It was another cold night. Naturally I thought to eat some walnuts to fire up my internal combustion engine, but the walnuts were nowhere to be found. I even got out of the tent and looked for them around the campsite. So it was a rough night and I turned off my alarm.
I woke naturally at 6:50, still cold. I packed quickly and ate a hasty breakfast. Chief was smoking and coughing nearby. I think he smoked at least five cigarettes in the time it took me to make and eat breakfast and clean up. I managed to get out at around 8:00. I wished Chief a good day and he did not reply.
The first detour of the day was to visit some cliffs on both sides of the trail. On one side I had amazing views and excellent reception and was able to talk to Sheila for 15 minutes on a video call. On the other side I could see the town of Greenville and the Flatlands beyond the Appalachian Mountains.
Because of my detours Chief got ahead of me and I ran into him smoking a cigarette along the trail. I said hi. He said hi. I think we’ve now exchanged at least 15 words.
It was definitely warmer than the last few days. Sunny and clear. Lots of great views. I moved quickly, until about 4:00 when I sprained my left ankle. At first I thought it was quite serious, and rested for 10 minutes, and then favored it heavily while walking, but the longer I walked the less painful it became, and by the end of the day I didn’t notice it at all.
I saw my first major signs of blowdown from Hurricane Helene. There was one area with a huge number of trees down over the trail, that had been sawn to make a passage for hikers. Many trees had pulled up their root ball, and the trail had to be rebuilt around the hole created by the root ball. The teamd doing trail maintenance had done a fantastic job of working around the problem, including building staircases around some of the holes and diversions created by the trees falling down. But so far I haven’t seen whole hillsides knocked over, which we did see when we were in North Carolina a couple of years ago.
Other than Chief the only people I ran into were four men doing a section hike heading southbound, Dirty Dog who is a 20-something I’ve run into a few times before, he had camped a few miles before where I wound up camping, and a man my age who shot past me at the end of the day saying he was going to try to make the next shelter. I didn’t try to make that shelter, because I wouldn’t have arrived until 7:00 p.m. Instead I aimed for Rice Gap, where the commentd in the Far Out app said that there was a decent campsite for one or two tents. There was no water supply around, luckily I knew this and I had filled four liters at a waterfall a few miles earlier. The only downside of that is having to carry four extra kilos of weight on my back and on a sore ankle.
I found some wild leeks in the last hour of walking, and picked a handful. I stuffed them in a pocket of my pack. When I cooked my dinner, I tore the leeks into the rice and pasta as it cooked. It made for an even more delicious meal than usual. One nice thing is that hiker hunger has kicked in and I can eat a lot of food and everything tastes good. Even the Knorr Sides, which all kind of taste the same to me, taste delicious every night.
It’s supposed to be warmer tonight, with a low only of 6, rather than 0 or -1, so hopefully I won’t freeze in my tent. In any case I made sure I have plenty of walnuts.
Mile 297.3 to 316.4 = 19.1 miles.
Love your tent pic! It’s what I imagine being on the trail is like.