- Miles 657.9-665.8 (7.9 mi.)
- Total ascent 2520’; descent 951’
The airborne insects of western Virginia are back like it’s their first day on the job.
A small bee decided my knee needed some more pain. Gnats and black flies buzzed about whenever the wind was still enough. We checked for ticks as we went and more thoroughly in the tent afterwards, but found none.
Tick-vector diseases and infections take a lot of hikers off the trail. We did spray our clothes with permethrin, a long-lasting insect repellent, and we usually wear long sleeves and pants when the temperature allows. We’ll treat them again in Daleville, the nearest trailside town with an outfitter, because a permethrin treatment is only good for six weeks or six washes.
Also at the outfitter, as I mentioned in a prior post, I’ll be buying new insoles. My Superfeet took a turn for the worse, with part of the heel cup on the right foot breaking away from the fabric footbed. I duct-taped them, but I am not sure whether it will hold.
The final straw for my insoles may have been the boulder fields we spent most of today stepping across. For the first mile or two, we climbed to the ridge. The ridge is rockier than the lowlands, and sometimes significantly so. For the rest of it, we crossed boulders, dodged rock cairns, and walked narrow ledges.
We got started late and didn’t expect the rougher terrain, and so we stopped nearly 3 miles short of our target today. We had hoped to tent at the outskirts of War Spur shelter, which we knew would have water, but decided as it neared 6 p.m. to stop at an earlier trickle (that Guthook had called a “creek”) near a flat-ish field of grasses gone to seed.
Our sitemate is Nimble, a 60-ish gentleman with a hurt knee and a leaking water bag. He seems desperate to get to Daleville, though he isn’t planning to take more than the two weeks he already has off for his knee. We fetched his water and offered ibuprofen, but he said he had already taken too much.
My stomach aches tonight, which is, to my surprise, its first gripe of the trip. I think I might have overdone the goat milk powder, which I found in a hiker box at Angel’s Rest Hiker Hostel, in our dinner. I took liberties because the base, garlic instant potatoes, could and did accommodate the lean tang of the milk.
I feel like I’m bitching; I did have a good day. Not a drop of rain fell, and we enjoed lunch at a picnic table by ourselves at Bailey Gap shelter. We also saw lots of wild geranium booms and star chickweed, both of which we Google Lens-ed with the precious little signal we had. Service has been otherwise nonexistent since Pearisburg. I would love to have internet access, but it is nice being cut off for a few days.
Forgive me for cutting this short, but I’m feeling sore and spent. It’s a great day for an early night.
