I woke at 5:10 and was packed and ready to leave by 6. Tortoise was already in the outdoor seating area. It was raining. He tried to convince me to wait until the rain stopped around seven, but the rain seemed light to me. I didn’t think it was raining very hard. We said goodbye. I set out at quarter after six. The rain was barely dripping, nothing my hiking umbrella couldn’t handle .
The trail followed the highway for a mile rhen climbed a hill. Another mile or two after that the trail was closed And there was a detour of almost 20 miles to avoid an area with heavy hurricane damage. There had been quite a bit of discussion at the hostel and over dinner about what to do about the detour. There was apparently a way to avoid it and hike part of the AT and seven miles on a busy highway, but the highway part was really unappealing.
As it turns out the detour was fine. A few sections were on old logging roads but none of the roads were in active use. Much of the trail Followed The Iron Mountain Trail which is where the AT used to go. The final section was a long steady diagonal climb up a mountain covered in a huge variety of beautiful wildflowers. Overall I didn’t see what the fuss was about.
On the detour I passed Cocaine Bear, whom I hadn’t met before; he thought he and Batman would make an amazing team. Speedy, whom I had talked to at the hostel, and I played leapfrog for an hour, finally I was in front. Flash shot past me; I was surprised he wasn’t far ahead but he had taken a zero day in Damascus. At a shelter I met Newman, who was just waking up from a 40 minute nap. He asked after Flash, and mentioned several other hikers I had met such as Mega Mile (the neuroscience student) who were doing the detour today too (I nevervran into any ofmf them).
I was back on the main trail by 6 and at Thomas Knob Shelter by 7. This was my longest day yet in miles, but the fact that much of the detour was on relatively straight well graded old forestry rosds probably explains why it didn’t feel that gard.
The shelter is on the edge of a high bald with amazing views but it was very windy and cold so I had no inclination after dinner to do any journalling (this is being written the following day) or reading. I was in bed, in the shelter (alone on the open ground floor, two women upstairs in an enclosed space with only an opening in the floor for a ladder. I suspect they were warmer. Even with all ny clothes on I struggled to get to sleep.
Mile 471.3 to mile 474.5 = 3.2 miles
Detour = 20.9 miles
Mile 497.3 to mile 499.4 = 2.1 miles
Total = 26.2 miles (and covered off 28.1 miles of official AT distance)
