- Miles 824.2-837.1 (12.9 mi.)
- Total ascent: 3540’; descent: 5344’
How nice of the storm to wait until we were in the tent, food eaten and stored, to dump. We’re camped with another couple, Beetle and Ryan (who’s trying out the name “Salami Mami”), both of whom we ate lunch with at The Priest shelter.
The Priest is the name of a 4,000 foot mountain, located in The Priest (capital T) Wilderness of George Washington National Forest. In a log book at the summit shelter, hikers write all sorts of internet-appropriate but real life-inappropriate stuff, with a handful of serious confessions. Two stacked boulders are a popular confessional for those who prefer to speak. Everyone atones for their sins on the 3,000 foot descent followed by a 3,000 foot climb, each spread over 3 miles. The topography is a remarkably even “V,” almost as if The Priest and Three Ridges Mountain, its northern neighbor, were made by a glacier (they weren’t).
We are staying half way up Three Ridges tonight. A popular choice is to stay atop the mountain and to get a sunset, like at McAfee Knob, but we didn’t want to do 6 more miles to camp high in a storm.
The downside of our decision is that the campsite 18 miles ahead, where we’d like to stay tomorrow, has had a bear visit every night this week. We will likely try to stealth camp a couple miles south of there.
More immediately concerning, at tonight’s site, is the poison oak. Being from the Midwest, I know to avoid poison ivy, which has much more of a presence here than further south on the trail. I rubbed a bare, unsuspecting arm across what I suspect to be poison oak and got an itchy, weeping bump. I washed it, and the rule is now “no touchie.”
Sharing a nice site with new friends has done wonders to take my mind off my itches and punished feet. Beetle is a physician’s assistant, and Ryan is a computer science student. They’d like to get a condo in Michigan once Ryan is done with school. When not hiking on the AT, they hike with Beetle’s family in New Hampshire.
We stayed up slightly too late talking tonight, around a failed campfire attempt, but it’s a better way to end than focusing on our feet.
Because tomorrow is going to be a long day, and because the light is attracting all sorts of humming, flapping monsters to our tent, I’m going to call it an early (late) night.
Oh, how I have earned it.
