Date: 2004-07-10
From: Peters Mountain Shelter

To: Rausch Gap Shelter campsite
Miles today: 17.5
Weather: overcast clouds

Happy Birthday to me! (and Steve K. and Michaela H.) I'm quite confident never again will I have a birthday quite like this.We spent an hour doctoring and wrapping Ursa Minor's toes in a futile effort to minimize the pain from her newly developed blisters. By 8 a.m. we set off hiking our 17.5 miles. I felt so badly for her. After just a couple miles she was nearly in tears. A few miles beyond, Bumpkin joined us in the first aid effort. She discovered inside the boot a piece of fabric which was wadding up. She also noticed a part of Ursa's new boot already wearing away after less than 100 miles. Unless Ursa quickly and miraculously gets these broken in to where they feel great, they are being returned for a full refund.So far my New Balance 803¢s are working okay. They aren't perfect. I'm putting Second Skin on both heels as a preventative measure. As expected, I'm feeling the rocks through the soles more so than with my boots. With three days of the worst rocks of the trail looming ahead of us, I'm a bit concerned how my feet will fare. But I'm committed to these, as I bumped my boots up to New York!The day was not without a bit of excitement. An hour into the hike we detoured 200 feet to the right to enjoy a vista. Enroute we passed by a campsite with a full roaring campfire. No one was there; they had packed up and were gone. To leave an unattended fire was bad enough, but lying across the rocks that made the fire pit the culprits had left four 10-12 foot logs. Three of them were burned through in the middle with the end sections having fallen out of the ring, still burning. I tossed them into the fire and stomped out the burning embers. One log was not yet burned in half. Unable to break it, I simply scraped it on a large rock until the smoldering bark was cooled. The whole process ate up a good 30 minutes. The vista was nearly non-existent but I'm glad I took the small detour. How can anyone be so blatantly careless?I guess I was angry and fuming for quite a while, as I learned later that shortly thereafter I walked right past or over two notes warning of the presence of two timber rattlesnakes alongside or on the trail!About halfway through the hike I met two SOBO's (southbounders) who warned of another rattler about 300 yards ahead. This one, they said, was very large, to the left under a fern, coiled and rattling. We proceeded with extreme caution. Either we are greatly vision-impaired or indeed it had slithered away before we reached its resting spot. We heard from Bumpkin (who was only five or ten minutes in front of us) the story of her near up-close-and-personal encounter with it.The remainder of today¢s stroll through the woods was uneventful, and the terrain continued to be mostly flat and moderately diverse.On to the shelter ... except the dwelling is a long .3 mile off the trail to the right. (Some day I¢m going to sit down and calculate how many extra miles we walked simply getting to and from the various shelters and water sources.) With a rushing creek at the same junction and some lovely flat tentsites catching our attention, we turned left, crossed the creek, and called this locale Home Sweet Home. Tonight the ¢we¢ consists of Ursa Minor, Bumpkin and Swan. Tents up, bear bag rope hung, campshoes on, supper prepared ... time for birthday cake! Only nobody brought one. So Ursa opened a chocolate-covered Krispie Bar. I found one of my sparkly, waterproof, can¢t-blow-it-out-if-you-tried matches to stick in the center, I smiled for the photo, and they sang Happy Birthday to me.A 17.5 mile hike, three unseen rattlesnakes, an almost out-of-control campfire, and a makeshift birthday cake in the middle of the woods ~~ nope: figure I never will have a birthday quite like this ever again. Nor will I ever have one as memorable. Thank you Ursa and Bumpkin!