Date: 2008-04-30
From: Damascus. VA

To: Summit Cut
Miles today: 16.9

We ate another wonderful breakfast this morning at the B&B. There was praline baked French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, smoked sausage, potatoes, and fresh fruit, with a breakfast dessert of cherry oatmeal crisp. We also had orange juice, milk, and coffee. We checked out of Augusta's and headed over to Dave's Place, a hiker hostel run by Mt. Rogers Outfitters. We secured rooms for the night because we decided we would slackpack today and we wanted to have a place to leave our stuff. But before we left for our slackpack, I headed over to the outfitter to look at possibly getting a new backpack. I've been carrying a Six Moon Designs Starlite pack, which I haven't been too happy with. It's a frameless pack with a pocket in the back where you put your sleeping pad to give it structure. In our first week on the trail, the zipper on the sleeping pad pocket had already broken, and the outfitter at Neel's Gap had to take it apart and stitch it back together. Because of its frameless design, the pack is very light, weighing in at just under 2 pounds. But a frameless pack comes with a lot less comfort than a regular pack because it doesn't support the weight as well. For weeks I've been struggling to get a good fit with my pack. My back and shoulders have been sore, and it has seemed like I just couldn't get comfortable. So Jeff at Mt. Rogers Outfitter measured me and fitted me for a new pack and ended up putting me in the exact same pack Eric has-- the ULA Catalyst, made by the same guy who custom-made our daypacks. He had me load up all of my gear inside of it and helped me to get a really good fit. It felt so much better on my back than my old pack. I can't wait to use it!But I didn't get to use it today, because from there we went to Subway for lunch, and then out slackpacking. Since Mango has her car here, we can shuttle ourselves around. So the guys (Eric & Canuck) hiked north out of Damascus, while Mango and I drove her car 16 miles up, parked it, and hiked south, back towards town. We passed the guys halfway and gave them the key to the car, which they then drove back to town. I realized while we were slackpacking that the four hours that passed from when we left the guys in town to when we saw them at the halfway point, was the longest amount of time that I have been apart from Eric since we started our hike. We're just ALWAYS together, so it was kind of nice to hike apart from him for a while, for a change. We didn't start our hike until 1:30 in the afternoon, and Mango and I didn't get back into town until almost 9pm. Then we all went to the grocery store and bought some fresh vegetables and salad to go with the venison steaks Mango had brought back with her into town and had been keeping frozen in the trunk of her car. The three of them grilled venison, and corn on the cob on a little grill outside the hiker hostel, but I just had the second half of my Subway sub. I'm a picky meat eater; I never eat beef, and venison didn't sound or look too appealing to me. Now it's almost midnight and I'm off to bed. We may be doing some more slackpacking tomorrow, which should be fun. It's great being in town and having a car!