Boots, Fawdie, and DIY Pancakes

Okay. It’s Monday, June 17, and I'm at the David Lesser Memorial shelter, which is about 9 miles south of Harpers Ferry. I felt like it would be a good place to stop for the night, because it's just a short hike into Harpers Ferry tomorrow morning, where I’m going to meet S. I'm really looking forward to that.

Harpers Ferry is where the headquarters of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy are, so many people consider it sort of the symbolic halfway mark of the AT, even though mileage-wise, it's not. It's located at mile 1,026, and the halfway point is closer to 1,100, which is in Pennsylvania somewhere.

Side note for any of you who didn’t already know this, but the length of the AT actually changes from one year to the next, so the midpoint is never going to be one static location. There’s a sign that the ATC moves around to wherever the midway point is for that calendar year, and if I get there, I’ll take a pic of it. This year, the AT is 2,197.4 miles long, so exactly halfway would be 1,098.7 miles.

Anway, I woke up this morning at the Bears Den Hostel, and hostels are definitely a mixed bag in terms of benefit versus cost. The benefits are easy to identify, especially at places like Bears Den. It's this really cool old historic building. You get to hang out with other hikers and people who are passionate about the trail. You get plumbing and a bed and food, etc. One of the downsides, though, is that sleep doesn't come very easily.

Yukon Cornelius

Last night, it was very hot inside the hostel, and on top of that, the bunk room was in a very highly trafficked area. So people kept walking back and forth, even though it was after “quiet hours.” So it can definitely be a challenge sometimes to get a good night's sleep in a hostel, but I think on balance, it's generally worth it, since you don't do it every night.

I got up at about 5:30, because people were already stirring, and I knew I wasn't going to be getting any more sleep. At Bears Den, the hikers sleep downstairs, and that’s where the laundry is and stuff, and the upstairs is more of a residential area. That's also where the kitchen is. So I go up there, and Bears Den has an interesting breakfast approach. Your stay doesn't automatically include breakfast, like it does at some other hostels. You have to add it on. But basically, they just left a box of pancake mix out on the counter, next to a griddle, a bowl, a spatula, and a whisk. You know, kind of Have at it, hikers! So I fixed myself some pancakes and tried to get as many as I could into my stomach before I headed out for the day.

I got on the trail at around 7:30, and I still had about 4.5 miles remaining in the roller coaster. That made for a bit of a tough start to the day, but it wasn't too bad, and thankfully, after the roller coaster, the trail gets significantly flatter and stays that way for probably 200 miles. So it was easier to endure the roller coaster, knowing that I was going to have some pretty mild terrain for the next couple weeks. The main challenge of the roller coaster today was that the weather is starting to get really hot. And steep climbs are, of course, much more difficult when it's hot outside.

The other interesting thing about this section of trail is that it’s sort of bound by Route 50 to the south, and you're just kind of left to your own devices to find a way to get across this four-lane highway without getting run over. You hit the same thing again later, when you get to Route 7.

You pop out of the trail, and you’re facing two lanes of busy highway going in one direction. So you have to just kind of pick your spot and run across to get to the median. And then you have to wait there in the median for a while until you find a good opportunity to run across the other two lanes. In some states, they’re taking measures to build pedestrian bridges above the roads so hikers can cross safely. But I guess in Virginia, they’re just assuming that drivers and hikers will figure out how to avoid each other.

A few miles beyond the end of the roller coaster, I got to the Blackburn Trail Center, which is a popular spot for thru-hikers to stop. The Potomac Appalachian Trail Club actually owns the property, and it's a little house, with a caretaker. It's actually down off the ridge a little bit, and it has electricity and all that, but hikers don't stay in the house. There are some nice camping spots on the property, and hikers can set up their tents there if they want.

I was there at the same time as two other thru-hikers. One is named Boots with the Fur. I had no idea what that meant when he told me, but he said it's from a song. [Wife note: 🙄 It’s the Flo Rida song “Low.” Music-wise, Rob might as well be 75 years old...] And the other was a 20-year-old kid who didn’t have a trail name yet. He started the trail in May, and he’d somehow made it to the Blackburn Center the same time as me. He said he’d managed to do 40 miles in 10 hours. Some of the other hikers were a little bit skeptical about that claim, but that’s what he said. So Boots with the Fur was trying to get him to take the trail name Fawdie. [Wife note: In case that doesn’t immediately translate, that’s pronounced “foh-dee” and is a slang term for a 40 oz beer.]

The three of us had our picture taken by Chris, who is the caretaker, and he’s a super nice guy. S. already knew all about him from the hikers on YouTube that she follows, so it was kind of fun meeting him, knowing that S. has seen him in some videos.

L to R: Max (Fawdie?), Boots with the Fur, Patch (Photo credit: Christopher Marshburn)

Chris, caretaker of the Blackburn Trail Center

We all hung out at the hiker center for a while, and at that point, the weather had gotten very toasty, so I wasn't in any hurry to get back out there. I only had about 3.5 miles to go for the day, so I was in no rush. They give hikers a free soda, and I drank that and had some water and ate some lunch.

Eventually, I headed out and made my way back up to the trail. It had gotten substantially hotter by then, and unfortunately, shade was not nearly as abundant as it had been earlier in the day. So I definitely got too much sun. S. is on me all the time to slather myself in sunscreen, but it’s a pointless battle, really. I just sweat it all off within minutes. Literally. And it gets in my eyes and mouth sometimes. It’s more trouble than it’s worth. And wearing a hat just makes me sweat more. So it’s a challenge I haven’t quite figured out yet.

When I got to the shelter, there was one other guy already here, named Mr. Freeze. And I've come to learn that he is unhoused, so he is choosing to live his life on the trail. It looked like he had a rather large Bible with him, and he was reading that, so I gave him his space.

One thing that’s noteworthy about this shelter is that the water source is a quarter mile away, down a very steep trail. So you have to do a half-mile round trip if you want water — which I did. And I’m glad I made the effort, because it's actually wonderful water.

I'm hoping it will cool down sufficiently this evening for me to get a good night's sleep. I've got 9 miles into Harpers Ferry tomorrow, and it's a pretty easy hike. Most of it's downhill. I'm really looking forward to seeing S. and checking in with the ATC and showing them I've made it this far.