Date: 2003-06-11
From: Laurel Creek Shelter

To: Niday Shelter
Miles today: 12.4
Weather: broken clouds

Having to write my journal out longhand is a pain!! Quite truthfully, too, the past few days have been mostly uneventful. Virginia is very pretty. We do most of our hiking on ridgelines after what often seems to be a torturous ascent. very often, however, there are no great views...we're just walking in forest along the ridgeline. Not that this is a bad thing, but it can sometimes seem monotonous. Blip and I have been trying to make better miles to get to Troutville by Friday, but to no avail. Either we've been too tired, or hurting to go on longer within a day, or the day just seems to get away from us. Where to? Lazy lunches on a rock outcropping...moseying(sp?) through the forest...voracious readings of the shelter registers to find out about those ahead of us. Very time consuming stuff. Then, of course, there are those times when Mother Nature conspires against us. After two and a half days of gorgeous, perfect hiking weather, we found ourselves leisurely lun!ching at the beautiful, but poorly located (half a mile off the Trail, down the mountain we'd just ascended) Sarver Hollow Shelter. We were able to dry out our tents, which had gotten wet during an early morning sprinkle. The day was beautiful now, though...hot, sunny, with lots of those big, puffy, cotton ball clouds. Blip was sitting on the lower step to the shelter and I had just gotten back from the privy (surprise, surprise). Blip heard a noise and then screamed and got up on the shelter's deck...a rattlesnake, about 2 1/2 feet long, had slithered out from under the deck, rattling a warning at Blip to let her know it was there! We just kind of stood there, not really knowing what to do. It went toward a tree, then came back toward the shelter steps. Blip said she wished she could take a picture of it, and I suddenly remembered my camera was in my pocket (doh!). I pulled it out of its ziplock baggie and was able to snap a shot before it slid under the shelter. M!y first rattlesnake! Now, get me outta here! We got our things together quickly, warned Deacon Blues (who was just arriving) and continued on our day's hike. We came across No Pepsi, who was slack-packing southbound. He told us there was a mile of tilted slabs of rock that we were going to have to cross...not fun. We then met up with Gerri, who had just finished taking a break with Randy, who had already started hiking again. We passed her and very soon came upon the tilted slabs. If you've never tried this...imagine walking for close to a mile with the ground tilted at a 45 degree angle. Now imagine doing it with a 40 pound pack on your back. Now add in some rock scrambling...over, under and through various rock formations...and you've almost got it. Now, for the piece de resistance, imagine that all those lovely puffy clouds you saw earlier have amassed to form a thunderhead directly over your EXPOSED RIDGE, and thunder has begun to insistently grumble. Although you haven't seen any lightning yet, rain has begun to sprinkle on the!tilted surface you're perched upon. How fast can YOU hike??? Luckily we were able to make it past most of the rock ridge before the storm hit. We were on our descent when I said something to the effect of "what a wimpy storm...I was hoping for more...more lightning, more thunder!" Blip said something like "you don't really mean that!", to which I replied "of course I do...bring it on!" And, well...I got what I asked for. A deluge, accompanied by LOTS of thunder and lightning. Now, this is a prime motivator to hiking quickly...we did a very fast 2.5 miles to the next shelter. We had been planning on pushing on further than that, but the rain did not stop...we were in the middle of a band of thunderstorms. We settled into the shelter as more people began to arrive. We ended up fitting 9 people into the shelter...unfortunately, that was all we could do, 2 people had to tarp. The thunderstorms continued into the evening, while we huddled inside, eating dinner and tr!ying to dry off...hope we can sleep!