Smile for the Camera
It’s Tuesday, June 18th, and I'm in Harpers Ferry right now, in a very nice Airbnb with S. I woke up at the David Lesser shelter, about 9 miles south of here, so I obviously didn't have a huge day. S. and I had made plans to meet at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy headquarters around 12:30, and I was up and out of the campsite by around 7:30, so I was running a little bit of ahead of schedule.
So I found a rock and had a seat about midway and called my dad. He had been in Canada the previous 10 or 11 days, visiting family and friends, and I wanted to catch up a bit and hear how his trip went. After that, I made my way down into the town of Harpers Ferry. The AT actually goes directly through the town, but that bit of the trail is after you pass by the ATC. So I won’t see that part until I get back on the trail.
I didn’t want to go to the ATC without S., so I spent some time just hanging out in the shade in a park close by. There was a pretty nice breeze there, and it was super hot today. When S. called to let me know she’d made it to town, I headed over to the ATC and got there just as she was pulling into a parking space. So, good timing.
Going to the ATC as a thru-hiker was a really fun experience. The volunteers there are all very nice, and they take your picture on the front porch of the center and print it out. Then, you add some information to the front and back of it, and they add it to this huge photo album with photos of every hiker that’s passed through so far. You can also go through the albums for past years, which they keep on a side table.
They also give you a number to show, I guess, your “place” among the thru-hikers for the year. When I registered at Amicalola Falls State Park, I was hiker 1,261. At the ATC in Harpers Ferry, I was number 723. But actually, there's very little you can glean from that. There were plenty of people who started the trail after me but got to Harpers Ferry before me.
So the only thing you can kind of conclude is that a lot of people have probably dropped out, which is typical. I think the general theory is that about 25% quit — or get off the trail for some kind of reason — by the time they get to Neels Gap, which is about four or five days in, for most people. And then supposedly, 50% have quit before they get to the ATC here.
Anyway, S. and I spent maybe 5 or 10 minutes at the ATC, looking through the photo albums and trying to find people that I knew and that S. had either been following on YouTube or met while doing Trail Magic, but we couldn't really spend much time, because Thistle was in the car and it was probably in the 90s.
It was too early to check into the Airbnb, so naturally, we headed straight to the nearest brewery that allowed dogs, which turned out to be Harpers Ferry Brewing. I got their pilsner, and S. got their Kolsch, and we ordered a pizza. After that, we decided to make a grocery run to grab a few things. We wanted to be able to check in to the Airbnb and just be done for the evening and not have to go anywhere.
Finally, we got into the Airbnb and basked in the delightful air conditioning. It was actually verging on Arctic, which is saying a lot, given my preference for cold weather, but I think I've started to get conditioned to much warmer temperatures now that I've been outside for so long. I’m pretty excited to be with S. and Thistle again and just have a couple days of downtime.
