West By God Virginia (I have no idea what that means)

On 5/15 I did 20.6 miles to Blackrock hut. On 5/16 I did 23.5 miles to just outside Elkton,VA. On 5/17 I did 23.8 to Crescent Rock. On 5/18 I did 26 miles to Gravel Springs Hut. On 5/19 I did 18.6 to Jim and Molly Denton shelter after resupplying in Front Royal, Va. On 5/20 I did 31.1 miles to the West Virginia border. On 5/21 I did 17.7 miles to Harper's Ferry station. 5/22 through 5/25 I was off trail at the annual Memorial Day Cabin. On 5/26 I did 19.8 Miles to POGO Campsite. On 5/27 I did 23.1 miles to Tumbling Run Shleter. On 5/28 I did 19.7 Miles to Birch Run Shetler. On 5/29 I Did 15.9 miles to James Fry Shelter. On 5/30 I did 23.4 miles to the middle of nowhere after resupplying in Boiling Springs. On 5/31 I did 18.8 Miles to Clarks Fery Shelter after resuppling in Duncannon.

Okay so its ben awhile since I updated the blog, between no signal and a broken phone I have not had the opportunity to update everyone on my ramblings on the trail. I did get a bunch of messages asking if I was okay, as people were growing concerned by my lack of activity, which is great to know that a search team for my body was being formed. It would not be a very wide search area maybe 3 feet wide by 2,200 miles long. For the record when you do find my body, I want to be cremated and put into a firework and shot off over Mount Mitchel,NC (please do not do it during the dry season, I dont want my lasting legacy to be a forrest fire). Now that we got that out of the way, let's get to the good stuff.

So when I left Waynesboro, VA I went into Shenandoah National Park and well..... it kind of sucked. There is a road going through SNP called Skyline Drive. The AT goes through SNP for 103.2 miles and crosses Skyline Drive 28 times and skirts it at least twice that many times. That means I was less than 1.5 miles from a road at all times. The irony of it was at every trail crossing there were plaques stating what the rules for the "backcountry" are. My parents' woods in Ohio are more backcountry than SNP; and rule number one on the plaque is to keep your dog on a leash (this must be so they don't get hit by a car). I'm not the only one who was dissapointed by SNP. The two founders of the AT, Brenton Mackaye (the visionary) and Mayron Avery (the builder), stopped talking forever because Brenton was vehemently opposed to the building of Skyline Drive and Mayron was okay with it. I would buy Brenton a beer right now if he hadn't died in 1975. There are so many people that visit SNP the animals have become accustomed to humans. There was a doe on the trail with a young fawn and neither moved as I approached, I actually pushed the deer out of the way with my hiking pole. Luckily for the deer there was a section hiker behind me or else I would have been eating venison for dinner that night. Scribbles ran into a bear with two young cubs, which is the only time to really worry about black bears, but they paid no attention to him at all and nothing came out of it. The Shenandoahs aren't all terrible, they have things called waysides which are convenience stores and short order grills located less than 0.5 miles from the trail. Now most of the items in the convenient store require a can opener and are geared towards people who are roughing it in their mobile homes, but they did have cheap beer so that was a plus. The other nice thing about SNP is that it is relatively flat, which is good since I had to put in some big miles.

As you can see from the mileage from the start of SNP to Harper's Ferry, WV I was moving faster than normal. I had miscalculated the mileage per day I needed to do in order to get to Harpers Ferry the Thursday before Memorial Day and had some ground to make up. I spent several days night hiking to tack on the additional miles. On the 20th of May I hit the 1000 mile marker right before I entered a section of the trail known as the roller coaster. The elevation profile for the roller coaster looks like a 13 mile sinusoidal wave. I finished the roller coaster very late in the night as I crossed into West Virginia. I drank a beer I had carried in for the celebration of pushing out of Virginia and then went directly to sleep on the ground as I was too tired to get out my tent or sleeping bag. On my way into Harpers Ferry I went to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy headquarters to get my picture taken for the year book (I find it funny the HQ are located in a state that only has a few miles of trail in it). I was North Bound thru hiker 213 for 2015, which means since January there have been 212 other thru hikers before me. My train wasn't coming till 5am on Friday and I was planning on sleeping in the train station Thursday night but it closed at 5pm since it was a national historical building and owned by the park service. So I ended up sleeping on the train platform (the only difference between a bum and a thru hiker is gortex).

My arrival into D.C was interesting. It was slightly shocking to see so much concrete and so many people (and none of them looked remotely happy). On the plus side there was more coffee than you can shake a stick at. I had to walk 35 minutes from Union Station to my rides house and was able to stop into three different coffee shops. I spent four days in a house along the Youghiogheny with a bunch of great people. I was able to rest my legs, and fill up my stomach (I'm down 35 lbs, but may have gained some of that back after the constant feasting). I certainly did not catch up on sleep as I was hanging out late into the night but I will gladly trade sleep for the great company any day.

When I got back to Harpers Ferry I crossed over the Potomac and was in Maryland. Maryland was a 40.6 mile stretch and was well maintained. I crossed the foot bridge that goes over I70 that I used to drive under on my many trips to D.C. I did not have the same feeling of awe as I did when I crossed the bridge outside of Hot Springs. It felt more natural; I was thinking "of course you're walking across this bridge, why wouldn't you be?".

I was almost able to say Maryland was an uneventful stretch but as I was heading towards the Mason Dixon line the sky started to darken. I knew I was in trouble when the woods went silent; the winds picked up and it started to pour rain. The sky turned into a strobe light. I was on a ridgeline and it was 2 miles off in either direction so there was no point in running. I was counting the seconds in between lighting and thunder. It quickly approached three seconds. I decided to stop walking and sit on my pack, as I was taking off my pack I heard a deafening sound and even with my eyes closed I could still see light as if it were a summers day. I opened my eyes back up and could see and feel the downpour of rain but couldn't hear anything. It was similar to a war movie when a bomb goes off and the audio is cut. I looked up and about 50 feet in front of me, on the trail, was a tree smoldering. It looked like someone put a stick of dynamite in it and blew half the trunk into pieces. I just stared at the tree as my ears started to ring (ringing is good, it means you're not dead). I stayed still for a few minutes just kind of taking in the situation. I had a pretty gnarly headache but besides that I was good to go. I started to head to the border of PA thinking whether or not it was good karma since I did not get struck, or if it was bad karma and just a warning of what's coming?

5/29 was a great day. A former member from the UCMC (University of Cincinnati Mountaineering Club) joined me for the hike. I passed Dead Womens Hollow which is mile marker 1,094.6 also known as the 2015 half way point on the trail. I did a photo shoot at the halfway point but knew I had more important things to do a mile down the trail. It is a tradition to eat a half gallon of ice cream after crossing the half way point. Now I'm lactose intolerant, and fully know what I was going to do to my body, but a tradition is a tradition. I started the half gallon challenge with two other thru hikers. I was able to finish the half gallon of ice cream in 22min 55 sec, Croc Rocket finished it in 28min and Uphill beat us both with 20min 1sec. We all got really cold after eating the ice cream, I stood in the sun and the other two guys actually put on their jackets. I spent the rest of the day waiting for bad things to happen to my guts but felt fine, in fact I felt great (probably one of the few days I wasn't calorie defecient). I think I have finally stressed out and worn down my body so much that it just doesn't care what I do anymore (similar to what I did to my parents growing up). I have a little less than 1,100 miles left on the trail. If the second half is anything like that the first half I'm in for a great time.

Doe and it's fawn (fawn is in front of the tree)

View from the train platform at Harper's Ferry

This is the nicest shelter on the AT by a factor of 100x

Probably shouldn't drink so much coffee either.

Croc Rocket and I starting the challenge