Date: 2017-09-13
From: Charlottesville

To: Devil's Backbone brewery
Miles today: 19.1
Weather: light rain

"Hey, Rolling Thunder," Train whispered conspiratorially, then beckoned me to one side before pulling out a pair of coconut halves. "What do you think?"It'd been a few weeks since the tramily had watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a recurring motif of which had been King Arthur and his crew simulating horseback travel by having their vassals clop coconut halves.Now we were an hour or two into the Blue Ridge mountains on a grey and misty day and Train revealed that he'd secretly bought a coconut at the supermarket in Charlottesville the day before and then borrowed a saw from Pepa to cut it into halves."You've got the perfect accent to announce it as we walk into Wolf Shelter," he added.And a few minutes later we did just that. Sriracha, Sweetblood, Dirt and 2am went through the same process I'd just done: disbelief at what they were seeing, then puzzlement and finally laughter.This was then followed by an instant agreement that we definitely had to carry the coconut halves all the way to Springer and Sweetblood announced that from this moment, our tramily would be known as the Knights of the Round Table.Team KRT, as we became known, was born. Or at least named.Pepa and his flatmate Keith had been kind enough to drive us back to the trail that morning, where the mountains remained shrouded in grey clouds. This was a far cry from the dire warnings of torrential downpours caused by the tail end of Hurricane Irma. I'd slept out on the porch, where the worst the weather threw at us was a steady light drizzle.We knew the forecast was for it to clear up during the day, which it did by the time we'd completed the steady 2000ft climb from the shelter to the top of Hunchback mountain, which was on the ridge of the Blue Ridge Parkway -- the biggest climb we'd done for more than a month.The parkway was a little bit like a low-rent version of Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park and, like Skyline Drive, the trail and the road intertwined along the top of the crest of the ridge.Once on the ridgetop, the hiking was unremarkable and with few views. For the final few miles, we traversed on the same side of the ridge as the road but below it before emerging where another road crossed the ridge at Wintergreen ski resort.I emerged onto the pass just as a car stopped to give Sweetblood, Sriracha and 2am a lift down towards Devil's Backbone Brewery in the valley below. There was room for me but I decided instead that I'd better wait for Dirt and Train, just in case they weren't sure knew which way to hitch off the ridge to get to the brewery. They arrived about 15 minutes later and the first car to go past -- a summer worker at Wintergreen skifield -- stopped to pick us up. He was clearly used to hikers and took us straight to the brewery.Devils Backbone had quite a reputation on the AT and at least one member of each party of nobos we'd met seemed to have been wearing some kind of Devils Backbone merchandise. We'd heard plenty of stories about how awesome and hiker friendly the place was, even though its indie-brewery cred had been diminished by selling out to the Anheuser-Busch corporarate conglomerate that owns brands like Budweiser.Thru hikers tend to stand out and we were greeted as such immediately by a greeter, who advised us genially but firmly to pitch our tents and then come back for some hospitality. I suspect this was a prudent suggestion born of having to deal with too many hikers who went drinking and then tried to pitch their tents or possibly even find the camping area. Soon enough we were back at the bar, where we settled in for a meal. The greeter said some other hikers had arrived she automatically assumed they'd join us, which was fine by us since the "big tent" is one of the hiking community's default positions that I enthusiastically endorse.The new arrivals turned out to be people I hadn't met before -- an Ohio flipper called OK and a Maryland sobo called Happy Feet -- but who were to become constant companions in the next two months. They fitted right in and we had a convivial night before wandering back over to the campsite.Life is good.AT fact of the day: A middle-aged couple I passed on the trail had a suspicously familiar accent and proved to be Kiwis who split their time between Waiheke Island, off Auckland, and the US. I had a sneaking suspicion they were once in the diplomatic service and thus we were likely to have some mutual friends but I greeted them, as I do any Kiwis, with my basic Maori: "Kia ora, kapai?" ("How are you? Good?") Alas my bluff was called when they responded in fluent te reo and I had to admit that I spoke Maori like a Pakeha tamaiti from Te Whenua o Te Potiki-Tautahi (White boy from Christchurch)...