Date: 2017-05-14
From: Davis Hollow

To: Chestnut Knob Shelter
Miles today: 22.0
Weather: clear sky

I woke up early this morning, a little chilly while we waited for the sun to reach our corner of the Earth. I'm still working on figuring out thermal mangement with the quilt... I woke up drenched in sweat at one point in the night and then chilly in the morning. Its very adjustable, I've just got to figure out how it works best in various temperature conditions. I also woke up to some coyotes which were yipping up in the hills, but they didn't come into camp.I headed out at 7am, the first one out of camp as evidenced by the cobwebs clearing I was doing. I very much enjoy morning hiking, it was cool, sunny, and a light breeze had just started stirring the trees. I could see ridges in the distance, including the one we had hiked on yesterday, but couldn't get any pics because I was only catching glimpses through the thick trees which covered the tops of my ridge.I passed a troop of boy scouts on the side of the trail making breakfast and continued walking. Going downhill hurts my knees a bit, which is because my pack is too heavy (I'm not sure I'm going to carry 5 days of food again if I can help it... I think it's worth ducking into an extra town to avoid the joint damage that an over-heavy pack causes).I passed a campsite with everyone eating breakfast and headed up and over a ridge. On the way down I passed and chatted with Beaver and BackwoodsBarbie, an older couple from KY section hiking for 8 days.After leaving them behind I came to a wall across the trail... a tree had fallen and was entirely blocking the trail. Pricker bushes prevented simply walking around and so the only option was to shimmy through between 2 of the branches. I didn't want to take my pack off and so went for it and got a bit stuck, but managed to slip though before anyone else came along and decided that that should be a trail name. Always an adventure!As I hiked the terrain flattened out and little while petals drifted down from the trees to the ground like summer snow. The trail followed a thin strip of forest which seperated two large rolling fields which stood to each side. The eastern one had a white farm house tucked into it with a tall brown silo adjoining it, topped with a gleaming silver dome. Every horizon had a ridge which dissapeared into the distance and not a cloud was visible in the sky. It doesn't get better than this.The trail crossed the fields and headed uphill before turning halfway up the hilly field. Turning back, the ridge formed a green wall protecting this secluded valley from the rest of the world and echoed back anything shouted at it.  Through a forest and over a bridge (to grandmother's...) the trail wound through the rural countryside, a nice change from the high mountains and ridges we normally follows. The bridge didn't have enough clearance for the volume of water carried by the river and was acting as a dam which had evidence of a recent spillover. I walked past an empty pavilion (which we'd later learn had trail magic... a make your own taco setup, just an hour after I passed it) and back uphill brought me to a shelter, where I had lunch and took a short nap until Classy and Lookout arrived.We hiked on and reached our final challenge for the day, a 2000ft climb up Chestnut Knob. It was a rather brutal slog upwards with our heavy packs and the weather as hot as it was. For whatever reason, perhaps calorie deficit, electrolyte deficiency, dehydration, or overheating, I just felt like I had no energy. To top it off, AWOL listed the spring at the shelter as unreliable, so we had to tank up and carry 3L of water, an extra 6.6lbs, 1.5mi to the shelter. My pack (ULA Circuit) is only comfy carrying less than ~30lbs and the extra water weight combined with the food I was carrying definitely exceeded that.The top of the mountain was bald, so we made our way through the sunny fields until we finally arrived at the shelter. This shelter, an old fire warden's cabin, was unique in that it was fully enclosed (4 walls!) and had a door (which we had never seen in the wild before!). The structure sat in the middle of a meadow and a group of colorful tents were visible in the woods on the far side. The meadow sloped over the edge of the mountain and from this vantage point the whole of the valley below was visible.We cooked inside the shelter to get out of the wind, but took our dinners out to admire the view as we ate. We watched a bit more of the Two Towers until just before sunset, when we returned to the view to watch as the valley below and the sky above faded to night. Classy and I stargazed for a while, wrapped in sleeping bags against the chilly wind.