Date: 2015-05-22
From: Pearisburg, VA

To: Pine Swamp Branch
Miles today: 19.9
Weather: few clouds

I am a knitter (I promise this will become relevant). As a knitter, I read a number of knitting blogs, one of which is www.yarnharlot.com. It is probably one of the best and best known knitting blogs, written by Stephanie Pearl McPhee. One of the concepts she has mentioned in her blog over the years is that of the black hole of knitting. You knit and knit and knit and you measure your project and there are just as many inches of knit fabric as before. That's the black hole of knitting.Today I discovered the black hole of hiking. You hike and hike and hike and you check how many more miles to the shelter and it's about the same as before, rather than the less than two miles you were expecting.Other than that, it was a good day. We took it easy in the morning and started hiking about 8 am, so an hour later than normal. First we had to weave our way through the outskirts of Pearisburg, which was not pretty. A bridge on a highway, a funky smelling factory of some sort, and finally the local landfill complete with "do not drink " sign on the nearby stream and dead mouse or vole right on the trail. Charming.The climb out of town started after that, but it was well graded and really not bad. Plus we were sugar fueled by soda from a trail angel who was waiting for two hikers and had extra soda to share. Thank you Bill!The weather today was mostly as advertised: "sunny and pleasant" but it did get chilly on a few stretches. I hurried through lunch at Rice Field shelter because I was getting cold. Just outside the shelter the trail went to a viewpoint on a cliff from where you looked into West Virginia and it was quite impressive.The next section was an easy ridge walk with tons of wildflowers, most of them not yet blooming. I did see a lot of geranium and a new to me fuzzy purple flower that was not open yet. It reminded me of borage but as far as I know that is always blue. I'll take a picture once I find some fully open.After a few miles of ridge, there was a great view from a meadow, with an arm chair to enjoy it from! I found Yoda there, relaxing and having a snack. At lunch, we had committed to going to the next shelter because of lack of water sources. If we wanted to stealth camp, we'd have to carry water for camp anywhere for 9 miles and we weren't interested in that. But going to the next shelter meant an almost 20 mile day.This is where the black hole of hiking comes in. Until the arm chair view, the miles had gone fairly quickly. We had 7.5 miles to go. What seemed like a very long time later, when we checked how much was left, we were still more than 5 miles away. Ugh. These last five miles were painful, literally and figuratively. The trail wasn't bad, mostly level and aside from some rocky stretches, it was in pretty decent shape. It was just that I was done. And so were my feet. But, no water meant no stealth camp so I had to tough it out. After some tea, dinner, hot chocolate and actual chocolate, I feel fine and even my feet don't feel worse than normal (which is to say, not fine exactly!). And according to some here, the recent relocation of trail on Pearisburg meant we did hike more than twenty trail miles. But I go by the guide, so 19.9 trail miles it is. Since we walked about a mile to the start of the trail, we did walk more than 20 but it still doesn't count. My streak of no 20 mile days continues! Tomorrow we will climb to a ridge, hike along the ridge and go down to a shelter. Whether we'll go further than that will be decided when we get there. I shall report back.Open map in new windowWant to add a map to your journal?