Miles 541.1-552.4 (11.3 mi.) Total ascent: 2375’; descent 2976’ As a kid, I could’t understand the appeal of birdwatching. Why not mammal-watching, or reptile-watching? Why not just hit a ball around on manicured turf and keep an eye out beyond the rough? I had one of those experiences today that helps me understand the excitement […]
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Miles 534.3-541.8 (6.8 mi) Total ascent: 1916′; descent 1946′ Tonight will be our first night staying in a trail shelter, to which we arrived early and in which the sole other hiker here didn’t seem interested in staying. Not wanting to end at 3 p.m., I’d wanted to press on. Rachel argued that if we […]
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5/5: Zero in Marion, Virginia
If I struggled to see the positives in yesterday, I couldn’t stop looking at them today. Rachel and I woke up around 9 a.m. — I was up until midnight on my phone, I admit — and listened to the hum of the air conditioner for a few minutes. It didn’t sound so different than […]
Miles 527.4-534.3 (6.9 mi.) Total ascent: 1814’; descent: 1198’ Long-distance hiking involves a number of inevitabilities. It’s possible to mitigate heat, bug bites, foot pain, and the like, but it’s impossible to opt out of them altogether. When I initially sat down to write this post, I was feeling sour about two such inevitabilities: hiking […]
Miles 511.8-527.4 (15.6 mi.) Total ascent: 3540′; descent 4413′ Rachel and I eat a lot of things on the trail that we wouldn’t in our “real” lives. But tonight, we made a dinner so comically gross that we chose to throw the final 20% away uneaten. Our recipe, not that we’d ever suggest making it, […]
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5/2: Deep Gap to Fox Creek
Miles 496.6-511.8 (14.9 mi.) Total ascent: 2444′; descent 3862′ We saw not one, not two, but five-plus wild ponies today! We learned at an area known as “Scales,” where livestock was once weighed for sale, that the ponies were reintroduced to the area in the 1960s in order to maintain the grasslands where cattle once […]
Miles 484.3-496.6 (12.6 mi.)Total ascent: 4442′; descent 2221′ Before I get to today’s events, I’d like to ask all present and future namers and namesakes of trail features to please ensure their name isn’t already in use on the AT. Searching “Deep Gap” in Guthook yields three different points on the trail [also see: Sassafrass […]
Miles 472.2-484.3 (11.6 mi.) Total ascent: 3698′; descent: 3547′ A third rat snake we saw not 100 yard from our tent site let one get away last night: Some rodent decided to chew a dozen holes in Rachel’s rain jacket, which, of course, we’d already replaced. I shook the mouse turds off around 7 a.m., […]
Miles 470.7-472.9 (2.1 mi.) Total ascent: 833′; descent: 223′ We spent today, which we’d planned to be a “zero,” riding the 35-mile Virginia Creeper Trail in its entirety. Known around Damascus as “the trail that saved our town,” the VCT is advertised everywhere: at the four-plus bike rental shops, the visitor center, the diner, the […]
Miles 464.3-470.7 (6.4 mi.) Total ascent: 804′; descent 2566′ We made it to Virginia just an hour or so into our hike today, only to stop for another rat snake. Like his buddy we met two days ago, this one was taking advantage of the sun shining through the trail’s canopy gap. Much as I […]