Date: 2011-05-01
From: Thomas Knob Shelter

To: Trimpi Shelter
Miles today: 25.1
Weather: overcast clouds

(In which I am woken by the midnight ponies and enter challenge mode)The Grayson Highlands, which I have entered, is famous for its wild ponies. I was on the lookout for them yesterday, but saw only dung as trace of their existence.The shelter is more than a mile in elevation, one of the highest for a while and notorious for freezing hikers who have just switched to their summer sleeping bag in Damascus. I sleep in the upper floor to try to avoid the winds and stay as warm as possible, as do Tippy-Toes and Night Hawk, the only other hikers in the shelter. I hear the winds pick up at night, but the upstairs stays toasty warm, and bundled up in all of my clothes as a precaution I am sweating.I am woken in the middle of the night by a loud thumping sound from the first floor of the shelter. "Is something eating our food bags?" Tippy-Toes asks in the dark, also awake. The thought had occurred to me as well, and I grab my headlamp and climb down the ladder in my socks to investigate. At the bottom I find myself looking directly into the face of a pony that seems to be trying to eat the shelter floor. The shelter is on a raised platform and the pony is outside of it, its head poking in. Further outside the shelter two more ponies graze by the picnic table. Up close in the light of my headlamp the creatures look awkward and ungainly, like ugly donkeys, as they clomp along the rocks and forage for food. I make sure that all of the food bags are safe and report back upstairs. I grab my camera and return to the lower level with Tippy-Toes, but the ponies get nervous with the light of both of our headlamps and disperse before I can get a picture.* * *In the morning I feel rested, despite the pony disturbance, and mostly recovered from yesterday's exhaustion, so I set out hiking. Soon I see the ponies again, and in daylight grazing in the fields they seem graceful and elegant, so unlike the loud, hungry creatures from the previous night. I stop to take pictures and a small foal gallops about excitedly, barely avoiding the annoyed kicks of the adults when it gets in their way.* * *The weather is overcast with a cool breeze, near perfect hiking weather, and the Grayson Highlands are beautiful -- I find it easy to understand why so many former hikers list it as one of their favorite parts of the trail. Despite all of this, my exhaustion returns and each mile becomes a chore. When I stop at the second shelter, Tippy-Toes has passed me and, though I had planned to continue to the next shelter, I dread the thought of hiking another 5 miles. Then an idea comes to me. I mull it over while I eat a large lunch.Instead of hiking 5 miles to the next shelter, I will hike 14 miles to the shelter after that. With the daylight that remains, that means that I will have to hike fast. Fueled by my large lunch, I start hiking faster than I have all day, and soon my energy level rises to match my pace. Having switched my internal motivation to personal-challenge mode, I find new reserves of energy. While I normally hike without consulting the guidebook or knowing what's coming next, in challenge mode I memorize every stream crossing and trail feature's mileage, reciting the upcoming items to myself like a mantra and mentally checking each one off as I pass it.Soon I fly by Tippy-Toes, and when I pass the next shelter I am not even tempted to stop. I see a young hiker couple I haven't met yet who are hiking up a storm, racing uphill. My challenge-self grins. With my pack weight and body weight, hiking uphill is unfairly easy for me. I continue my pace, surprised to find that I don't gain on them, but glad to have pacers ahead of me. My challenge-self is impressed with the couple's hiking speed but is unconcerned, knowing that I can keep this same pace going uphill for hours on end without a break. Sure enough, the cumulative time of couple's small breathers add up and they let me pass.The day, which had dragged so long all morning, flies by as I check off the miles. I stop to write in a trail-side registry and again to pee, but otherwise continue without a break until I get to my target shelter, well before sunset.I would not want to hike for the challenge of it every day, but it is a pleasant change from my regular hiking style and I am glad that it pulled me out of what had been an exhausting, difficult day.After I have been at the shelter for twenty minutes or so, the couple from the trail arrives. Smiling, the guy walks up to me and the first words out of his mouth are, "How much does that pack weigh?!" I heft my still swollen food bag to gauge its added weight. "About sixteen pounds right now, probably", I say. "I knew it!" the guy says, grinning. "He was closest, he guessed 15 pounds", the girl says. Their names are Kevlar and New Boots, I learn, and they are both from Pennsylvania. Around the fire Kevlar tells us her story of getting kicked by a pony in the rear end. New Boots adds his own harrowing tale of standing by and videoing the event.