Date: 2017-09-01
From: Washington DC

To: Rocky Branch spring
Miles today: 16.9

I was hiking along late in the day when I saw someone striding towards me who clearly had the thru-hiker look. It was only when he got closer that I twigged it was Goose, an Australian flip flopper who I¢d last seen in central Maine on his northbound hike from Harpers Ferry. Most people doing this opt to return to Harpers Ferry and head south to Springer but he was one of only a handful who did both sections northbound.This in turn meant he had only a couple more hours of hiking to finish the AT, but he seemed relieved rather than excited by the prospect of being done. Goose explained how he¢d split up from his girlfriend in Australia while on the trail and, since Springer, had hiked on his own for weeks at a time then took to doing 30-mile days -- both of which generally combine to produce the dead-eyed resignation we saw in so many nobos early on.But he was also looking forward to the future and had a 12-month US visa, which meant he could do the ski season here, particularly since there was no girlfriend back home to whom he needed to return. He seemed guardedly optimistic, which was good.Taking time to have an extended chat with Goose was a little at odds with an afternoon in which I was trying to crank out the miles, but I was glad I did. By the time I stopped a few hours later, I¢d done just under 17 miles for the day, which was remarkable given that I hadn¢t got back on the trail until lunchtime. The delayed start was because train services between Harpers Ferry and Washington DC work fine -¢ if you¢re a commuter. Apart from the daily Amtrak service, there are two commuter trains into DC in the morning and then two back in the late afternoon. After leaving Sara¢s home, I took the metro to Rockville and then took an Uber from there to Harpers Ferry, getting back on the trail at 12.30pm. After a solid climb up from the river, the trail headed along the undulated ridgeline and stayed there.Within a few miles, I¢d found the border sign for Virginia, my 11th state and the end point for the sobos trying to do the four-state challenge of going from Pennsylvania to Virginia via the 44 miles of Maryland and West Virginia. You could almost feel the relief echoing from the hills, or maybe it was the lingering apprehension of the nobos who were about to begin?My goal for the evening was to get to a notorious section of trail dubbed the Roller Coaster, where the trail veers off the ridgetop and instead goes up and down over a dozen or so ancillary ridges on the western side. You could even buy a T-shirt locally, saying: ¢I survived the Roller Coaster.¢The shadows were beginning to lengthen when I got to a sign plonked apparently in the middle of nowhere: ¢You are about to enter the Roller Coaster. Have a great ride!¢It was a little difficult to know what to make of it. We¢d been getting similar well-intentioned drastic warnings from nobos almost since the day we started, but ever since exiting the Whites in New Hampshire, they had all proven to be universally overhyped.I knew that a certain degree of humility is prudent on long hikes, as in any part of life, so I tried not to dismiss the difficulties of the Roller Coast too blithely, so I figured it would be best to wait and see. Half a mile or so after the sign I reached the spring I¢d been aiming for and was happy to find it was flowing well and that there were campsites nearby. Just as I set up the tent, the first drops of rain began to fall and the last bit of light faded away.Life is good.AT fact of the day: We¢d been warned that anyone who had become accustomed to regularly knocking off state boundaries would need to steel themselves for Virginia, the longest state and taking a full one quarter of the trail. The AT even had a term, the ¢Virginia blues¢, for the discouragingly long time it took to cover the state¢s 550 miles. I suspected anyone who suffered from the Virginia blues might struggle on the PCT, where the California section is 1,750 miles long. That took me three and a half months ¢- longer it¢d taken to cross into my 11th state on the AT.