Date: 2007-10-27
From: Luray, VA

To: Rockfish Gap, VA
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

1,325.9 miles down, a mere 848.1 to go!Had a good night's sleep at the Budget Inn in Luray, and awoke in the morning and packed up all of my still smelly, but no longer wet hiker gear. I packed up my tent for what's most likely the last time for my whole trip; I'm going to start hiking without it to save a bit of weight. It's the best tent that you could ever ask for, an MSR Fling. It's a two person, so it's nice and big, but it's a brand new design and is super lightweight (right at three pounds). It was still overcast and misty, but we hit up a diner and ate a hearty breakfast before heading up to Thornton Gap. We parked at the Panorama and started the trek up to Mary's Rock. About 5 minutes before we left, a couple left the parking lot with day packs, headed for the top. We passed them about 10 minutes later, which felt good. I have been really cautious about inviting other people to come hike with me, because I get really anxious when I feel held back from hiking at my usual pace. Bernie (cousin) kept right up at a comfortable pace, and before we knew it, we were on top. Unfortunately, the view was pretty pathetic; clouds. It was also really windy, and we huddled on the leeward side of some rocks before deciding that we had had enough, and headed off towards the next stop. We made nice time on the way to the Pinnacle, but I don't even remember being there; I guess that the clouds kept the view concealed enough that you didn't even know you had arrived or passed by. We climbed Old Stony Man before dropping down to Skyland, and it was a nice climb. The summit was clogged with people, though, because it's a very easy hike from Skyland to the top. We had lunch sitting on a rock at Skyland, and met up with Jean Pierre. A shelter overseer had taken him to the outfitter in Luray the day before and had purchased nearly $300 of equipment for him. We had all thought about how ill-prepared Jean Pierre was, but none of us had really been blunt; we had just given him constant advice on switching out some things and getting rid of other things. He was definitelly very lucky to have come across this guy's generosity, and admitted that he was cheating death due to some of his equipment. The rest of the day went pretty quickly. We smelled smoke when we got to the blue blaze to the shelter, so we grabbed some firewood and toted it down the hill. We arrived to find a massive heap of firewood in front of the shelter, and five drunk people sitting around a fire with food spread out all over the place. They offered us all the food we could eat, but we turned most of it down because we had packed pasta, pesto and wine up for our dinner. We cooked up our dinner, and suffered through the tremendous amounts of smoke that were billowing into the shelter due to strong winds and the fire maintainer's innability to keep a clean-burning fire. I had boogers running out of my nose, and my eyes were watering like mad because it was so smokey.We woke up nice and early and ate bagels and creamcheese for breakfast--definitely one of the nicest trail breakfasts I've had since starting! We got to Big Meadows to find even larger hordes of tourists, and hot coffee. The rather large cashier lady with a mullet gave me a free coffee when I asked her how she was doing, which was cool. We lazed around in the sitting room for a bit, and I advised some people that the Apple House in Linden was not worth the drive. Plus, the people were somewhat obese; the last thing they needed was to drive for an hour to eat apple cider donuts! A lady in the group was standing around talking about how she had walked .2 miles to a rock that sits near the lodge like it was some massive, life-changing experience. One of the guys standing near to her said that she should have taken a picture so they all could have experienced it...such laziness! We shuffled off towards the south and arrived at the Lewis Mtn. Campground at about 2:45. Bernie headed off to Skyline Dr. to hitch back to his car, and Jean Pierre and I hustled down the trail. Being a hater of night hiking, I was really moving, and made the 11.5 miles to the shelter in 3 hours and 30 minutes. I was whooped when I got to the shelter, and Jean Pierre showed up a few minutes later echoing the same sentiments. I traded him the hot water from cooking my mac&cheese for him hanging my food up for me so that I didn't have to get out of my sleeping bag. I slept well through the night, but awoke to frost for the first time since Mt. Washington. I decided to test my plan of ditching the relatively heavy hiking shorts w/ zip-on legs and instead started the morning in my long john bottoms with lightweight shorts on top, and two long-sleeve shirts on, as well. Jean Pierre's legs and feet were giving him trouble, which is to be expected when you've been on the trail for just over a week and try to tackle a 24 mile day. We got down to a ranger station and took advantage of the tap water and flush toilets. Less than 2 miles brought us to the next shelter, but it was nearly 1. I advised Jean Pierre that he should call it a day and give his feet and legs some rest through the afternoon. He rather reluctantly agreed, as he has a rock-solid date that he has to meet in getting to Springer. Also having an impending deadline, I left and completed the next 13.5 miles to get to the Blackrock shelter by 5:30. It was the first time I got to a shelter with a bit of remaining daylight in quite a while, and it gave me plenty of time to cook up dinner and read the stories in the registry about Sid the rat who lived in the shelter. Sure enough, I went to scope out the top bunks for a place to sleep, and they were covered with rat poop. I did some rather agressive sweeping, and set out my stuff. I climbed into bed at 7:30 and finished my Undercover Economist book (good read, might I add), and played solitaire on my iPod for about an hour. I think that I'm getting dumber the further I walk; I wasn't able to beat the solitaire the whole time! Additionally, last week Uly gave me a "medium" Sudoku puzzle to do. I stared at it for nearly an hour and couldn't even fill in a single box. It took looking on the back of the paper to get a few hints about where the numbers needed to be, which got me started on a small streak, but that quickly ended and I was left staring at the paper totally at a loss. Before I left for Katahdin, I was damn good at Sudoku. I awoke a few times during the night to hear Sid running back and forth on the lower level, but I never saw him and he never came up and messed with me. Supposedly, he had stolen someone's liner sock a few nights before. I slept pretty well until about 4 am, when I started to get cold. The frost in the morning was not too hard, but it was enough to convince me that the time has come to switch to something a bit warmer than my 45F sleeping bag. I wasn't in too big of a hurry to get moving, so I took my time packing and hit the trail at 9:20. I took a quick break at a pullover on Skyline Drive, and there were 11 cars that came through while I was sitting there. Four of them never even stopped, and only one person ever got out of their car! I couldn't believe it. The people were only 15 minutes of walking away from an awesome viewpoint, yet they didn't even want to drive around with their windows down. I got to the Calf Mtn. Shelter and took a rather lengthy break to kill some time. There was a piped spring, like at Blackrock, which I took full advantage of. I gave up pumping water last week, because every time I go to pump, I am reminded of how pathetically weak my upper body has become since I started! When you get tired just trying to get some drinkable water, it's time to switch to another way to get drinkable water. So, I'm going to ditch the heavy pump and go for chemicals, which should save me about 12 ounces. I got to my rendezvous point within 30 seconds of Mom, and I changed into some clean clothes and we hit up a nice restaurant near Charlottesville on the way home. I got crab cakes, ate tons of very tasty bread, and split a lemon custard that was really good. I love good food! I am currently at home working a bit, giving the feet a rest and preparing myself for the final month's push down to Georgia. I just did the math, and I think that I did my math wrong before; I have to average 23.6 miles per day to finish on the 8th! Doh; what was I thinking when I came up with 20? Maybe I really am getting stupid. I did check my averages from this last month, and my first two months on the trail, and I did an average of 13 miles per day up until I took my last break, and I did 18 miles per day after that. My body feels great right now, despite feeling old and stiff when I sit for too long. I'm going to buy a bright, long-burning headlamp so that I can start getting ready in the morning before sunrise so that I can take full advantage of the sunrise. The last month feels like it was only a few days, so I'm thinking that it won't be that bad to go what comes close to super fast for the last month in order to finish. There are some rather imposing mountains between here and Springer, though, so we'll see what happens. I don't think that 23.6 is insurmountable. I am very reliably hiking at about 3.2 miles per hour, counting down time for lunch and other various stops in that average. That's only 7.36 hour of walking per day--ain't no thing!!!