Date: 2017-04-18
From: Jenny Knob Shelter, S. VA

To: Powerlines after Docs Knob Shelter, S. VA
Miles today: 27.7

Memo to self: Never EVER, and I mean NEVER, spend the night in a shelter again. Even if it's torrential rain, set up your tent and bed down there. Last night was about as bad as it could be. I was lying next to Smoky, a fine fellow but a great snorer. (And how is it that the snorers are always the first ones to go to sleep? Why can't they ever be inflicted with insomnia, huh?) Three people over from me was Mattress Boy; I'd commented when he was setting up that he had one of the noisy mattresses that squawk every time you shift in your sleeping bag - he seemed to resent the (factual) comment. And all through the night he tossed and turned, and his mattress amplified his every move. So I lay still and quiet and awake; took some Ibuprofen PMs around midnight; fell asleep around 1; woke at 3. At 4:30 I said screw it, time to go. By 5:39 I was on my way, my new early-start record, handily eclipsing the record set only the day before. I used my headlamp for the first half-hour. The day was overcast and cool. There was little climbing until about midday. Until then there were lots of streams and mud and long alleyways of rhododendron. The climb went from 2,600 feet to 3,900 feet in 2.6 miles. The sun came out when I stopped for lunch at the top. Eating, admiring the view, chatting with other hikers, and making a couple of telephone calls consumed 80 minutes - quite an unusual thing for me, but I'd done 17 miles by then and felt I'd almost done for the day. I had planned on going to the next shelter mainly because it had water and reaching it would be a new distance record for me of 24 miles. When I got to it, I was still feeling fresh, which was good, as the camping options were poor. 1st Sergeant, a retired military veteran, arrived just after me, as did Smoky (ex-Marine) and advised us to keep going the mile or two more to some power lines where there was good camping. We watered up and moved on. Smoky took off on his bionic legs, and by the time I reached the site (which was 3.7 miles away, not one or two), he'd already set up his tent and was getting a fire going. I set up mine far enough away that he can snore his head off. We ate dinner and went to our respective tents. So I am quite chuffed at having set a new distance PB of 27.7 miles! The rain has held off until now. Tomorrow is expected to be very wet. But before I sign off, and to revert to being a trifle grumpy: a little time back, as I climbed a very long and challenging ascent out of a town, loaded down with my backpack as usual, I met three hikers coming down the climb, 'slack-packing' - meaning they were doing the hike sans packs. They had been shuttled to the top of the mountain from their lodgings and were dropping back down to the town, where they would get their packs and then be shuttled back up to the top of the mountain to head down the other side as they continued the trek north. I've mentioned this to other hikers who, like me, think it's almost a form of cheating. Oh, "Hike your own hike", I can hear other hikers say (especially the slackpacking descenders), but it's certainly a fact that while they can truthfully say "We hiked the AT", they can't say "We climbed every ascent on the AT". They will have climbed 15.x Everests, not the full 16. The quality of their AT thru-hike will be lower than mine. Sniff. Not that I care. I'm just sayin'. Tipperary