Date: 2008-03-28
From: Rte 501

To: Punchbowl Shelter
Miles today: 10.5
Weather: overcast clouds

Friday, March 28, 2008Rte 501 to Punchbowl Shelter, 10.5 milesYummy breakfast of pancakes, omelet and fruit. Everything at Dutch Haus, food, interiors, yard is spiffy. I feel like a member of the family. I could live here.Lois and I discuss mother-of-the-groom attire. Lois is not the ruffly or glam type. She got an understated dress from Coldwater Creek. Looked great.Lois warns me to pay attention to current legwear and footwear fashions. Apparently, since I started walking trails, pantyhose and stockings went out. Bare legs are in, she says, with polished toenails. Uh oh, I¢m in trouble. Hiking legs are hairy, bruised, scraped and bitten. Toenails deformed or absent. Feet deeply calloused. Beyond repair, unless I take a couple months off the trail, which I¢m not doing.Four Bears and I catch up. Do you want to hike today, Four Bears? I¢d like to, but I¢m overdue in CT. Thanks, Ed, for sticking around so we could see each other. We¢ll day-hike together sometime when I find myself in your part of CT.Dan is section-hiking the AT, has about 350 miles left to do, which he hopes to complete. So does Four Bears, but Four Bears hasn¢t got a burning desire to try to finish the AT.I learn the BRP was closed north of where I got off last night at 56 due to a forest fire. They¢re letting it burn to 56, but not beyond. The fire has already claimed about 1000 acres.   11AM I start at the James River. 65 degrees. Supposed to get colder tonight and tomorrow.I¢ve got a tick in the back of my left calf on the lateral side of the Achilles tendon. I can¢t get a fingernail under it and see it at the same time. I¢ll just hope it¢s not Lyme-bearing. I guess I¢ll leave it there til I get back to Dutch Haus and then see if Lois can take it out for me.My pack feels OK. I¢ve got 2 liters of my special trail elixir with me, plus the water filter.Spring azure butterflies. A perfect miniature purple violet. Lots of signs of spring here at about 700 feet.An odor, a dead deer alive with feeding flies.Bluets.Leave the creekside trail, turning left onto a switchback, going up. Sky is getting kind of black, so I¢m going to pass John¢s Hollow Shelter without stopping. If I can, I¢d like to finish 2700 feet of up before it rains.I remember hiking southbound to the James River in 2004. Incredible pain in my knees. Every step agony. I sat down at the side of the trail just a little north of John¢s Hollow Shelter and knew I¢d be quittin¢ at 501. I was just praying I could get out to 501. That¢s where I met Triple Crown hiker Lucky Star. She was walking north. She encouraged me, and I did get down to 501. My first AT hike I had lots of low points and not that many highs. This second hike is the reverse. On this hike I don¢t have the pain, the inexperience, the loneliness and the fear I had on the first.12:30 cooler, much windier, maybe 50¢s. Clouds have blown over, but more are coming.I start to worry about the tick and stop hiking to try to extract it with tweezers. No luck. I cannot get that tick out. All the rooting around I'm doing in there probably makes things worse. Will leave it alone and hope for the best. Wonder if I¢ll have to go through the whole Lyme thing again.Hello to a couple descending to 501. Yesterday they climbed from 501 to Punchbowl Shelter, and stayed there overnight. He tells me to keep alcohol on the tick. If it gets infected, that¢s good because then you can pop it out. If not, it¢ll die in there and work itself out eventually.Look-out point. See radio tower and Apple Orchard Mtn and the footbridge. To my right, there¢s some cleared area the first row of near hilltops. Wonder what that is.Meet a young couple. They stayed around Punchbowl last night.Sign for Saddle Gap Trail, about 800 feet of climb left. It¢s been easy so far.Summit of Bluff. Memorial to Little Ottie.Descend about 900 feet to Punchbowl Shelter. 5PM. I¢m feeling strong and could hike much farther but I¢ve got only about 2 hours of daylight left and my headlamp is weak and it looks like more rain is on the way. I¢ll stop here.A ton of people here. 26 scouts and leaders. I chat with a member of the group whose 8-year-old daughter suffers from something I never heard of, a rare inheritable connective tissue disease called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. The daughter¢s athletic, and was a gymnast. When the symptoms started, before the daughter was diagnosed with EDS, physical therapists had her stretching her joints. With EDS, a disease where the collagen overextends and doesn¢t snap back, that¢s the exact wrong thing to do. The joints need rest. The daughter had to stop gymnastics, and is still struggling with that.I share the shelter with Wahoo, who graduated from the University of VA. He lives about 15 miles west of Waynesboro. He hiked the AT in 1997. He hiked with a friend trail-named Tar Heel, who graduated from the University of NC. Wahoo also hiked from Mexico to Yosemite on the PCT and 300 miles of a state-long trail in Arizona from Mexico to somewhere up near Flagstaff. That trail was marked mostly by cairns but they weren¢t very close together. He got seriously lost 3 times, and a number of times momentarily lost. He met no other hikers on the Arizona trail. This hike he¢s walking Waynesboro to the James River.My first night in a shelter in quite a while. Gotta get in practice for the Smokies in April with Purple Rose, Randy, Memere and Grey Feather!