Date: 2019-05-20
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

I'm back on the trail for a week to hike with my old tramily (or at least what's left of it!) By coincidence they are leaving Waynesboro, Virginia this morning to enter Shenandoah, making an easy entry point for me.I'm out the door in Chester County, Pennsylvania, a little after 5am and get to Waynesboro, 300 miles away, around 9:30. Clammy sent a text about going to the post office at 9 before hitting the trail, so I grab breakfast before heading to Rockfish Gap.Five thruhikers are getting dropped off. A guy named Sweatsicles, a thin British guy from Devon, an Aussie, another guy and a girl. All are just back from Trail Days and loving life. Two have identical loud Hawaiian shirts they just got from Walmart. None have seen Clammy, UNICEF, Fast Lane, or Food Truck. So I hike north into Shenandoah National Park. The forest has exploded in green since I left the trail in Damascus on May 1. The understory is a sea of ferns, shrubs, flowers, grass, and young trees. The trail is well-graded and groomed, a dirt path through the woods. The classic image of the AT.I fill out a backcountry permit at the self-registration station a mile in and hang it on my pack. So much simpler than the Smokies system, and free. A guy named PonyKeg is there with a girl, both just back from Trail Days. He's hiking in a new Toy Story onesie from Target. Why they make them in his size I can't say. Ironically Damascus, location of Trail Days, has neither a Walmart nor Target.An hour in, at 11:30, I get another text from Clammy that they just hit the trail at Rockfish Gap. Oh, man, they're behind me! I was hurrying to catch up. So I slow down. I meander around the radio towers on Bears Den Mountain. The fire circle with tractor seats embedded in the ground is in rough shape - overgrown and falling apart. Down in Beagle Gap I hang out and get some sun for a couple hours. The hikers from earlier wander in, but none of my tramily. So I hike a couple more miles up to Calf Mountain shelter. Along the way I see a bird on the trail with an injured wing. I try to examine him, as if I could just pop it back into place, but the little thing squawks and resists so I back off fearing I'll worsen the injury. It's tough leaving it, knowing the bird is easy pickings for a predator.  It's well after 3 when I reach the shelter so I figure it's likely my friends will stop here tonight, even though it's only seven miles out of town. Sweatsicles and the Brit start gathering wood for a fire despite today's high in the 80s. They arrange the tinder and kindling into neat little piles while I absent-mindedly eat dinner. I left my new stove at home to save a little weight. In warm weather hot meals are not as attractive so it's tuna, cheese, and summer sausage on tortillas.By quarter of five I realize I've made a huge mistake. My tramily isn't behind me - they're ahead of me! The text I received at 11:30 was probably sent two hours earlier. I've wasted the whole afternoon waiting while they've been hiking. This isn't the first time texts have been delayed while hiking, but it's usually because one or the other party doesn't have service. In this case we both had service because an interstate highway runs through Rockfish Gap. I'm confused as to why texts don't say when they were sent rather than received. Seems much more pertinent. Texts, in fact, have no delivery guarantee at all, making it a lousy method of communication.Anyways, off I go, stopping at a spring for water along the long side trail from the shelter to the trail. To confirm my suspicion I just then get a new text from Clammy that they passed this shelter long ago and are nearing the next one, 13 miles away. So I head north, figuring I can cover the distance in four hours given the nice trail, which puts my arrival around 9, in the fading twilight. I hate night hiking, and my Petzl eLite headlamp has very low wattage, but 9 is manageable. I follow a detour around some power line construction. After twenty minutes I realize my hands are unnaturally free. I've forgotten my trekking poles. Nuts! Back I go. I remember I put them down to get water and forgot them as I hurried off while juggling the bottles into my pack pockets. Twenty minutes later they're not at the spring. Some well-intentioned hiker must have taken them to the shelter. Sure enough, there they are. I head off after taking some ribbing from the shelter-dwellers. I've left my poles before, but always remembered them within a minute or so. I was just too focused on catching my friends. That mistake cost me 50 minutes, and now I have to hike four miles an hour to make it by dark! Off I go, determined to set a personal best. Along the way I encounter two deer that are overly accustomed to humans. They travel on the trail as they browse, and seem in no hurry to get off despite my approach. At the last moment they sulkily walk off trail to let me by, giving me resentful looks as I pass.Seven miles in I realize I can go even faster if I walk on Skyline Drive for awhile. The trail crosses it several times between here and the shelter. Five miles of road walking gets me six miles of trail. Plus I can sustain a faster pace on asphalt. I speed walk the road, swinging by several scenic overlooks. The trail misses most of these. I see the sun dipping over the Shenandoah Valley. Very few cars are out. While the road is open 24/7, it's mostly a weekend pursuit at this time of year.The sun sets at 8:23 but I still have two and a half miles to go. I'm doing thirteen to fourteen minute miles by this point, more of a jogging pace than a hike. As the twilight dims I swing back on the trail for the final half mile up a hill to Black Rock shelter. In the woods it's even darker. When I reach the side trail to the shelter it gets darker yet. I don't bother to fetch my headlamp out of the pack. It's so dim it would hardly help, and I'd rather use the fading light to walk than search my pack. Finally I stumble over the last rocks into the shelter area. Clammy's voice rings out from the dark shelter, "Valley!" He knew I would make it tonight. That's what I do.Food Truck is with him, but Fast Lane is back in Waynesboro, delayed by running into some old friends a couple days ago at Devil's Backbone. He'll catch up in a few days. UNICEF is not here - he decided to start hiking his own hike back in Buena Vista, and went to Trail Days this past weekend. It's sad to see the tramily broken up, but good to know they are enjoying the trail the way they want to.After catching up I try to sleep off the long day. But my seasonal allergies are acting up and it's a tough night trying to keep my air passages open. Gotta take my pill later in the day.