Homeward Bound

Today is June 1st, which is Saturday, I believe. It’s hard to even know what day it is anymore. I woke up this morning at the Seeley-Woodworth Shelter, and I think I might have had it all to myself. I saw a couple hikers come into the campsite area late, but I never saw them put up their tent, so it's quite possible that I was there alone all night.

I was excited to get going this morning, because I was going to be meeting S. and heading home for a bit. And as I think I explained in an earlier post, I had initially planned to reach the pickup spot on the 2nd, but I managed to do some extra miles here and there, so I was able to get home a night earlier. That's a win for me. I hope it's a win for S., too.  

I woke up and tried my first backpacker breakfast, which was scrambled eggs with peppers and onions and potatoes. Sounded good, but it was actually pretty flavorless. At least it had a lot of calories and a lot of protein, so it was a good thing in the end. I left camp at about 7:30. And under normal circumstances, I probably would have been able to leave by about 7:00, but the prep time for that dehydrated meal was a lot longer than what my usual breakfast has required lately. So it delayed me a bit. But that's okay.

The first part of my day was getting to The Priest shelter. It was a nice day, and the first six and a half miles were pretty smooth. Fortunately, it was a lot of ridge walking. There were definitely some climbs, but nothing too serious, and I actually felt really good. And because the weather was so lovely, I decided to take the small blue blaze trail off the AT to go up to Spy Rock. I dumped my pack on the side of the trail and went up, and it was totally worth the extra time and effort. It was just absolutely gorgeous, with 360-degree views. So that was a good detour.

I enjoyed that for a while and then retrieved my pack and continued on. There's a decent amount of signage around the trail in that area because a lot of people like to day hike up to Spy Rock and to The Priest. So there are lots of mile markers letting you know how far you have to go to get to this spot or the other, which you don’t typically see on the trail. The climb to get to The Priest shelter was fairly aggressive. I felt really strong already, but the benefit of knowing you’re about to have a zero day or two is that you feel okay kind of pushing yourself and burning a little extra gas, because you’re going to be able to really rest afterward. So I did over 500 feet of elevation gain over a one-mile stretch, which is decent, and I did it in under a half hour, which is very fast for me.

When I got to The Priest shelter, I saw that Sings with the Pines was there, which was great. I hadn't seen him since I was hiking with Charlie, I think it was the first or second night we were out. So we chatted a bit, but then he headed off again.

So The Priest shelter is just in the shadow of The Priest mountain, which is one of the higher peaks in the area. And the thing about The Priest shelter is that it’s become a tradition now to use the logbook there as a kind of confessional. People own up to their “hiker sins,” and it’s generally things like “I didn't dig a deep enough cathole,” or “I dropped a wet wipe into the privy,” or “I stole someone's tuna packet when they weren't looking.” They tend to be fairly benign, though some seem a bit far-fetched. But it was still funny to read through. [Wife note: Hiker names have been redacted to maintain anonymity.]

S. had asked me to look for entries by some of the people she follows on YouTube, some of whom are thru-hiking this year and some who did it last year. Unfortunately, the logbook didn't go back far enough for the 2023 hikers, but I was able to find some from this year. Very few people actually sign The Priest logbook, so even though there were a lot of confessions, I didn't see a Trail Name next to the confession all that often, which made it hard to determine who said what. In my entry, I said that I hadn't really committed any trail sins yet but that in a few days, I would be slack packing a very challenging section of the trail.

Eventually, I loaded back up and went up to the peak of The Priest, which turned out to be pretty disappointing, because it's just a forest up there. Not a lot of views. But one of the things The Priest does have is an incredibly steep descent. I still had two miles to go at one point, and my legs were already feeling like Jell-O. I came up on a doe and a fawn on the trail, which gave me an excuse to rest for a bit while I waited for them to move on. I also passed a younger couple who were on the way up, and they were already struggling and kind of complaining about how hard the hike was. They had no idea how far they still had to go, but I didn’t think it was my place to tell them that.

At around 2:30, I’d done about 11.5 miles, and I made it to The Priest parking lot. S. was waiting for me there with Thistle, which was great. She’d brought some things for Trail Magic just in case she saw any other hikers pass through while she was waiting, but unfortunately, there was sort of a lull in the flow. As I was loading my stuff into the back of the car, one other thru-hiker finally appeared, and S. gave him an orange Fanta, but then we just headed out.

When we got home, I knew I was going to have some time to deal with my laundry and pack later, so I didn’t waste much time getting into the shower. When I got out, S. asked if I wanted to go to Decipher for a beer, which is not something I typically object to, but after the previous time I came home, when I wasn't feeling well and beer wasn’t very appealing, she wasn’t sure. But I was feeling good, and she said she had something she wanted to show me, so we headed over.

A couple people we knew were there, so we got pints and went to stand with them and catch up a bit. And after a few minutes, I looked at S. and asked what she’d wanted to show me. She told me to just wait, and I’d see. And about 15 minutes later, Pub Crawl walked through the doors!

It just so happened that Pub Crawl had posted on Facebook a day or so earlier that she was going to be getting off trail for a bit, and S. had commented on the post, saying she should let us know if she was ever in Charlottesville so we could take her around to some breweries. But then Pub Crawl had responded that she was actually in Charlottesville already, visiting a friend, and would be there all weekend. So she and S. arranged to surprise me at Decipher. We had a couple beers and caught up, and it was super fun to see her again.

I hadn't spent a ton of time hiking with Pub Crawl, but I really wish I had. She's a great person. And as I said, she's getting off the trail for a little bit for some family reasons — her sister just had a little girl — but we're sad to see her go, and I hope she’s able to make it back. She said she was thinking about going southbound from Katahdin starting in August. So maybe I'll bump into her along the way if she does.

All in all, it was a great day. Got some good weather. Got to see Spy Rock. Got to hike over The Priest and read some of the confessions in the shelter logbook. And then finished up with a couple beers at Decipher, hanging out with Pub Crawl and some other friends. Not a bad way to kick off a few zeroes at home.