Saturday, June 27 9:22 pm 28.0 AT mi 28.6 mi total Spy Rock sunset/first
marathon distance day!
AT 797.8 Punchbowl Shelter → AT 825.8 Spy Rock junction campsite
Weather: Hot and sunny/overcast. Nice cool breeze today!
Trail Conditions: Pretty smooth sailing today. Big climb from about 1000 ft elevation to over 4000 ft elevation in one stretch, but it was over ~6 mi and felt gradual. More a matter of water management today
My Condition: Ask me tomorrow! As of this moment, feeling good physically, great emotionally
My first marathon+ distance day! I was on the trail by 7:30 this morning and just kept putting one foot in front of the other, one more piece of food into my mouth. You start stumbling, you drink and eat and possibly sit. You start feeling weak, you eat and drink and potentially sit. You see a cool animal or flower, you take a picture or video and then eat and drink. Saw a second mother deer – doe pair on trail. I’ve found that if you take it slow and avert your gaze, you can get pretty close. Both times, the mother deer started licking the doe’s backside. I wonder if that’s a last ditch defense mechanism, eliminating any potential scent trail the doe might be leaving. Still, gross. Our mothers really do love us kids! Fog talked about Spy Rock being a great sunset spot, so I set my sights WAY on the horizon and went for it. Made it here with plenty of time to spare – put up tent, changed, ate, and made my way up the side trail to Spy Rock. What a view! 360 degrees of beautiful Virginia blue ridge rolling mountains. Clouds impeded the full sunset, but I was still treated to incredible blues and yellows in the sky and layers and layers of hazy hills. A big day like this is doable with the right trail conditions, especially if you get an early start, but even with my trail legs under me I wouldn’t say it comes easy. You still have to work for it. And by that, I mean keep stepping, keep eating, keep drinking, keep an eye on any potential issues, and sit down occasionally when you REALLY want to get serious about eating or drinking.
Post Trail Analysis
As you can tell from this particular entry, my hiker hunger is in full gear and food is clearly on my mind! I brought my food bag with me up to Spy Rock while I watched the sunset and continued to pig out. It sounds like there was some sort of meteorological phenomenon happening this particular evening, because the haziness I was seeing was rather widespread. This was one of my worst nights of sleep on trail – you’ll read about it in tomorrow’s entry, but there were some hooligans playing loud bass-heavy music in the early evening, and some jagoffs playing a pan-flute or a recorder or some other type of devilish instrument in the middle of the night. I shone my flashlight in their direction multiple times, trying to send a subtle message of “hey there’s other people here too, and it’s the middle of the night, maybe you should finish your pagan ceremony during daylight hours.” I’m all for freedom of expression and experiencing the outdoors in your own unique way, but there’s no fatigue like that of a tired thru hiker. Unless you’ve felt that level of deep fatigue, it’s hard to describe. I needed these nights to be restful for the purposes of physically recovering from day to day.
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