6/13

I woke to more rain.
“Sounds like rain.” said mom.
“You think?” I said in a sleepy voice and went back to sleep for a bit, because, really, what was the point of getting up.
Of note was the fact that it wasn’t thundering or lightning.
When we finally did get up and get packed, the guides, mom and I huddled briefly.
“Well? What’s the verdict?” I asked.
“You did great yesterday. Do you feel any better today? Not really? OK, well, let’s get to Massie Gap and see how that goes.” said Tricky.
“Works for me.” I said and off we went for the day.
I was pleased and nervous at the same time. Apparently, I had been ok yesterday and it seemed that they really did want me to continue (phew). We had a big day ahead of us (well, in the grand scheme of thru-hikers, we were doing absolutely minimal mileage).5.2 miles from Wise shelter to Thomas Knob shelter (a meadow just to the north of it.) Most of it was hard climb including Wilburn Ridge. But it was also shaping up to be the neatest day on the trail (IMO) with Rhododendron Gap, the wild ponies and really nice views.
We packed off and I basked in the fact that the first bit of the day was rolling hills rather than uphill.
I had been looking around me, but I was focusing on keeping moving. The woods nice to be in, some sunlight dappling through. Toward midday, the clouds started to cover the sky, but that was when we hit the open area at Massie Gap and moved on to the ridge.
These are the famous wild ponies of Wilburn Ridge (although they are amenable to being approached carefully…) and they aren’t as skittish as I expected. Mom was in heaven.
[And as a side note, in the August 2007 edition of Backpacker magazine p. 31 (no useful links, just to their base site) there is an article about Mike Magnuson doing this part of the AT south to north and taking pictures of the ponies that we saw this day.]
Actually, we messed with Almanac while we were hiking up to the ridge. When we had out pack shakedown, Almanac had talked mom out of bringing apples for snacks and really talked her out of wanting to give some apple to any ponies she saw on the trail (Leave No Trace philosophy and protecting the ponies’ ability to keep foraging on their own for food.). So while we marched along, mom in front, then me, then Almanac as sweep we were talking about the ponies.

Almanac:”So, we’ll be seeing ponies soon!”
Mom (Rocky):”Hey, kid, got the carrots?”
Me:”Right here!” (no, I didn’t…but I am a good straight man.)
Almanac:”WHAT??!?”
Me:”Just kidding!”

Hee…
Mom did get to commune with the ponies after all.
Just over the hill from that set of ponies was a mother and baby wandering around in a clearing by the trail.
We had lunch just past a series of rock steps (and this is how mom got her trail name… “Rocks are HARD.” (said with a straight face…hence she is Rocky.) ) which would make a believer out of anyone in the absolute wonderfulness of trekking poles. I had left off my knee brace this day (on the left knee Monday, the right knee on Tuesday and without even a twinge either day, I decided that wearing neoprene sounded supremely icky and so I left it off but put it in an outside pocket if things got bad.) and even through the brutality of those damn rock “stairs” (some of which were a bigger step up than my leg… I did a bit of crawling up with my pack and all… grace, you know.)
and with lunch (and my arrival 10 minutes behind the rest of the crowd) the question of me not being able to keep up was suddenly moot. Never really was mentioned again, I still felt like death warmed over and I was balancing the sudafed doses, because having your heart race uncontrollably is uncomfortable. Add that sensation to hard physical exertion and its truly awful.
The thing is, I was having a great time.
I am a masochist, aren’t I?
The weather was good and I was noticing the great scenery. The first few days, I was more concerned with me being sick as a dog and being upset over my lack of speed (and other things) but the weather was actually really nice out. The parts of the trail under tree cover was nice and cool (the elevation didn’t hurt) and it really only rained a few choice times conveniently when tents were assembled or when we had a tarp to run under like little chicks under their chicken mama. The only time we caught it on the last ten minutes of the day’s hike (this day as a matter of fact) but really everything was just peachy.
We were almost to the ridge that was the dangerous part (it wasn’t a ledge or anything, but it was a clearing on the top of a mountain-this set of pictures gives a good perspective of the ridge area almost two years exactly before we were there) and the clouds were starting to move in earnest toward us.
So we moved along at a pretty good clip and as fast as I could on the other part of the saddle while the clouds kept moving.
We made it with no problems, no thunder or lightning, it didn’t rain, but it was overcast. And we also started seeing the rhododendrons off the trail. Rhododendron Gap was just ahead through a tunnel called Fat Man’s Squeeze. I thought it was really cool, but I hear a bit of grumbling from other folks who seemed to be slightly unnerved by it. You had to rest your hand on one side of the cave while you held your trekking poles in the other, but it wasn’t bad walking through at all. Here’s Flame and Wanderer working through the cave.
Just beyond that, the rhododendrons started to bloom in earnest. You could hear bees buzzing all over and see those big, fat clumsy black bees lilting around the blooms.
I saw Hollywood, Flame and Wanderer just before they disappeared into the rhododendrons at the sign and then I entered in myself. It wasn’t like what I built up in my head, but as nothing ever is, I still enjoyed the view.
A few more climbs and then we moved on to a flat part on the trail…where it started raining. I had put my pack cover on that morning (fit nicely over the thermarest Z-lite I had strapped to the top (and help keep me from scraping my sleeping pad up as I tended to do with it up there.) and stayed put with the help of an elastic band that snapped under my shoulder and back padding of the pack. Mom, Almanac and I stood under a tree to get out of the rain, but it kept getting harder, so I took off my pack and put my rain jacket on.
I really didn’t want to, I was sweaty and a bit too warm, but I figured I’d be wet one way or another and staying warm was better than freezing my arse off in the cold rain.
I didn’t realize we were right on top of camp. Five minutes later, I see everyone under a tarp (still in the process of being put up) and Tricky telling everyone to put warm things on so no one would get hypothermic.
I almost regretted stopping for 3 minutes to put my raingear on as I would have been able to get into camp at the same time everyone else did… priorities, you see.
It slacked off raining after about 15 minutes and we put up our tents attempting to chase the sunshine to dry them off a bit.
A bunch of folks went to tackle the Mt. Roger’s trail to the summit and some of us stayed in camp with promises to put all the stuff left out to dry in the remaining sun in case it started raining again.
Mom tried to start a fire again, but was having a hard time of it as everything was so soggy. She sent me off foraging for tinder and wood to very little luck. Eventually, mom snagged some of the firestarter from Tricky and managed a fairly smoky fire.
We had a raven near us the previous night near Wise shelter, and someone said it was bad luck to have a shapeshifter so near… however, ravens are part of my personal totem crowd and I was thinking that it was a lucky break. The raven was back tonight and yelled and squawked at us all during dinner.
Speaking of dinner, I actually wanted it this evening.
I wasn’t hungry, per se, but the thought of spaghetti noodles was really interesting to me.
I ate as much as I could then the rain started again lightly while we cleaned up and put our bear bag up and packs under the tarp for the evening.
I suppose that having a stuffed up nose on a weeklong backpacking adventure might not be considered to be the optimal thing, but frankly, it meant that I couldn’t smell others (or myself) as we ripened during the week.
Mom and I did break out the baby wipes after the storm started really going. There was thunder and lightning and everything (some rather close by… less than 1 Mississippi); we wiped of 3 days of sweat, and in my case a great deal of the trail all over my legs (how do I get that grubby? goodness.) helped to make us feel somewhat less grubby and then got into our sleeping bags and listened to the rain.
Good day.
Better night’s sleep.

6/12
The morning dawned somewhat dewily on the tents.
I got up and got mom some coffee back in the tent and organized our stuff out of the bear bag (actually more accurately named “the mouse bag” as it was to keep the rodentia out.) and moved the rainfly off to a sunny patch to let it dry.
I tried to eat a Larabar (normally my favorite thing) and had to quit halfway through it since swallowing brought tears to my eyes. I put it away for later.
The lead guide came over to talk to me this morning about me being sick.
She was concerned that on the day we crossed Wilburn Ridge that my being seriously slow could be a problem if weather got bad. Exposure out on the ridge if there was lightning was a seriously dangerous prospect. People have died… and neither she nor I wanted that.
I understood her point of view. The danger was real, my cold was potentially going to get worse and she needed to know if she needed to get me out.
I told her that I would go and go and go. I wouldn’t stop, I wouldn’t be as fast as everyone, and realistically I couldn’t promise any speed increases, but I wouldn’t ever stop or give up or whine about it. I also told her that despite all that, if she thought I might put someone in danger that she should tell me. I wasn’t about to ask anyone to get hurt on my account.
We decided that we’d see how I did that day (it was a shorter day) and that there were still places for me to hike out that weren’t exposed in front of us if worse came to worse.
Needless to say I felt even more horrible after this talk.
What if I were ruining everyone’s trip-especially mom’s? I know how much she looked forward to this (I had, too.)? What if I became that problem child that no one ever wants to deal with? The guilt of yesterday hit harder, my cold wasn’t better, I felt worse everyday, and now, I was a problem.
Glorious.
I also knew that my mom was concerned. She blames everything on me being overweight (middle east strife, global warming, etc.) but I’ve always been awful on uphill stuff even when I was in somewhat reasonable shape, so while me losing weight wouldn’t be a bad thing, it most likely wouldn’t make me any faster slogging up a hill.
The good news was, Tricky, the lead guide wanted me to continue (as did I) and was pretty positive about me doing it. I didn’t think she’d lost faith in me yet. (and there was no way I would be the one who said quit. They really would have to kick me out bodily. I’m stubborn as hell, yo.)
We packed up after gathering in a circle to do stretches all around and moved off to the area near Wise Shelter.
Tricky and Almanac switched duty each day for lead/sweep. So today, I had custody of Tricky. It was kind of nice to be able to have the guide all to myself (even if I wasn’t able to hold up my side of the conversation as well due to breathing.)
While I was making the climb of the first hill, she gave me some pointers about tackling hills and general trekking pole usage (I was getting the hang of them, but I was still learning, so pointers were much appreciated).
Basically, I needed to slow down and conserve my puny resources. So I started to retrain myself on my pace.
Mr. Potato Head is pretty ingrained and muscle memory is not an easy thing to redo, so I spent the day working up new walking song… or rather, a walking uphill song.
I ended up with a mishmash of imagery.

The accompanying sound is a combo of a drastically slowed down baby elephant song that sounds like a foghorn.
PEAAAAAAA-Nut.
Repeat ad nauseum.
But, by the next hill, I only stopped once to drink, because regardless of whether I can still breathe while going uphill, I’m still a klutz and will fall down if I try to drink from my camelbak tube, use trekking poles and walk at the same time.
Let’s be realistic here. Some things you can’t solve with PEANUT.
At times, I was even in front of mom. (To be fair, she was stopping every 5 seconds to Hoover up the wild strawberries along the trail. I’d give her even odds with a hungry black bear duking it out for the strawberries. I can’t win here.)
It became even more clear to me that breaks were irritating. I’d show up at the group break about 5 minutes after they flopped down (drastic improvement here, folks-still with the snot and the cold and the cramps, that was persistent) and not want to stop.
Still not hungry, though. I’d watch them eat and I’d drink some water and take pictures then we’d go.
Granted, this was an absolutely easy day on rolling trail, but I kept up, I didn’t stop and I made it to camp right about the time everyone else did.
We set up camp just north of Wise Shelter (oh yeah, did I mention we were hiking North to South? No? Oh, well now you know.). The meadow was surrounded by rhododendrons, there was a river running just north of us (that we crossed over on a very cool bridge on the way there), took advantage of the privy and mom and I sat down in the tent for a bit.
Well, she sat for a bit. I passed out and woke up about 2 hours later when I got cold.
I had a fever at that point, even I could feel it, so I took out the sleeping pads and bags and went back to sleep.
I have two pictures of this part of the day… one of the alien from inside the tent and the other one of the roof of the tent. There is evidence of me walking around, but I was generally as elusive as Sasquatch.
I could hear all the fun going on all around me, and I sort of enjoyed the half day vicariously listening to everyone talk about the snake they saw at the river, mom coercing Sassy into finding firewood for a fire, Almanac starting dinner and the following gem of a conversation.

(Rustle, rustle, rustle)
Miscellaneous people: What’s that rustling? Is that a bear?!
Almanac (in mom voice): Who’s there!
Sassy: Its just me, Angela. (she was in the bushes looking for firewood)
Teabag: Oh, all bears say that!

And forever more, all bears are named Angela.
Then, additionally, Sassy flushed a couple of robin babies.
One looked sort of like a 20 year old boy refusing to leave home (effectively ready to go, but not yet kicked out) and the other one had the crazy baby robin feathers and not quite ready for prime time.

Mom:Its a fledgling.
[I couldn’t ID the voice]: looks like a baby.
Mom: its a fledgling.
[I couldn’t ID the voice]: a what?
Mom:A FLEDGLING.
(I could hear the “whatever” in the silence.)

I emerged briefly for dinner, and while it tasted fine, it was black beans and rice, and my throat was seriously trying to kill me for eating this. I barely managed to swallow the little I had and keep it down. That was an unpleasant meal. I wanted more of the chicken soup.
I took more drugs and went back into the tent.
After they started a fire (I could hear mom grousing about being talked out of packing marshmallows – “But they are light!” she grumped.) and a game with the group of “2 truths and a lie” I went to sleep.
There had been a brief discussion about my continuing the next day and we decided to to let the weather decide. I had reiterated that I wasn’t quitting, and that short of a thunderstorm, I would go until they told me I couldn’t. There was one last place I could hike out at Massie Gap and we’d see how that went.
Jeebus what a horrible night.
I dreamed that they kicked me out, I dreamed that they magically found a horse trail that I was able to skirt the ridge, I was half mourning Rhododendron Gap that I had built up in my head as a magical fairy place (must have been all the drugs, I’m not usually sentimental over bushes.)…
I’m sure that this was brought on by the sudafed/tylenol cocktail that I had been pushing trying to make myself somewhat less comatose, but the sentiment remained.
And then it started to rain.

Continue reading AT:TUE →

6/11
We got up medium early. I was not the first one up today; I was starting to be really tired… of course, it still didn’t register that I was this tired.
I was stuffed up though and I started taking a serious amount of Sudafed trying to clear out my sinuses.
I’m glad I bought a bunch of it before I left (and a side note to the buttmunch who decided to pass the legislation limiting the only sinus medicine that works on me; I hereby curse you to the hell where you can’t breathe unless you take Sudafed incessantly. Rules of three don’t apply here because I am already living it. Feh.) because I was desperate to not let it get into my lungs. Once it got there, I’d be more useless than I already am.
So, I put the roll of toilet paper (sans center cardboard in a ziploc) into my pocket for easy access and got my stuff together in my pack.
Breakfast was put out, but as I’m not typically a breakfast eater, I only had a bit of tea and a few sliced strawberries. I wasn’t terribly hungry.
There were some last minute additions to a bunch of folks’ packs, namely rain covers. We had brought several extra garbage bags (of the forceflex ilk for sturdiness) and mom stayed with that (it suited her theme-she had gotten her pack for $12 at the used gear sale at REI- well, add in a new clip for the closure (about $1.50) and thread for sewing the strap where it was coming loose-so ‘free’ fit right in) and I went over and succumbed to the siren’s song of a pack cover at MRO.
All hail the Osprey XL.
I vote it the best $40 I have spent, but more on that later.
Two vans loaded us up to take us to the trail head at Fox Creek.
Packrat was our driver (he is pictured in the book “A Walk for Sunshine“) and he regaled us with tales from the trail of his own. He’s been a ridegrunner, helped people out from the trail when they were hurt (carried their packs out then went back and carried *them* out), in short a dear man who was entertaining the whole drive up.
We arrived at Fox Creek and while we were there (adjusting packs, adjusting hiking pole lengths, etc) out popped a hiker from the trail.
Hikers and other hikers say hello and talk. Its what you do on the trail, there’s a nice community and an immediate sense of solidarity between people out there. I like it.
He talked about the weather, the fact that his shoes were disintegrating and Packrat offered to take him into town, but he declined the offer and said he’d survive until he saw his dad…the next week. Heh. I hope things went ok for him. I sensed a great deal of duct tape in his future.
We took a ‘before’ shot of the group-12 of them to be exact-one with every camera in the group– and then set off about 12:30p.
We started moving uphill immediately. I wasn’t terribly steep, but it is uphill. Combine my snot levels and the fact that even on a good day I am slow on the uphills, I decided to let the speed demons move on ahead and I stayed back with one of the guides playing ‘sweep’ that day. (I’m sort of nostalgic about that term as it was one of the positions I played in field hockey in high school.)
Now, I have an annoying tendency to try to walk the same speed in every situation. Uphill, downhill, level, in bad shoes, etc. My internal marching song is something like a theme song to a 50’s tv show (nothing in particular, and no, I won’t sing it for you) with “Mr. Potato Head. Mr Potato Heeee-aaad.” being the lyrics.
And of course, it kicked my ass.
Lack of oxygen is un-fun.
I started to seriously lag behind the group, and while Almanac was exceedingly kind about the whole situation, I was not pleased with myself.
Our first break was Old Orchard Shelter (elev. 4050′).
You will be pleased to know that on a trail, which by the way is the most un-wheelchair-accessible trail I have ever seen, that the government has seen fit to make the privy there 503c compliant. 3 feet wide, handles for balance and fully wheelchair accessible.
Your tax dollars well spent.
The group stopped for lunch at Pine Mountain… and by the group, I don’t mean me. I was behind at that point. By the time I slogged up there, they were almost done. I wasn’t worried about me eating, I wasn’t hungry-a precursor of things to come, I suppose- but I didn’t want Almanac to give up her lunch/rest time just because she was stuck with me.
Frankly, I’d almost prefer to make breaks very short and slightly more frequent. Long sit downs make me creaky and cold. Not to mention the whole ‘take off your shoes’ thing. I suppose folks who wear GoreTex need to let their feet breathe. But I wear ventilated shoes and smartwool socks to prevent my feet from getting too hot in the first place. (I really expected my feet to be more of a problem actually. I’m ecstatic they weren’t). My other paranoia was my knees. I wore the knee brace on my left knee the first day, it had twinged a few days previously, so I thought I’d head that off at the pass… especially since we were climbing so much.
In fact, I think my broken knees are ‘broken’. My former super power of being a walking barometer has failed me repeatedly over the last week. In WV, I couldn’t feel the impending storms, later on when it was about to pour- I got nothin’.
Not even a tweak. Sigh and yay at the same time. Only took me 20 years of work to get them back into some decent shape.
The day was almost all uphill: Fox Creek to Old Orchard Shelter then to Pine Mountain; save the final stretch to The Scales (our sleeping point that night) and that was rolling trail… and I was lagging behind the group in larger and larger amounts.
I’d try to make up for being slow then lose my breath and have to stop.
I was distinctly unhappy, but definitely determined not to whine about it. I felt like death, I couldn’t breathe (and if I breathed too deeply, then I would start to cough) and I felt guilty as hell that Almanac, who was sweep, had to slow her own pace to match my snail’s pace.
From Pine Mountain, I was able to recoup a bit of the time that I lost on the uphills. It was rolling trail which meant I’d go super slowly on the uphill bits and haul ass on the downhills.
I made it to The Scales not as far behind as I’d been all day, dropped my pack, sat for a minute then helped mom put up the tent.

Part I of the Hollywood shoe saga:Hollywood was having trouble with her hiking boots, apparently I missed the sole falling off of one of her boots during the day’s hike. I donated a crapload of Gorilla tape (this stuff is the best… skip the normal duct tap and get this stuff.) We taped it as best we could and she trounced off with her sole more intact… for a while. I really like Hollywood, she is an exceptionally cool person.

The Scales are a meadow near the Grayson Highlands park. It was named for the times that the cow folk would herd all the loose bovines into the area, weigh them and then sell them off.
Its a VERY nice place to camp. No great inclines, privy (which you come to recognize as one of life’s great luxuries on the trail) and normally you would have water available to filter. We made due with our remaining water in the camelbaks and a gallon from the park keeper for our appetizer, a concoction of chicken soup mix/chicken bouillon/miso soup mix that I came to look forward to each night. There’s wisdom in the saltiness of it to replace all the stuff you lose sweating on the trail (and that was part of the danger for me, if I didn’t eat and just drank water I could suffer from hyponatremia but the appetizer worked its salty magic each night.
Heh heh. That sounds dirty, doesn’t it?
Hi, I am 12.)
Southern Virginia had been experiencing drought conditions and we had to walk about 3/4 of a mile or so down a road to find some running water larger than a mud puddle. It took us about 45 minutes to fill all the camelbaks (and I will be referring to any water system as such by that name, kinda like I call everything that I blow my nose on a ‘kleenex’. All you copyright lawyers can just chill.) and to get the group water bucket full then haul it all the way back up the hill.
Dinner was set up, a culinary masterpiece of the backpacking variety, that I summarily skipped due to the tomato content (oh my ulcer, she no like the tomatoes, but she loved the chicken soup). I put an unmeasured amount of cheesy potato mixings in the dregs of my soup with some more hot water and some mushrooms and had a good meal. It turned out more like potato soup, but that was fine by me as well.
I’m sure some people will look at this week and freak out over my food situation. It was actually a pretty good food set. I wasn’t hungry, but I still ate some, my stomach didn’t hurt due to food (it would due to stress later on in the week) and as far as my stomach went, it was a pretty good week. So drop it.
I slept pretty well that night. We’d been warned that there might be wild ponies wandering around nibbling on tents and generally wreaking pony havoc (and then I thought, “well, hell, mom is going to sit out all night trying to see the ponies, isn’t she?” because mom is a horse freak of the biggest variety.) but no ponies. Well, actually I think we saw one off in the distance up the hill to the west, but it was subject of debate.
I think I scared them away with my snorking. I took more sudafed before I went to bed as well as raiding mom’s Tylenol (mine seems not to have made it into the pack-ye gods. THAT will NEVER EVER happen again.) to quell the shrieking of my muscles… My calves were a tiny bit sore, my quads weren’t bad, my knees were fine… but my hips (the connect-y part between where my hip bone is to the top of my quad – brownie points if you can find it and name it (Eden? Hawk?)… I didn’t after a cursory Googling/Wikipedia-ing) screamed every time I moved and when I sleep in a sleeping bag, I move a lot trying to get comfy.
Despite all that, I slept ok.

The rest of this entry is classified as TMI… read at your own risk…
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