Date: 2019-06-17
From: Bryant Ridge Shelter 

To: Cornelius Creek Shelter
Miles today: 4.9
Weather: broken clouds

Another short day today. Noodle got out around 9/9:30 and I was pretty much ready, but I had spotted the girl that had exclaimed last night when I walked by and it turned out to be Cali! I stayed to chat with her. Turns out there¢s been some drama with her and No Rush and Rachel and Noodle. They were a trail family, but they were having some issues. Cali told me a bit and Noodle had also told me a bit, so I was just there to listen. I didn¢t have any issues with any of them so I just listened and planned to hike with whoever was there to hike with. Cali and I chatted for so long that I ended up leaving in the worst part of the day. It was so hot. Today was 92 degrees. And the day started with an uphill and that uphill crawled up and up for 9 MILES before finally going down. It was just death heading out knowing I had to get up that massive and long up while it was so hot. I was purely miserable. And it was mainly mental because I was hating the idea of this long uphill, but the heat didn¢t help me physically. I was draining through my water. I hiked slowly and passed through a ton of greenery, or the ¢green tunnel¢ as some hikers call it. The spiders had had a field day and I was walking into web after web after web. It added to the misery and I was just so done. I sat on a rock and just sobbed. I wanted to quit and leave and just be done with this trail. It¢s so long and so hard and monotonous and hot and just too much. I almost needed a reset.I didn¢t see Cali coming after me so I figured she was struggling too. There was no one on the trail, which must have been why the webs were so bad. Normally people clear them out. I felt so alone. I got to a shelter that was 5 miles from the last and I sat down. I was alone. It was sprinkling rain and I was miserable and so I sat to wait it out and wait for Cali. I was hoping she wouldn¢t go past this shelter without stopping in. A few boys came in after already having hiked 18, and they were headed on even further. Great. I don¢t remember their names. It started to pour and they sat with me to wait out the rain. I basically decided I was staying. I was truly miserable. This was just the worst I had felt on my entire hike and I didn¢t want my trail experience to be this way. It was just not what I came out here for. The boys left and another man showed up. He set up in the corner and we chatted. It was just the two of us. I sat and waited, almost paralyzed with my unhappiness, and waited for Cali. She showed up a bit before dark. She wanted to night hike and I was not sure I wanted to. I really wanted to do more miles, but just couldn¢t move. I was just done. We ate dinner and it started to get dark, and I heard a rustle, and a mouse came scurrying right next to my foot. I screamed and stood up and the mouse ran over to the man in the corner and he woke up. Ugh yuck! I knew they were coming to the food we were eating, so I told Cali we needed to get rid of our food. We packed it all up in our food bags and hung it in the shelter, and the mice didn¢t seem to be a problem after that. We were more motivated to night hike after the mice, but we decided to stay.We set up our stuff and went to sleep. I was hot and itchy from bug bites so I didn¢t sleep well, but I slept. Little Debbie