Squatch Rocks
Okay, so it’s 6:45 on Sunday, May 18th, and Charlie and I are in our tents at the Niday Shelter at mile 688 on the Appalachian Trail. It's raining — again — and I have no cell service, and I'm very annoyed by that.
It was a pretty long day, and I put my friend Charlie through the ringer a bit. We did about 12.6 miles. But let me back up to the beginning of the day. We woke up this morning at the Laurel Creek Shelter after a very rainy night, and fortunately, the rain had subsided by the time we woke up, but nonetheless, everything was still pretty wet.
We were on the trail by about 7:15, and after a short walk, we came to some nice farm pastures with lots of cows and old barns and things like that. And when we went back into the woods, we saw the Keffer Oak, which is apparently the second largest oak tree on the Appalachian Trail. I think it’s the largest one on the southern portion of the AT. And it’s believed to be more than 300 years old. Pretty impressive.
After that, we had a very difficult climb up Bruiser's Knob, so Charlie got a little baptism by fire with a nice steep and fairly lengthy hike up the side of the hill. At the top, there are what I've since learned the Bruiser's Cairns, which are these rather large rock piles. Apparently, farmers in the area created them a long time ago. We were guessing that maybe the farmers thought that this was all arable land and they just needed to clear all the rocks out of the way, so they made nice piles out of them. Our other theory, which we think is more plausible, is that Sasquatch lives up there and he — or she — creates these piles as a hobby. So, one or the other.
So we walked along Bruiser’s Knob for a while. We had to do some pretty serious rock traversing. The ridge got narrow and really rocky, which was kind of fun for a little while but then got fairly tiring. The views were nice from up there, though. Not long after, we crossed the Eastern Continental Divide, which I didn't even know was a thing, but we saw a sign pointing to the Gulf of Mexico in one direction and the Atlantic Ocean in the other. I’m assuming that that means that rivers on one side of the divide flow into the Gulf of Mexico, and rivers on the other side flow into the Atlantic.
The trail then headed pretty steeply downhill to the campsite, and again, we did 12.6 miles today, so kudos to Charlie for managing that on just his second day and with a full pack. We were sort of hustling to get to the shelter as quickly as we could, because we started hearing thunder off in the distance. Fortunately, we made it with enough time to set up our tents and eat dinner — albeit fairly quickly — before the rain started.
There are some other hikers here, too. One guy, whose trail name is Lavender, I met literally on day three. We both stayed at the Mountain Crossings Hostel at Neel Gap. I’d seen him sort of from a distance maybe one or two other times, but it was kind of funny that we both kind of looked at each other when he passed us on the trail, and then we ended up meeting here at the shelter. It's good to see him.
There’s also a woman here who goes by LOP — for “life of the party” — and her friend is joining her on the trail for a little while, similar to the way Charlie’s joining me. So that was fun, talking to them.
And this guy named Sings with the Pines showed up at the campsite a little bit ago. He was actually at Long Creek last night, too. He kind of looks like he finished his shift at Medieval Times and then decided to hike the trail and went straight there. He wears this burlappy tan shirt that’s roughly sewn, and he’s got a sort of kilt on, but it has a sash that goes over one shoulder. And that's his hiking outfit. So he's an interesting guy, from New York City. Not really sure what his story is, though. When he showed up, it was just starting to rain, so I didn't get a chance to talk to him much.
We're going to try to do about 10 miles tomorrow, and then, the next day, we should be able to hit Dragon's Tooth. Hopefully, the weather will start cooperating!
