Date: 2005-05-09
From: Lost Mountain Shelter

To: Wise Shelter
Miles today: 17.3
Weather: clear sky

I got up at 6:45 and walked out with OC1. We¢ve been walking a lot together. I guess officially, we¢re kind of like walking partners. We haven¢t really discussed it; it just happens we just started talking about where we were going together. It¢s working out really well like that. We both have about the same pace. We both get up at about the same time. Neither one of us likes to stop very often. We both like going somewhere about 18 to 20 miles. It¢s good to have company to walk with. And he¢s a great guy. I really enjoy spending time with him. I usually have an extremely hard time hiking with anybody. I tend to stay behind him because I have a hard time hiking with somebody behind me, for sure. I tend to pull away and run off. He manages to keep me in check with staying in front of me at a really good pace. Walked out this morning and the shelter was a long, long uphill to White Top Mountain and Buzzard Rock. This hike has kicked my ass before. I was being very careful and very slow this morning; not to wear myself going up. I did a good job of that. It was an enjoyable hike up. I stopped a number of times and picked a bunch more ramps. I don¢t know how much longer they¢re going to be around. I picked a whole baggie full of ramps to cook for later. I got up to Buzzard Rock, which is a very scenic area with some high rocks. A whole bunch of hikers had gathered around. We took pictures of each other. We took pictures for each other. I hung around there for about a half an hour. I took very much of a tourist day. After that, we started walking into the Grayson Highlands, which is one of my favorite places on the trail. Some of the people that I had talked to today that had been in other places were describing it like Arizona. Other people I know have described it like the Highlands of Montana. It¢s obviously a sparse high altitude with good scenic overlooks of mountains, pine forests, and flowers covering the ground. It¢s a beautiful, enjoyable hike going through there. Just before the section with all the rocks, we stopped at Thomas Knob Shelter, which has a great view behind it as well. I spent about two hours hanging out there. I fully cooked. I made Ramen noodles with hickory smoked tuna and ramps that I had fried in olive oil. I put some red peppers in it. Basically, I pigged out to the point where my energy level dropped a couple of points for a good half hour. Also today was the first day that my phone actually worked. I took the opportunity to just about run the battery down calling everyone I possibly could. I called home. I called the office. I called all my friends to tell them where I was. Some, I couldn¢t get a hold of. Then we started descending out of that section of the Highlands through a lot of rocks again. It¢s a very rocky area. I arrived at Wise Shelter about 4:30 and cooked again. Now that it¢s dark, I'm probably going to go to bed. OC1 and I have kind of planned to walk together for the next few days for sure. We¢re looking to do about 45 miles in the next two and a half days or so. Maybe a 20 tomorrow; and a 21 the next day; with a quick stop in the Partnership Shelter to order a pizza. (It¢s a shelter you can actually order pizza from.) Then we¢re going to make a short run into The Relax Inn and stay there overnight. I¢ll shower. I have a mail drop there. And various things. I¢ve got to beef up again after some long walking days. I believe that is in Atkins, Virginia. It¢s a 45 mile hike on the trail from here. There are a couple of other things I wanted to mention too. We have developed a core group of people that I see every day. That¢s what happens out here. You end up running about similar miles. The group that I see every day has been the same people I¢ve seen for the past three weeks. Some longer; some all the way from the beginning. Some from the very first day (which would be OC1.) If I don¢t see them in one day, I¢ll see them in two or three days. Then they hang out, running the same miles. Then they catch up and so on. I would say that that group would be OC1, Free Radical, Snowman and Spark Plug, Hopeful and Red Wing, Hazy Sonic and Firefly, Jersey Fresh, Patch, Spicy Thai (although he¢s few days back because he stayed in Damascus). It¢s going to be interesting to see what happens in the next week and a half to ten days, because many of those people will be going back to Trail Days. That means they¢ll miss three days of walking on the trail. I don¢t have any intention of going back to Trail Days. I¢m going to keep walking. I know that OC1 is too. We may end up with a whole new different group. God knows what happens. Aside from those people who I just mentioned, generally everyone else is walking ten, twelve, fifteen miles or taking extra zeros. That core group is running about 20. All of us have made comments on how every two or three days we have to remember a whole new set of names for all of the other thruhikers around us. And there are many on the trail now. It¢s getting pretty crowded. Getting into shelters now (expecially the ones outside of town) you get ganged up with thirty or forty hikers sometimes. That is it for tonight.