The Trail Provides
Happy Easter, everyone, though you probably won’t be seeing this until a few days after the fact. It's about 7:10 p.m., and I’m at the Wayah Bald shelter, which is at mile 120.6. I did an 11 mile day today, and the shelter is at 4,700 feet. So the views are really nice. I get to see a nice backdrop of the mountains from the trail. Today was really hard. Most of the trail was uphill, and I don't know what the problem was, but just from the get-go, I just didn't have any energy in my legs. You know, I don't know if my bile was the wrong color or I had an imbalance of bodily humors or something.
But I spent the night in a hotel last night, and I got some good food yesterday, and that should have provided me adequate rest and fuel. So I’m not really sure what the issue was. I guess there are going to be days like that. What can you do?
Anyway, I’ll start from the beginning. I took another shower at the hotel this morning, which I probably didn’t need to do, but it’s something I’ll probably do as much as I can, whenever I have access to plumbing. And then I headed to the lobby for some breakfast. There's a hiker here from Bavaria that I've bumped into a few times, and he was at breakfast the same time as me. I could tell he was a little shocked, and maybe more than a little disappointed, at what the Microtel had to offer. If you’ve ever traveled to Europe, and especially Germany, and seen their version of a hotel breakfast, you know that their spreads are incredibly elaborate and generous. Smoked salmon and a range of charcuterie, lots of cheeses and fresh breads, tons of fruit, eggs cooked multiple ways. So it was kind of funny watching him look over the sad display of microwave breakfast burritos and do-it-yourself pancakes and bagels that had clearly just come out of a package. I hope he got enough food in the end.
I had arranged to be picked up by the shuttle that’s run by Three Eagle Outfitters. They generously supply a person to drive hikers around. You have to pay a little bit, of course, but it's a great service. I’d texted the guy the night before, and he picked up me and another thru-hiker and took us back to the trail. This guy's name is Solace — that's his trail name — and he's thru-hiked the AT four times. He's also done a ton of other trails. I don't think he's done the Triple Crown, because I don't think he’s done the Continental Divide Trail, but he's hiked all over Europe. All over Asia. He's heading to Vietnam soon to go hiking there. So this guy has quite a story. He dropped us off at about 9:30, and we hit the trail. It was straight up from there.
Siler Bald
About five miles into the day, it suddenly sounded as though some kind of war had broken out. There was gunfire and automatic weapons and what sounded like small bombs going off. I don't know if there was a military base nearby or something like that. I ran into a day hiker and asked him if he knew what was going on, and he just said, “You know, people just like to fire guns.” So I guess, Easter — God, guns, and glory! It sounded like they had enough firepower to take down a small country. So that disturbed the ambiance of the day a bit.
The day was basically a big uphill, some downhill, and then another big uphill. At the end of the second big uphill, which was almost the end of the day, I’d reached the top of Wayah Bald. I think it's about 5,400 feet, and the Civilian Conservation Corps built a really nice stone observation tower on top of it. It's now a park, and you can drive up there, and a bunch of kind people had set up tables for Trail Magic. So I emerge from the woods after a very steep climb, all sweaty and tired, and somebody hands me a beer. It was fantastic.
So thank you, Trail Magic! What's funny is that for most of the day, while I was trudging along, I’d been thinking, “This is terrible. I can't do this. This is so hard.” And I kept trying to encourage myself, you know, “Just put one foot in front of the other. Just get up the mountain.” And then when I did, I encountered this amazing group of people, and they handed me food, and the view was incredible, and suddenly, I completely forgot how much the previous 10 miles of my life had just completely sucked.
That's sort of the life of the thru-hiker. A lot of people say, “The trail provides.” At that moment, I just needed something, and there it was! That was great.
I spent a little time there, surveying the lovely views, and then moved on to the shelter, which was about a mile down from the summit. I set up camp and made myself some instant mashed potatoes with a packet of salmon mixed in, which was really good. Very filling and highly caloric. It's funny that my objective now is to get as many calories into myself as I can — rather than the fewest. I imagine that'll be a difficult adjustment when I get off the trail.
So, that's it. Another good day. I mean, it was a really hard day, but definitely good, too. Tomorrow looks to be a much easier hike, lots of ridge walking, so I'll probably do somewhere around 10 or 12 miles. We'll see how it goes!
