirts. We can only keep warm if we keep moving. I start climbing right away and I warm up. I have no jacket. I sent my down jacket and my rain jacket off trail. That¢s the risk of going ultralight. You cut your margin for error slim. You have to ¢make wise decisions.¢What if my umbrella broke? I thought about that as I sent Franky off with it this morning. What if he caught it on the privy door and it snapped? Would I be up a creek without a paddle? I thought of what I carried. I have a ground sheet and I have safety pins and thin 3mm mountaineering rope. Here¢s what I¢d do. I¢d drape the tarp over my head like Little Red Riding Hood, fix the front closed with a safety pin and with pins or rope tie crude sleeves. It would be a rude poncho. I¢d survive. I¢d make do--just like the man on the front deck this morning.   Less than a mile after starting, a trailside sign welcomes us to Shenandoah National Park. This is no small deal. We have been looking forward to it and the Great Smokies since we started. We will be in the park for a hundred miles. Immediately--I would not have thought it possible--the trail gets better. It¢s wider. Some places we can even walk two abreast. Quickly there is a self register box. In the rain we are supposed to fill in a form using these small pencils. We would have nothing more than a gooey, illegible mess. I take two forms and tuck them in a ziplock bag.We chat and tell stories. We¢ll be parting after 16 miles. Dot and Franky are hiking on six miles to the next shelter and Frodo is picking me up to go in to D.C. for a zero and to see all three of our children. We see trailside crabapple trees with fist-size green crabapples strewn over the trail. Dot loves horses¢she competed as a teen¢and this trail is so fine it would be perfect for ponies. Then Dot sees this sign and puts on her sad face. http://www.trailjournals.com/j...I crammed food into my pockets this morning and put a ziplock with more into the outer pocket of my pack. Around noon, I pull out more food¢two string cheeses, a cheese cracker six pack and a candy bar. It¢s the only time I take off my pack in the sixteen miles. We¢ve only once been over 2000 feet in the last few weeks, and we haven¢t been over 3,000 feet since Greylock, five states ago. Today we climb to nearly 3,600 feet. At Harpers Ferry a few days ago we dropped to 400 feet. At one point we have ten classic, PCT-like switchbacks as we climb a hillside that in Maine we would have gone straight up. At 2:45, 16 miles covered, we cross a road and walk into the Elkwallow Wayside. We will hit a ¢Wayside¢ almost every day in the Park. These havens have a store, a grill and flush toilet bathrooms. We won¢t need to carry much food on trail. We meet four new hikers! It¢s our kin, our first cousins. Flip Floppers. They started northbound at Harpers Ferry in May, They reached Katahdin a short while ago and ¢flipped¢ back south to Harpers Ferry to continue on, Now, like us, they are hiking south to Georgia and Springer Mountain. We will likely see them on trail, four new faces re¢populating our sorely depleted, near empty, southbound thru-hiker numbers. We chat like little children over greasy hot French fries and burgers. Then its time for Frodo and I to drive back in to D.C. In wet shorts and damp shirts¢you sweat under a rain jackets--Dot asks if the two of them can come back with us to town. ¢Of course.¢ We had originally invited them, but they¢d passed.Thanks to Frodo for braving the traffic on the way back to our daughter Jordie¢s Bethesda home. It¢s such a disconnect, to hike 16 miles in dripping woods and then end up in a mall buying dinner at a food court and then sleeping in a soft bed. I¢ll be back hiking the morning after next, like the postman, whether in rain or snow, in heat or cold or gloom if night, I have my appointed rounds.