Date: 2005-05-19
From: War Spur Shelter

To: Niday Shelter
Miles today: 18.2
Weather: broken clouds

We were up and walking at normal time. Albert decided to sleep in and catch up with us later. He's not much of a morning person. We got up and running into an immediate uphill. It wasn't horrible, but first thing in the morning, it's always an eye-opener.We kept walking and got to the first shelter by 9:30 and sat down and ate some grits. We spent an hour or so there. In Virginia there's alot of ridge walks. Maybe 8-10 miles in length between them. You drop 2,000 feet into a valley, and then 2,000 feet right back up again. That's been the case for the last couple of days, as well as today. Another big up, right after Laurel Creek Shelter. Then a fairly easy, sort of flat ridge walk, with not alot of rocks, until we got to Sarver Hollow Shelter.We did not go down there because it's 3/10 of a mile off the Trail. By the way, it's supposed to be haunted, or so they say. As soon as we went past the Trail down past Sarver Hollow, it got rocky and nasty. There was a big ridge walk right at the peak of the mountain where everything was sloping rock down the side. It was a very challenging ridge walk. I realized this is the place where I had my first real fall trying to walk these rocks in the rain in 2003.What really started scaring me more was that it started to rain, so I really started to haul ass. I tried to get the hell out of those rocks. They turn right into slime as soon as the water touches them.It took about an hour going as fast as I could to get through all the bald face rocks all the ridge walks through there. Shortly after, there was another big downhill with little rocks and alot of overgrowth. Apparently, I had missed the rain on the ridge but it had poured down below. I got soaking wet walking through the overgrowth. You couldn't avoid touching it.I got into Niday Shelter at 3 o'clock with OC1 just about 5 minutes behind me. I thought I had blown him away because I was really hauling ass.I cooked twice tonight, just to get rid of some of the weight of my food. I'll be in town tomorrow and I'm trying to get the weight down.There was what I thought to be a Boy Scout Troop up on the ridge. I thought I had blown by them going the other way, but they ended up coming here. It turned out to be an Outdoor Adventure Group. It was a bunch of boys with behavioral disabilities. They take them and spend 14-18 months outside with them - living outside for 14-18 months, which I think is a pretty amazing thing. A cool program.They set up this huge tarp, like 19 people got under it. They built a big fire. It was very well organized.   The shelter got full really fast tonight as soon as it started getting dark. First it was just OC1 and I. Then an older couple named Chuckles and Gotta Go dropped in. Some kid named Nomad, then someone else. By that ttime the shelter was overpacked. The rule on the AT is 'there's always room for 1 more in the shelter'. Right around dark, I decided I wasn't going to sleep in the shelter. The last hiker that came in was jammed next to me like a sardine, and I was against the wall. I figured it was going to be a miserable night with my snoring and him kicking me. So I set up a tarp at about 10 o'clock. Hopefully, I'll get better sleep out here than I would packed like a sardine.