Date: 2012-04-13
From: Dick's Creek Gap

To: Muskrat Creek Shelter
Miles today: 11.7
Weather: few clouds

Friday the 13th.  We put this all together a bit late in the day.  Either way, it didn't seem to matter much.  The day started at 8am with laundry and a trip to the local outfitter while I consumed an entire box of cereal for breakfast.  I got a shower, packed up and grabbed the motel shuttle to the trailhead at 11:00.  Chief and I decided not to finish the beer and instead leave them as trail magic by the river.  This is probably illegal.  Fortunately, a group of hikers were already there and I handed the bag of beers to some of my favorite fellow thru-hikers, Tom and Richard, who I met at Mountain Crossings.  They were very thankful to have a trio of ice-cold PBR's immediately after getting off the trail.  The next thing for us to do was get water.  There was water at the motel but it tasted bad and we knew there was the cool, tasty Dick's Creek water waiting for us at the trailhead.  However, one look at the first hill and we were seriously thinking about waiting until we were a mile in.  A liter is 2.2lbs for goodness sake.  And nobody filters only a liter of water on a thru-hike.  So we got to hiking up these crazy hills a little lighter in the pack.  It just went straight up.  Almost straight up anyway.  But when we had trudged in that first mile and saw the blue-blazed water trail, it's not like Dick's creek just flowed up that hill.  It was a mile straight back down to water in this gully.  You bet I was thrilled for the extra exercise I had just created for myself.  I took my pack off and committed to the effort.  Even without my pack, I had to stop twice on my way back up that treacherous ravine.  And you know what?  0.7 miles down the main trail from the blue blaze, there was a beautiful spring bubbling out of solid rock.  We could only laugh about what had just happened and then went into cruise mode.  Up, down, up, down.  We met a couple of folks from Arizona with headphones in and eventually had to strike up a conversation so we could pass.  One more down and we came to a sign that indicated that our goal for the day was only 3.1 miles away.  Chief and I both looked at each other and said, "I bet we can do it in an hour."  We took off.  We even ran a little, maybe 45 seconds, on the flats.  We were gonna make the stateline.  Georgia in a week!  We approached this herd of six hikers laughing and carrying on in the middle of the trail and we knew we were golden.  This had to be it.  One minute left.  Here we met Wild Bill, his brother the Professor, their friend the Detective and another group, Guano, Sun Beam, and Peaches who was temporarily named on the spot.  We both still lack "officially sanctioned" trail names.  We spent a lot of energy on our time trial and filled up our water bags at the next spot.  What came next was the biggest mountain of the trail yet: Couthouse Bald.  This is not a spelling error.  It was a tremendous effort and we made camp up on a ridge at Muskrat Creek Shelter.  The sunset was spectacular.  Surely the most beautiful one I have seen on the AT thus far.  A lot of folks we have been hiking with came over to enjoy it on the ridge with us.  Samson even played my ukulele and set a very nice mood while we all sat on logs watching the sun dip low far off into the Pacific.