Date: 2017-09-19
From: Buchanan Trail junction

To: Fullhardt Knob shelter
Miles today: 21.3
Weather: broken clouds

We had plans today to do the miles more sensibly and less ass-backwards than yesterday, when we adopted a slower pace and more breaks in the morning then had to haul ass in the afternoon.We even discussed a strategy: we'd do 11 miles before lunch and then, six miles later, we'd have a break just before the start of the big-ass hill to get to the shelter.And then we hit the hawking crag and all these carefully crafted plans turned to dust.In truth, we were OK with this. Plans, after all, are just a means to have fun out here and ought not be considered as if they are carved in stone when the reality underpinning them changes.In this case, the trail emerged onto the Blue Ridge Parkway at an overlook that was crammed with cars and people. We quickly learned that this was a famous hawk observation area and we met Alan, a guy who stood astride both the twitching and hiking worlds by offering cold sodas and snacks to every hiker and birder who came by. It was also a pretty idyllic site in which we could kick off our shoes then lounge around on the grass while basking in the sun. And did someone say free food?Soon enough, a few other birders came by, wanting to hear about our hikes and also to offer us spare cookies. They told us (let's just say the conversations were pretty one-sided since our mouths were full!) that this was a particularly famous site for spotting birds of prey and September was the best month to be present. In one previous year, 8000 hawks had come past in one day, including 3500 in a single hour.Today was rather quieter than that -- maybe 20 went past during the hour we spent there -- but we tried to imagine how it must have been on that day. (It helped, of course, that imagining is another thing you can do while eating yogied cookies!)It was nice to be back hiking with the others after camping on my own last night at a site which proved to be the most ant-populated bit of the Appalachians so far.This was only about a mile and a half from the shelter the others stayed at and, with an early start, I arrived just as Dirt, 2am and Simpleton Extraordinaire were setting off. I caught up with the events since we'd parted, which was more entertaining than expected because Jameson, Simpleton's dog, chased away what they were pretty sure was a bear in the middle of the night.About three and a half miles later, we caught up with the others at a pooling spring near a road crossing. I was grateful it was flowing -- although less grateful that Jameson decided to sit in the spring before I could get water from it -- because it was listed as intermittent and the next certain water was 10 miles away. Half a dozen miles later, we encountered the hawking crag and our plans changed.All this left us a little way behind our intended schedule but the PCT-like grades that followed meant it was easy and fast hiking down to the creek which was the last source of water before our 900ft ascent of Fullhardt Knob shelter. Like last night, this shelter has no water source -- it featured a water tank supposedly filled from the roof but Young Scout had given us the important beta that it was empty -- and we were headed to it purely because it means we can have breakfast in Bojangles the next day. For all the extra effort we're going through, Bojangles has a lot of living up to do!Like yesterday, the others used this final water source to cook dinner, since it would save having to carry cooking water up the mountain. Ever since the PCT 11 years ago, I'd watched jealously as people would cook and then hike on another couple of hours, which was also a bear-smart thing to do because it meant there weren't cooking smells around the campsite to attract pesky bruins.But, also like yesterday, I sat around watching them cook rather than participating. I'd tried several times on the PCT and since to eat a big meal and then hike and it just doesn't work with my particular physiology. Since there are so many other factors -- a general imperviousness to injury (touch wood), a capacity for endurance and a poor sense of smell -- for which I had been blessed with a natural capability for thru-hiking, it seemed churlish to complain about something as minor as not being able to hike on a full stomach.This final break also provided a hint at how this epic hike actually has an end point in sight -- just. I'm due to get my next pair of shoes in two days time, having last changed them about 750 miles ago in Connecticut, and this pair is likely to last me all the way to the end at Springer mountain. The new shoes are certainly overdue, as shown when I slipped on my way down to the creek and grazed my shin because the tread is far less grippy than they need to be. And as we chatted at the creek while the others cooked dinner, I also announced that I was hoping to hike with them for the rest of the way. Sweetblood, Sriracha and Dirt were also starting to make final plans for the trail. It wasn't that long ago that reaching Springer was an impossibly distant theory but they'd worked out that if we average 17-mile days until Damascus -- Dirt's home town -- we would then be able to average 12 miles a day and still finish the AT a week before Thanksgiving. The end is becoming visible, and the plan to slow down to enjoy the final weeks rather than treating it like an ordeal to get over with as soon as possible is just a reaffirmation that I'm hiking with like minded people.The final haul up to Fullhardt Shelter -- the shelter sign was, of course, defaced in exactly the way you would expect -- was not too bad, being a steady ascent that was mostly on old forestry roads.Now we're exactly five miles away from Bojangles.Life is good.AT fact of the day: The hut registers have been providing entertaining reading and one sobo ahead of us, Cauldron, had proved to be a consistently amusing scribe. At the waterless shelter I passed this morning, he wrote: "Dear ATC, I was advised that this shelter was dry but it rained all night. Please explain."