100 Miles and Phantom Balloon Animals
Well, today is Friday, March 29, and I’m currently at Rock Gap Shelter at mile 105.8. I'll get to that milestone in a minute, but I skipped the 28th when I was at Carter Gap Shelter, so I want to backtrack to that first. I pulled into camp that evening, and the temperature was dropping really quickly, and everyone was scurrying to get their various tasks done. So I got into my tent and talked to S. for a little bit, and then I was going to do my recording.
The next thing I knew, it was almost 10 o'clock p.m., and I had completely passed out. So we'll do a little bit of a two-for-one here. When I woke up on the morning of the 28th at Muskrat Creek Shelter, it was again cold and very windy. In general, not overly conducive to a nice early start. But I managed to get myself together and hit the trail. The day’s hike didn’t end up being anything overly noteworthy. There was one point where I went over Standing Indian Mountain, which is about 5,400 feet, and I believe that’s the first time on the trail that I've hit a mile high in elevation.
[Wife note: A friend suggested this cool interactive AT map if you ever want to follow along or check out any specific areas.]
Someone kindly added a leaf to make bottle filling easier.
This is "Dog. " Trail name “Cujo.” She's a therapy dog who’s hiking with her person.
It just was a long day, about 12.5 miles by the time I pulled into camp. S. keeps telling me that people are interested in what I’m eating, so maybe in a future post, I’ll go through some stuff that I tend to gobble down during the day, just to keep myself going. But for dinner last night, I had a backpacking meal — Three Bean Chili Mac, which is exactly what it sounds like. It was fabulous. I’ll definitely be purchasing that again sometime.
Overnight, it was really freaking cold. I guess I might be sounding a bit like a broken record here, but that’s the truth. Someone said it dipped into the 20s, which doesn’t make for a great night's sleep, but you take what you can get.
So today was going to be a big day, because I was going to hit the 100-mile mark. The first 4.5 miles were fairly straightforward, and then I pulled into Mooney Gap to have some water and get some calories in, because the next two miles were going to be basically straight up.
It was a really nice part of the trail, with this little babbling brook, and I was just relaxing there a bit, enjoying the wilderness, when this guy comes along and decides to plan out his entire future on his phone with the speaker volume at 11. He was this bombastic, highly extroverted dude who I don't think realized how much of a racket he was making. So I suppose I couldn’t blame him, but at the same time, I was getting so annoyed that I was about ready to get up and kick the phone out of his hand. But I managed to keep my mouth shut, which turned out to be a good thing.
He got back on the trail before I did, and not far past where we’d been, I came to a junction in the trail. And I was having a hard time figuring out which one was the AT and which one was the side trail. It wasn't very well marked. [Wife note: Good thing the Vision trail name didn’t stick.] All of a sudden, I heard him yell down to me to let me know which way to go, so I was feeling pretty relieved that I hadn't confronted him about his max-volume phone usage.
The next two miles were super steep. I really had to work hard for it. But at the peak of Albert Mountain, there’s this fire tower that happens to denote the 100-mile mark. And the view was fantastic. I lucked out with the weather. So I spent a little time up there before moving on, and from there, it was a fairly easy six miles into Rock Gap campsite.
As I was cruising through the woods, it was just this beautiful path, not very rocky and very smooth. The leaves haven't really bloomed yet, so you can see a lot through the forest. It reminded me of Sherwood Forest, so nice and serene. Really peaceful.
And then my pack started squeaking.
It sounded like a clown making balloon animals — that type of squeaking. And it immediately started to drive me insane. I kept telling myself, Only a little ways more, and you’ll get to the campsite, and you can fix it. Just hang in there. But eventually, I’d had enough. I ripped off my pack, threw it down, and started rifling through it to try to figure out what was making the infernal noise.
I did this three times, only to realize that the squeaking was coming from the frame of my pack. So I'm not really sure how to fix that. I might have realized today that I'm not all that enamored with my backpack. So far, all my other equipment seems to be doing fine, but you know, the one that’s kind of the most important is letting me down a little bit.
Anyway, made it to Rock Gap, set up my tent, did all my chores, and now I'm about to make some ramen with protein powder and tuna for dinner. Tomorrow should be a pretty short walk over to Winding Stair Gap, where I'll pick up some kind of a shuttle (not sure what that will be yet) and head into Franklin, NC, for a resupply. I'm pretty much out of food. I'll spend the night in Franklin, and I’m really hoping to hit the Lazy Hiker, which is a microbrewery that’s not far from where I'm staying.
