Found Our Trail Legs

Every time we take a step off trail for a day or two it feels as if a brief chapter of our journey has ended. We begin this latest chapter in Elkton VA. We stepped back on the trail with our bags shaken down, broken equipment replaced, and legs rested. The weather that caused us to get off trail was incredibly humbling. Personally I don’t think it is in my nature to ask for help from others, this trait likely works to my detriment in more situations than I know. After our break from trail I was glad that we had taken a breather and asked for help. Our first full day back we set out to do an 18 miler, and got hit with an ice rain storm right off the bat. It was like nothing had changed since we left the SNP 3 days before. We wondered if we had made a mistake and returned too early. We persevered through the long day of hiking to the shelter, and when we sat down to make dinner the evening turned to 55 degree weather. We had done it! We survived winter’s dying breath, one last hurrah for old times sake. It was a relief. This hike is always teaching us that we need to strike the balance between facing challenges head on and taking a step back when necessary. It felt good to face the weather that originally took us off trail and come out on top this time. We felt invincible after this. Our most immediate goal following the “end of winter” was to make it to Devil’s Backbone Brewery for a happy hour that runs Monday-Thursday. This would require us to walk about 58 miles in 3 days. We were on a hiking warpath to soak up every last bit of sunlight the days had to provide. On this trek we hiked our personal best 25.7 miles in one day! We were shocked at what our legs were capable of.

I guess most of you are thinking, wow I bet after 25 miles and 12 plus hours of hiking, Tea/Time and Peak must have passed out immediately after eating their mandatory liter ration of ramen for the night. Thats what we thought too. But heres the thing, the last five miles of our day were kindly plastered with information about how bears like to frequent the shelter that we were heading to. My bear paranoia has mellowed over the course of our thru hike so far, but this day I believe it became subconsciously heightened. This all fizzled to the surface when an hour into our sleep we woke to my hiking pole mysteriously falling off the peg it was hanging on. My reaction to this was obvious... to wriggle around frantically failing to unzip my sleeping bag because I took one look at my boots 5ft away from me, assuming it was a bobcat ready to pounce.

After a much rockier and tougher than expected thirteen miler into Reed’s Gap, we easily hitched a ride down the mountain to Devil’s Backbone Brewery. We had arrived in a knick of time for the last hour of happy hour. Ive never worked so hard to get to a happy hour in my life. Emma ordered a Vienna Lager in honor of her late grandmother Louise (Vienna lager: her beer of choice) and I ordered their AT beer the Trail Angel Weiss. The beers, giant pretzels, fried pickles, and greasy chorizo burgers flowed for the next hour and a half. Our bodies felt replenished from the much needed fatty and suds-y calories they had received. The next morning we packed up our tent spot after a lye-in and headed back for our hiker breakfast. A five dollar plate of everything the chefs could throw on there. This plate also came with copious amounts of Devil’s Backbone swag.

I guess we are brand ambassadors now... it is not lost on me that the brewery marketers believe that they are on to the most genius advertising scheme of the century by creating trail-mobile-billboards out of every hiker that falls for their little craft brew trap. But we did need those hats... we were starting to get sunburned. Marketing schemes aside the Brewery was incredibly hiker friendly and a nice break. They even gave us a ride back to the trail after missing their scheduled shuttle by two hours!

It is rare, but sometimes on the trail a plan comes together perfectly. This happened for us as were getting close to a town called Buena Vista, or as the locals say “B-yuna Vista”. Our mission for the day was simple; get into town to re-stock at the Food Lion and return back to the trail without having to stay the night. To do this we needed to hike 12 miles to route 60, hitch hike 10 miles to “B-yuna”, buy 3 days of food ASAP, hitch back to the trail head, hike 2 miles south bound to our shelter for the night. Seems like a simple enough plan, but whenever we organize anything heavily around trying our luck with hitch hiking I automatically get skeptical. The day started well, we jammed out to Van Morrison while eating breakfast and moved through the first 7 or 8 miles of our hike easily. The mountain top meadows were stunning. 

We stopped at an overlook to enjoy a view and ate a whole packet of Korean bbq jerky... not recommended. Here we met Blue Stem, a 2017 thru hiker who was completing a section of the trail he missed due to an injury. We bonded for a while, talking trail and enjoying the view together. After 15 minutes he left and we thought nothing of it. Only once we started up again did it click that Blue Stem had mentioned that he was getting a ride back to town with his wife at Rt. 60! We hustled to catch up, burning by any weekend warriors who were in our way. We arrived at the parking lot the exact same time as Blue Stem’s wife. Trying to play it cool about our seemingly coincidental “run in”, we asked for the ride we really wanted. Ride #1 score! And they even gave us two cans of coke. I ended up drinking both of them.

Now we pass no judgment on any town we travel to through in the Appalachian mountains, but after receiving a brief tour through the bustling heart of “B-yuna Vista” and taking a look at the Days Inn sleeping option, we really did not want to stick around. A quick shop and phone charge at the Food Lion and our thumbs were back up at around 5:30. Actually I almost left my phone plugged into the wall at the Food Lion and as I ran back to get it, a Toyota Tacoma had pulled up in the 2 minutes I had gone. Something tells me that I have not been the main source of our hitching luck so far. This hitch took a little while longer to confirm itself since we were not actually headed where this family wanted to go (there are 2 AT trail heads close to town that are 10 miles apart). It was heart breaking to think we would have to turn down a ride for the sake of not missing 10 miles of trail! But after 10 minutes of map checking the family finally decided to do it. They immediately presented us with half a box of Samoa girl scout cookies, a bag of caramel M&M’s, peanut butter crackers and told us to hop in the bed of the truck. We could not believe our luck and the extreme kindness of this family to not only, miss out on their planned final hour of fishing for the day, but to also unload all of their junk food on us whilst doing so. They dropped us at the trail head, an impressive 2 hours after we had originally hitched and we walked the final two miles to the shelter with ease. Walking to the shelter I was on cloud nine. I told Emma “I think I might be high off of all the trail magic we received today.” She quickly reminded me it was probably a sugar high from the 2 cokes, cookies, and M&M’s of the last 2 hours. Best day ever...

One thing we have learned from the trail is that you should never pass up a good opportunity when it is right under your nose. Emma’s mother Sissy has been kind enough to “slack pack” us through certain stretches of the trail over the last two days. “Slack packing” is when someone takes your back pack from point A to point B for you so that you can hike without it. Ditching our weight for two days has been amazing, and we have covered a lot of ground in doing so. One of these hikes included Dragon’s Tooth which has what is considered the toughest mile of the AT in Virginia. It was absolutely steep and rocky, we were very happy to be pack-less for this mile. 

A good friend of ours who hiked the trail in 2013 told us to be weary of hiking with friends on the AT after you have your "trail legs". Other than being a nice break from the weight, we wanted to “slack pack” some big days so that we can hike with our friend Tommy without running him and his dog Dingo into the ground over the course of two days. We are excited to enjoy the company of friends and family whilst still hiking a little less miles on trail as a result of these “slack pack” days. Well for now thats all I’ve got!

The future to come; our dreaded collision with the 2018 NOBO thru hiker bubble, we reach our 500th mile, and I get a haircut... catch you on the flip side! Or the flop side?

Here is some bonus material courtesy of Emma G. Still practicing camera lighting and talking. Enjoy!