Screw Those Guys

Today is Tuesday, April 23, and at 8:18 p.m., I'm already in my tent for the night. No surprise there. I'm at the Clyde Smith shelter at mile marker 370.7. Over the past seven days, I've hiked just over 95 miles, which is definitely a high mark for me thus far.

This morning, I woke up at the Beauty Spot. Yesterday, I started the day not knowing where I was going to wind up, and I ended up finding something very special. Today was more about just getting from point A to point B.

Tomorrow, I’m heading up to Roan Mountain, which is a 6,000 footer, so my goal today was to position myself to not have a huge day tomorrow. I know there are going to be some big climbs. So my mileage for today was 15, but I didn't go over any remarkable mountains or anything like that. It was kind of a commute, almost.

I left late this morning, at around 9 o'clock. Part of that was because it was freezing, so I was delaying the inevitable. But also, it was just so nice to be up there. And I also left late because I called my dad to wish him a happy birthday.

Once I got going, it was just down, up, you know, whatever. The next peak, Unaka Mountain, was pretty interesting because it was maybe a little bit higher in elevation than where I’d stayed the night before, but unlike Beauty Spot, which is a grassy bald, Unaka has a dense spruce forest on the peak, which is fairly unusual for around here. So that was pretty interesting, and it was just nice and cool and fresh up on the peak after a tough climb.

At about mile six, I stopped at a shelter for a snack and met a guy named Hopeful. He was hiking south because he’d had to get off the trail for a few days — I think he’d hurt his knee or something — and he was just sort of testing it out. Normally, he's hiking northbound. This is actually his second year in a row hiking. Two fairly mean-spirited people gave him his trail name last year. When he first started the trail, he was over 300 pounds and not in particularly good shape, and when he said he was going to hike the whole AT, these people said, “Well, that's hopeful.”

And he adopted it as his name, so good for him, and he did make it. So screw those guys. And I was talking to Hopeful for a little bit, and I was just like, “Geez, it's been, you know, 360-plus miles at this point. And I feel like I still don't have my trail legs.”

And he's was like, “Don't worry. I didn't have my trail legs by this time last year, either. By the time you get into Virginia, you'll have them.” That was really nice to hear, and I enjoyed talking to him. I really admired his positive attitude. So, go, Hopeful!

At the shelter, I caught up with Coffee and Bodacious. We seem to have been keeping roughly the same schedule, but I guess that won’t be the case for much longer. They're planning on doing a huge day tomorrow, so I might lose sight of them. But it's been nice hiking with them for a little bit.

And then, the next nine miles were PUDS, which is an acronym for “pointless ups and downs.” Today was just full of PUDS. Eventually, I made it to Clyde Smith shelter, and a bunch of other hikers were already there, several of whom were the guys I’d talked to on the porch of Uncle Johnny's hostel.

They’re all big mileage guys, and they’re fast, too. A few days ago, I mentioned someone who’d done 16 miles in four hours (compared to my nine), and I now know his name is Cats. Earlier in the day, he’d whistled by me on the trail and just disappeared in a matter of seconds. I like Cats. He’s named after the animal, because he’s constantly in search of trail cats — or really, any cats of any kind. He just loves cats. So, good for Cats!

I cooked up some ramen and added this high-protein chicken broth powder to it that S. had found, just to bump up the protein. [Wife note: It’s also anti-inflammatory and good for the immune system.] And I was wanting salt and carbs after sweating so much today. I feel pretty good about having done 95 miles over the past seven days. But most of the people at the shelter tonight did somewhere between 20 and 26 miles today and don't seem to think that’s a very big deal.

If I’d done 26 miles, I would probably still be out there hiking and would end up needing to be taken away in a Medivac for exhaustion. So, I guess mileage is a relative thing, and everyone's got to hike their own hike. But it's interesting to see all the different approaches to the trail.