Looking Canadian

I’m at the Abingdon Gap Shelter right now (April 29) at about mile 460. Over the past seven hiking days, I've hiked just over 105 miles. That comes out to about 15 miles per day, and when I started out back in March, the thought of a single 15-mile day was pretty foreign to me, let alone seven of them. So that feels like a big milestone to me. My body is definitely feeling the wear of it, though. This is not necessarily a sustainable pace, but as I’ve said a few times now, I want to get to Damascus by the 30th, so I’ve been motivated to push a bit.

I’ll definitely make it, barring any unforeseen impediments, because it's only 10 miles down the trail at this point, and I can do that tomorrow. It’s very important to me to already be in Damascus when S. gets there. If I were further back on the trail, we could have arranged a pickup spot somewhere outside of town, but I’ve been using her visit as an excuse to try to get through some extra miles.

Just as a comparison, I went back and checked, and the first week I was on the AT, I did about 65 miles. I don't think that I'll keep doing 105-mile weeks going forward, but the terrain does level off a little bit further north in Virginia, so that could become much more feasible. For now, though, let's just call it a high water mark.

Also for perspective, the place I stayed at a week ago and where I am today are at about the same elevation. But in between them, there was 24,000 feet of descent and 24,000 feet of ascent. That's a lot of climbing and descending. My feet, knees, back, etc. are definitely ready for a day off on May 1, which will be great.

I started out this morning at Iron Mountain Shelter. Yesterday was quite warm, and the forecast was saying that today was supposed to be the same temperature as yesterday, so I wanted to get an early start. I left camp at about 7:30, when it was still nice and cool, and luckily, the first eight miles were pretty easy, relative to the day before. The temperature hadn't really risen too much, either.

So, I got through those quick eight miles and came to a shelter. It was actually a little bit early for lunch, but there was a picnic table there and water and all that, and Beans was there, too, as well as a guy named Ziploc. Ziploc is an older retired gentleman. He got his trail name because he filled up a Ziploc bag with oatmeal and water and went to shake it. And it turned out that he hadn't closed the bag, so he shook oatmeal everywhere. [Wife note: I can’t help but giggle every time I read that.]

We all had some lunch and filled up our water bottles and all that stuff. The day was starting to get noticeably warmer, so I decided that I’d take sort of a slower approach to the rest of the day’s hike than either Beans or Ziploc. So when they headed out, I kind of hung back a bit. Not that we generally hike “together,” anyway, but sometimes you wind up in a cluster, and you sort of leapfrog each other throughout the day.

About four miles later, I came to a road crossing, and there was a hiker sitting there named Maple Leaf. He’s a nice young guy from Ohio. The first time I met him, he told me he’d gotten his trail name because people kept thinking he was Canadian. When I asked why, he said he was told that he “looks” like he’s from Canada.

I was like, “ What? I don’t see that at all. You don’t look particularly Canadian to me.” And he said, in this half-exasperated/half-relieved way, “Thank you!”

Anyway, this stretch of road tends to attract a lot of people on motorcycles, I guess, and Maple Leaf really likes motorcycles. So we sat there for a little while, while I cooled down and he talked about motorcycles. It was kind of fun. I guess he eventually got his fill of motorcycles, because he took off again, but I spent a few extra minutes there just to make sure I got my body temperature down as much as possible first. And then I was off, too.

The final four miles of the day were pretty uneventful, though there was much more climbing than in the previous 12 miles. And it happened to be during the hottest part of the day, so I got a little sweaty. Nothing compared to yesterday, though, which was kind of a nightmare.

Eventually, I rolled into Abington Gap, and unfortunately, the water source for the shelter is quite far away. This seems to be the norm in this section of the AT. This one is close to a quarter mile away and basically straight downhill. Not necessarily what you want to do after hiking 16 miles, but you know, you kind of need water. So you do it anyway.

I ate dinner, hung my bear bag, and talked for a little bit with the other hikers here, but then the black flies started to swarm, so we all retreated to our tents. Should be a pretty quiet night. I cannot wait to get up and hike down to Damascus tomorrow.