Date: 2014-05-10
From: Rod Hollow Shelter (tent)

To: Blackburn AT Center
Miles today: 17.9

Today was filled with milestones, the first being our traversal of the dreaded Roller Coaster. This section of trail consists of 13.5 miles of tightly packed mountains, with the trail going straight up and down pretty much every one of them. Knowing it would already be a tough day, we started early in order to avoid the afternoon heat. To me, the worst climbs were the first two mountains, as my body was still waking up and not appreciative of my heavy breathing. After I finally settled into the terrain ¢ or as we like to say, ¢embraced the suck¢ ¢ the trail became its usual spiteful, difficult, always entertaining self. It was difficult and I was sweaty, but the accomplishment I felt at the top of each mountain made the hardship worth it.Around 10 miles in, we came to the Bears Den Hostel, a stone castle atop a Virginia mountain. It was here that I would say goodbye to most of my comrades for the day, as they were taking advantage of the hiker special: a bunk, shower, laundry, pizza, soda, and a pint of ice cream for $30. Intending to zero in Harper¢s Ferry and, thus pay for two nights at a hostel there; I decided to move on to less costly places. Before I left, however; I guzzled four sodas and found a pair of ¢hiker sunglasses¢ in the hiker box. The glasses look like swimming goggles and are, in a word, absolutely worthless, as they fog over almost immediately. So of course I took them with me, as I couldn¢t let something so pointless be lost to the world. Does that make me a hipster?As I set out from Bears Den, I began to hear thunder rumbling in the distance. After briefly speaking with ¢Trail Boss¢, the trail maintainer for the Roller Coaster, I took off to finish my climbs before lightning and rain fully set in. However, I did stop for one important thing: today I passed the 1,000 mile mark! It felt good to celebrate, and I took a beautiful selfie to commemorate the occasion.As I was descending the next to the last mountain of the Roller Coaster, the skies finally opened up and cast me into the middle of a thunderstorm. There is very little that can make a wimpy human feel the true power of nature more clearly than a nearby crack of lightning while being stranded in the woods. The thunder is simultaneously deafening and exhilarating, and I was in complete awe as I (very quickly) hiked to my destination.The Blackburn AT Center is a large cabin maintained by the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club to provide lodging and support to hikers. It is a beautiful building, and when I arrived a group of people from the Washington D.C. area outdoor club were on the porch drinking wine and watching birds. I was shortly joined by Mumbles and Sunrise, and we were offered sausage cornbread, watermelon, oranges and beer. Later on we were also given lasagna, seasoned brussel sprouts, salad, wine and chocolate cake. We stayed up late and told stories from the trail, receiving some advice from one of the club members who had hiked in 2003. It was a fun, entertaining evening, and as great as Bears Den seemed, I think that I made the right decision to move on.I will get up early tomorrow and hit one of the biggest landmarks of the trail: Harper¢s Ferry, the psychological halfway point of the AT and location of the Appalachian Trail Conference headquarters. I cannot wait to explore this historic town, if only to revel in the fact that I, in fact, actually walked all the way there.