Day 69
Start: Dirt Road Stealth Site
End: Pine Swamp Branch Shelter
Miles Hiked: 14.1
Miles on AT: 656.9
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With no pressure to hike big miles today, we awoke with calm. Janitor had accidentally set his alarm to 6 am, but it actually worked out well. He got going early while I was able to take my time waking up and we still left camp at 8 am.
Today started with a short climb. Janitor went ahead while I did my morning warm up. I caught up with him at the top and, wow, what a view! The top was a grassy balk, the tall grass waved in the wind, and the sky stretched out in all directions. A shelter stood back a bit in the tress, and I was jealous of the hikers I could see that were still milling about there. This would have been such an amazing place to camp last night! I would’ve been too tired to continue hiking last night anyway, but it would have been nice.
We stayed up there for a while, enjoying the view and me enjoying the sun. I just love wide open spaces like this, so I wanted to soak it up while I could. Our hike today would be relatively flat and dry, so we hiked to the next water source to have second breakfast and load up on water. Since it was a short day, we took our time, spending about an hour there, eating and chatting with the other hikers around us. Since I had eaten my second breakfast for dinner last night, I made good ol’ mashed potatoes and tuna today.
After cleaning up and getting our water to go, we hiked on. Despite the terrain looking relatively flat on the map, it wasn’t the smoothest. We were constantly tripping over rocks or navigating hopping from large rock to large rock. It wasn’t exactly the easy day I had imagined. That’s another thing about the AT; just when you think it might mellow out a bit, it just hits you with another surprise. It never gets easy for long.
At one point on the ridge, we came upon a construction zone. Apparently, the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a natural gas pipeline, was being constructed in this section. The construction area didn’t last long, but we did hear machinery whirring in the distance.
We stopped for lunch at a little grassy campsite with a perfect view of West Virginia. I got my lunch out, laid back on my pack, and enjoyed the view. Janitor had to move on because the grass was bothering him, so I finished my lunch quickly so I could catch up with him further down the trail.
At this point, Janitor and I were more than ready to get to camp. When we reunited, we had only 2.5 miles left to go. Luckily for me, they were down hill miles. I flew down, moving as quickly as possible. I reached the shelter just before 5pm, with Janitor just a few minutes behind me. We had the shelter all to ourselves at this point, so Janitor and I got our pads out and took a much needed nap. It was glorious.
No one showed up for the rest of the evening, which meant things were quiet and calm. Tomorrow is town day, so we are looking forward to a short day and some good food.
And that’s day 69.
A version of this post originally appeared on TheTrek.co.