Date: 2016-05-03
From: Harpers Ferry 

To: PA border 
Miles today: 43.0
Weather: light rain

First of all, sorry to all the loyal fans who kept checking in for the video updates today. In my head it was a perfect plan, but we had some technical difficulties with the website and YouTube. If I figure out how to get them posted I will because some of them are quite comical. Anyway, we went to camp at the border of Virginia and West Virginia last night, but of course there were rocks everywhere so we walked down about a quarter of a mile. Here the ground was sloped but at least there were no rocks. We all crawled in David's tent for the night, which is only supposed to sleep 2 people. We did this because there was only space for one tent. The sleeping situation was not ideal, but we got some rest before the alarm at 2 went off. We packed up and Backtracked to the border. After setting foot in Virginia we took off down the trail. Of course it has rained all night, so the trail was a mess. There was literally a small river through the trail at some points. It was pitch black outside at this time so we accidentally splashed through all the big puddles. When it got light outside, around 6, our feet were soaked and our pants were covered in mud, but we had already covered 10 miles so that was good. West Virginia is only 4 miles so the majority of our day was spent in Maryland ! The terrain here wasn't bad as we went on, a few rocky sections and several uphills, but nothing too bad. By 11 we had already hiked 21 miles, which sounds good, but we still had 22 miles to go which was rather daunting. We reached our next break point around 4:30, and by then we had covered 33 miles, but we were all starting to get really tired. Team moral was low, and we almost decided to stay at the shelter and call it quits. We ate a hot meal and took a really long break. We decided we had come too far to stop here, so at 6 we set out to finish the last 10 miles. The end of the day was of course the hardest section of hiking, or maybe it just seemed that way cause we were so tired. We took our last break at a shelter near the top of Raven rocks. From here there was only five miles to go ! As we headed down the mountain we came across one of the hardest sections of trail yet. It was an extremely steep downhill with giant boulders in it. There was no distinct trail because there were no trees to put blazes on, just piles and piles of rock. I'm sure there were blazes on the rocks, but at this point it was totally dark outside. We were all honestly a little frightened because we had totally lost the trail and we were all cold, tired, and hungry. One thing that kept us going was that there was absolutely no where to camp with all the rocks. We aimlessly wandered through the massive Boulder field for what seemed like a lifetime. When we got off of the rocks we split up in search of a blaze. Luckily Eli found one, so we bushwhacked our way back onto a trail. After a while we saw headlights on the road in the distance, and found ourselves in Pen Marr Park which we knew was close. We ran the last half mile to finally reach the Pennsylvania border/ Mason Dixon line. What started in the morning in the dark ended at night in the dark. We had been awake for 20 hours and hiked for almost 17 hours. We retreated to Pen Marr park and (probably illegally) camped in one of the pavilions. The challenge was grueling and painful, but in the end I would do it all over because there is something strangely satisfying about pushing your body to the limit. You will never know how far you can go until you try, but I think it is safe to say we all found our limit today. I hope we can all walk tomorrow. Haha sorry again the video updates didn't work out, and sorry this post was unusually long. Thanks to everyone for all the support ! Happy trails ! - Goose