That’s My Cue

So this is May 27th, which I believe is Memorial Day Monday. I woke up today on a ridge along the Blue Ridge Parkway. And as you might recall from yesterday's post, there was a pretty large storm that swept through at about 8 o'clock last night. I was lucky enough to not have any trees fall on me or my tent, but the rain was definitely pretty severe at times. Unfortunately, my patch job didn’t hold up as well as I’d hoped. When I woke up in the morning, I wasn’t too happy to see that water had accumulated at the bottom of my tent.

So the patch job apparently has its limits. Thankfully, I guess, my tent was kind of pitched, so that my feet were lower than my head. Normally, this isn’t great, because I end up slipping down all night and have to keep readjusting, which isn’t terribly helpful as far as getting a good night’s sleep. And when that's the case — when I’m on an angle like that — I usually put my backpack down by my feet, to kind of act as a barrier to keep me from sliding so much into the edge of the tent. So the biggest casualty this morning was my backpack, which was just sitting in a pool of water.

To be fair, my backpack getting wet is not a terribly unique situation, because I sweat all the time. So I'm generally used to wearing a wet backpack. Since I was up on the Blue Ridge, I had good enough cell service to be able to check the radar, and when I did, I could see that yet another system was barreling toward me — well, not me in particular, but barreling toward the area I was in. So I knew I needed to get hustling. I skipped breakfast and just packed up and got going shortly past 7 o'clock.

After just a few minutes, as I was walking up the trail, I heard some people talking, and I was interested in checking in with them to see how they’d fared during the storm. Lo and behold, it was Maple Leaf, Asstronaut, and Heavy. I continue to cross paths with these guys, which is awesome. They're really nice guys and fun and have interesting things to say. As for how they fared last night, Asstronaut sleeps in a hammock at night, rather than a tent, and at one point, the storm got so intense that he had to get into Maple Leaf’s tent with him.

The last time I saw those guys was right before I went into Bland, which was around mile 590. So, close to 200 miles. Turns out they’d been tenting just about a half mile up the trail from me last night. We continued on and hiked together for a little bit. After maybe six miles — it was pretty easy ridge walking — we stopped at a shelter. It had started raining on us by then, but thankfully, it wasn’t too bad. While those guys had some snacks, I finally ate some breakfast, followed by an apple pie. At my last resupply, I decided to give fruit pies a shot, even though they’re a little on the heavy side, since they seemed like they’d be less dry than a lot of the bars and such I’ve been eating. And I’m so glad I did. They’re delicious and majorly calorie laden. Win-win.

The guys were making plans to go to a campsite that was off the trail a little ways and invited me to join them. Apparently, the place had burgers and beers, and although that sounded like a delightful distraction, my Spidey Sense told me those guys wouldn’t be getting get back on the trail afterward as they were thinking, and I wanted to make up some more miles. I’m sure I’ll bump into them at some point again, so we parted ways when they got off the trail, and I continued on another few miles.

 Next up on the trail was the biggest climb of the day, followed of course by a big descent, and I eventually wound up at the Bryant Ridge Shelter at around 3:30, which was pretty great timing after about 13.5 miles. And the Brian Ridge Shelter is just huge. It's double-decker. It has this beautiful covered porch, and it's a great place to spend the afternoon. It also happens to be at the foot of a massive climb.

So I had the choice of either staying at the Bryant Ridge Shelter and spending the afternoon there, or heading straight up to the next campsite, which was about 3 miles away. So I elected — with some encouragement from S. — to stay put. I took out my food bag, ate a lot of food, and then decided to eat even more. I basically packed as much as I could into myself, because I know tomorrow is going to be quite intense.

Not too long after I got there, this older hiker named Tick Magnet, who was slack packing — I can only assume that he named himself — arrived. He has a YouTube channel, and he kind of interviewed me and another hiker named Snail Mail, who showed up right after him. Snail Mail is a nurse in Boston. [Wife note: It took a lot of digging and sleuthing, but I found it: click here. Rob makes his appearance at 13:35. He’s sitting in the back at the picnic table, so he’s not very obvious at first.]

Tick Magnet didn’t stick around long, and soon after he left, a guy whose trail name is Tree Licker showed up. When I asked him the story behind his name, he just said, “Don’t ask,” so I let that one go. And as the afternoon progressed, more people arrived, including a guy named Lavender, who I’d just seen again with Charlie about a week ago. Lavender, his hiking partner, LOP, and LOP's friend were all doing some slack packing, so they more or less just cruised through Bryant. It was fun seeing them, albeit briefly.

I’d elected to actually spend the night in the shelter, which I don’t normally do, mainly because Bryant Ridge doesn't really have any tent sites. It's sort of built into the side of the hill. And there was plenty of space. So I just kind of set up shop away from the general population.

A lot of younger folks started arriving and setting up camp, and a big discussion started about the latest releases from Beyonce and Taylor Swift. At that point, I had very little to add to the discussion or any real interest in participating. So that was my cue to head to my sleeping pad and put on an episode of the Conan Needs a Friend podcast. Soon, I’ll attempt to get some sleep. I want to get as much rest as I can for tomorrow.