Date: 2017-09-10
From: Bearfence Mountain shelter

To: Pinefield shelter
Miles today: 20.4

After yesterday's indulgent double-wayside schedule, today was looking grim on the town-food front: 30 miles between opportunities to indulge in chilli cheese fries. The horror!But when all looked lost, a solution presented itself: Train's daughter Emily was studying at James Madison University, a short drive from where the VA Route 33 crossed the AT, and she was coming to visit her dad for a couple of hours. And what college student doesn't want a free meal? So Train arranged to meet her at 9am and then we'd all drive up to Loft Mountain wayside to catch up over food. WIN! One of the common themes of my AT hike is that I hike slower than all the others around me, which is hardly surprising when they're mostly less than half my age and haven't (yet) wrecked their knees through mountaineering and adventure racing and two other thru-hikes.A corollary theme is hating to feel anyone is waiting for me, which is why I was on the trail at a recent record of 6.45am, aiming to cover the six miles to the meeting place in time.For all my hatred of getting up early, the calm and quiet meant there are definite benefits to hiking at this hour and I cantered along mostly easy trail to the meeting place, arriving just after 9am. None of the other faster members of the tramily had caught me, which was quietly satisfying even if my goal was simply not to be the last.The true reason for this became apparent when the others rocked up over the next hour: Train's daughter hadn't got his messages about the meeting place until this morning and was running late. Once everyone was together we hiked another three miles or so to Swift Run Gap, with Train taking a cross country route down to Skyline Drive to meet Emily, who was at overlook nearby. We all reconvened at the gap, after which Emily was kind enough to drive us to Loft Mountain wayside where we sated all our desires for carbohydrates and cholesterol. She seemed nice, although she didn't seem to quite get why her dad wanted to hike the AT as the fulfillment of a dream he'd had since he was a 12-year-old scout and met an AT thru hiker.She dropped us all back at the gap, at which point Train went to pay for her to fill the tank with gas and the rest of us resumed our hike. From the gap, we worked off some of our wayside food by hauling ass up the steady climb to the summit of High Top Mountain. From that point, the trail undulated along the ridgeline while Skyline Drive snaked around below. We arrived at Pinefield Shelter to find a group of section hikers present, who I suspect were mentally scarred by learning that we'd covered four times as many miles as they had, despite our taking a two hour lunch break at the Wayside and carrying beers with us.But they were a fun bunch and we swapped stories into the evening.Life is good.AT fact of the day: The reliability of water continues to confound. There was a spring marked near the summit of High Top Mountain which I assumed would have no chance of flowing, based on how few of the water sources listed on the Guthook app had been running. And of course it was flowing well -- probably because we carried a full load of water up the mountain.