Off We Go

I woke up this morning (September 13) at Shaw’s Hiker Hostel, and fortunately, I got much better sleep last night than I did the night before. I also got another great breakfast. One of the disadvantages of staying at a hostel, though — and it's totally something worth dealing with — is that a lot of times, you don't get the earliest start. Since you’re kind of dependent on other people’s schedules, you definitely can’t begin your day as early as you can when you’re on the trail at a campsite and can just get going as soon as you’re packed up.

I had planned to hike 15 miles today, and not really knowing what the 100 Mile Wilderness had in store made starting a little on the late side a bit stressful. But it was fine. After breakfast, I settled up and caught the first shuttle to the trailhead at about 8:15. It was a quick ride back to the trail, and one of the owners of Shaw's, named Poet, drove us there.

Poet hiked the AT in 2008, I think, and after we’d arrived and unloaded our packs, he gave us a really nice pep talk about enjoying the moment and about how, you know, this is the last bit of this big adventure and we should soak it all up. It was really nice of him to do that, and his words were clearly very heartfelt. [Wife note: Thank you to Carolina Sunshine for the recording!]

In the van, there were a couple of section hikers we didn't really know, plus Salamander, Carolina Sunshine, Bouge, and a woman named Sparkle — who’s just a crazy good hiker. There was also some guy I’d never seen before, and as soon as we got out, he took off hiking, and we never saw him again.

Pretty much right away, Sparkle and Bouge just hit the trail, running. I kind of stayed with Salamander and Carolina Sunshine for the day, which was nice.

The big story of the day was that we needed to ford three rivers. And in past seasons, crossing some of these rivers has been a pretty major event and even dangerous. But fortunately, this year — for better or worse — it's been pretty dry, so the river levels haven't been all that high. We got to the first ford and were able to rock hop it.

The second ford, we definitely weren’t able to do that, though, so all of us who had sandals took off our hiking shoes and put them on instead. A little earlier, we’d bumped into a group of hikers who were coming south and had just crossed the river, and they gave us some good info on where the shallow areas were.

When we hit the river, Carolina Sunshine went first. She was ready and just charged ahead of us into the water. Sparkle was next. She wasn't wearing any shoes at all, because she didn't have any sandals and didn't want to get her hiking shoes wet. Bouge and Salamander and I crossed behind Sparkle. It was rather slowgoing, but maybe that was a good thing, because moving quickly when you’re trying to ford a river is a good formula for slipping and falling into the water.

After we’d all made it across, we stopped for a bit to have lunch. And by the time we were done eating, Munich Mule had shown up. Not Yet and Hootie showed up soon after that — they’d all been on the second shuttle from Shaw's this morning — so we were able to give them some guidance on crossing.

Munich Mule

I continued hiking with Carolina Sunshine and Salamander after lunch. There was a third river we needed to ford, but again, the water levels were so low, we could easily rock hop it. Over the course of the 100 Mile Wilderness, there are supposedly five river fords. We did three of them today, and two were super easy. So, I’d say that’s a good beginning.

After the third quote-unquote ford, I was feeling pretty tired, and we were coming up on the Long Pond shelter. It was about 6 o'clock, so when I pulled into the campsite, I just found a tent spot and considered that the end of my hiking day.

These days, the sun goes down at around 7 o’clock, which means you don't have a ton of time for all your camp chores if you get in at 6. If you don’t want to do them in the dark, I mean. I set up my tent and had a little food, and now I’m going to call it a night. It’s just before 8 o'clock. So that was day one in the 100 mile Wilderness. Pretty simple, and we had beautiful weather. We're hoping for the same tomorrow, but we'll see.