Wednesday, July 8 8:49 pm 9.7 mi
AT 1013.5 Blackburn T.C. → AT 1023.2 Laudoun Heights
Weather: Hot and sunny
Trail Conditions: Smooth sailing compared to yesterday. Relatively flat. Lots of day hikers, especially around Keys Gap
My Condition: Have never run a marathon, but I imagine this is how folks feel the night before, staring down a feat of endurance unlike anything they’ve done before. 43 miles, 4 states, 1 day!
Pretty short, easy day of hiking today. Hung out for most of the afternoon with Fresh Ground and the trail family. Sadly, Fresh Ground was forced to deal with another unfortunate complaint. Since his run-in with the angry day hiker in the Shenandoahs and subsequent visit from the rangers after he was reported, he heard from a hostel owner that he was being asked about specifically by some of the higher-ups in the ATC in regards to a complaint made, (if I had to venture a guess) likely from the same angry guy. The hostel owner vouched for Fresh Ground, and later told him about the whole thing. Today, he received an email from the head ranger of the Appalachian Trail notifying him that he couldn’t serve food where he was today. Fresh Ground posted his set up for the day on social media this morning, and unfortunately that ended up getting him in trouble. One of Fresh Ground’s friends is a surveyor, who is well versed in this topic, and apparently even he doesn’t quite know how to make heads or tails of which parking lots are NPS land and which are not in this area. It’s not clearly marked either way. So he packed up the food and we just sat around and hung out. My heart breaks for him – here he is AGAIN just trying to do a good deed and he’s catching hell for it. He might not admit it, but you could tell he was hurt by this. He honestly seemed ready to drive home at first, but called a couple friends, one on the PCT who was forced to head further south as she tried to reach the northern terminus of the trail due to snow, and another who is on the AT in the northeast (I THINK I heard Vermont, but not sure). In addition to reassurance from us that we’d hate to see him go but ultimately he needs to follow his heart and do what’s best for him, he worked through the emotions and it sounds like his new plan will be returning home for the summer after he supports us through the 4 state challenge. With COVID numbers again spiking and his van having NC plates (a current hotspot) he doesn’t envision a warm welcome from trail authorities in the cooler northeast states with mandatory 2 week quarantines, and he’s not enjoying the summer heat trying to sleep in his van. Why does the world always seem to make it so tough for the ones doing the most good?
Post Trail Analysis
Why indeed? I know that he’d say the physical heat was the bigger issue pushing him away from the trail, but dealing with all this metaphorical heat couldn’t have been easy for him either. He’d end up supporting us the next day, his first time ever attempting the 4 State Challenge, and then spent a little bit of time at home before heading out west with the Leapfrog Cafe to meet up with some of his friends on the PCT and CDT, feeding hikers along the way. He would later return in the cooler fall to feed southbounders again on the AT.
Allow me to set the stage for the 4 State Challenge. I crossed into Virginia on Friday, June 5 around mile 470. It was now Wednesday, July 8, more than a month and over 500 miles later, and I was still walking through Virginia. Virginia comprises about a quarter of the entire trail, and many people experience the “Virginia Blues” as they hike and hike and hike without the gratification of crossing into any new states. Personally, I loved Virginia and experienced no such blues – the Pennsylvania Blues, however, I would definitely later experience! Every year, a handful of crazies attempt the 4 State Challenge. The challenge, in concept, is simple – you start your day in Virginia, cross into West Virginia, cross into Maryland, and finish your day crossing the Mason-Dixon line entering into Pennsylvania, all within a 24 hour period. You sleep right near the VA-WV border, breeze through WV which you can’t be in for more than a couple of miles, and spend the majority of the day traversing Maryland, finally making it to Pennsylvania exhausted if you survived the last couple miles of rock scrambling. This wouldn’t be a test of how fast I could hike; rather, it would be a test of grit and endurance. We planned on starting the day quite early, crushing as many miles as we could before we hit the heat of the day.
One other note, tonight would be the last I’d see Cage. He hiked on ahead, claiming that he wanted to take some time to explore and experience the rich history in Harper’s Ferry. He ended up deciding to call it quits, feeling that he had accomplished the things he set out hoping to on trail. Kudos to him for finding that, but it definitely stung a little bit losing a treasured member of our trail family with so little warning!
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