Date: 2017-09-14
From: Devil's Backbone brewery

To: Summit ledges, The Priest
Miles today: 15.2
Weather: light rain

Pain now? Or pain later?On the ascent of the Priest, a peak famous on the AT for involving a brutal 3000ft climb over 3.5 miles, the question wasn't quite as simple as that because pain was inevitable. Instead the options were more pain now (by camelling up for water early on in the ascent for tonight's camp on the summit) or more pain later (by having to hike on to the shelter to get water then walk back to camp).I opted, as I usually do, for pain now and filled up with three litres of water from the creek the trail crossed about 900ft into the 3000ft climb. I didn't need familiarity with the metric system to work out that three litres of water meant three kilograms of weight.The others opted for pain later and went ahead. That didn't make much difference because I'd inevitably have fallen behind anyway and instead I plugged away up the hill. I was grateful that, unlike Maine, the trail was actually pretty good and it was easy to slowly grind my way upwards.We'd already done one big climb that day, up to Three Ridges, but through a spectacular bit of dumbassery, I'd managed to add an even earlier one to that right after leaving Devil's Backbone brewery.We'd wandered over to the restaurant for the hiker breakfast, which cost $5 for an impressive concoction described as "whatever the cook decided to make". In today's instance, it was a mix of eggs, vegetables and fruit.There was reputedly a free shuttle back up to the trail at 9am but at 8.40am, I wandered out to hitch up to free up space for the others. One car offered a ride to Wintergreen Resort, which I declined because the turnoff was well before the place we'd hitched down from the previous evening, Then another car said they were going up to the pass and I accepted a ride.By "the pass", I soon discovered the driver actually meant Wintergreen Resort, with the result that I had to hike about 300m of "bonus" ascent over more than half a mile to reach the place where I could abide by my goal of contiguous footsteps. My worst case scenario -- of being passed by the rest of the tramily being transported by the brewery shuttle -- was averted by a few minutes by my hauling ass up the road.Once we were all back together again, we followed the trail over a small hillock and towards the ascent of Three Ridges, about which we'd been hearing dire warnings for months from nobos. The climb was fine and the warnings proved to be yet more nobo hype.In the midst of this we met another couple of straggler nobos. Broken Arrow was a 70-year-old woman who has been out since February and seemed to be loving her hiking life. Later we encountered Superdave, a professional gambler who had been out since June 22 after winning enough at poker to be able to hike. Neither aimed to flip or complete their thru hike but were instead just seeing how far they could go.After the top of Three Ridges, we were warned -- by nobos, so not entirely trustworthy, but warned nonetheless -- that the descent would be worse than the subsequent ascent of The Priest. So it proved and I at least was grateful we weren't coming up this way.We regathered at Harpers Creek shelter, where we encountered Footprint, Happy Feet and OK and tried to entice them to camp on the summit with us instead of at the shelter a little further on. Once we crossed the river and then a road, the ascent of The Priest began. Despite adding a bonus 3kg part of the way up, it was actually OK and I slowly plugged my way up to the top, dead last but arriving in camp faster than those who had to hike on the third of the mile to get water from a spring near the shelter.The campsite was next to rock ledges that had spectacular views for the sunset and seemed likely to have an equally awesome view of the sunrise too. Footprint and Pan joined us as we cooked on the ledges and enjoyed the sweeping views, feeling like the richest people in the world. And we are, in the things that matter.Life is good.AT fact of the day: Around 1300 miles into this trip, we ought to have some hiker cred. But we managed to be 180 degrees wrong in our prediction of where the sun was going to set -- a mistake that only became apparent when the sun burst through the cloud cover... D'oh!