I’ll keep this short as it was a great but very tiring long day. I woke before 5 and started packing. Checklist was awake by the time I had my tent packed up and my food down from the tree. I ate a quick breakfast and said “See you uptrail” which is a common saying on the AT. We were going to the same place but since Checklist is a fair bit faster than me I thought I should get a head start.
First stop was Spy Rock, a peak of rock with 360 degree views and a couple of rare protected plants (they didn’t tell you which ones were protected on the information panel, but I think one was Allegheny stonecrop because I saw it on many of the fenced off rocks).
Then onto Priest shelter to get water, and up Priest mountain. I ate lunch on the way down. Checklist had stopped at Priest shelter to do some videos (he has a YouTube channel) so he caught up and started his lunch as I finished mine. We met three day hikers who had come up from a parking lot to see Spy Rock and chatted briefly with them. A man in his 50s, a woman in her 40s, and a woman from Peru in her 30s (ages are my wild guess). I left to head down the mountain soon after the threesome did.
Soon after I found them stopped, the man and the Peruvian woman below the trail. She had stepped too close to the edge of the trail and fallen and hurt her ankle badly. After about five minutes she tried to put weight on it and could not. The gave her some Ibuprofen and she limped along a few feet using her trekking poles for support. It was a mile and a half to their car. Checklist and I moved on, as there wasn’t much we could do to help. I hope they made it down okay. (I heard just now – a day later – that she made it safely out.)
After the parking lot we had another big climb and parts were very rocky and challenging. Again some great views near the top but by now it was getting late and we were still 4 miles away from the shelter. Checklist forged ahead and I muddled on. The sun was down below the western mountalns long before I got to camp around 8. A woman, her 18 year old son and his girlfriend were staying in the shelter so there was room for the two of us. I cooked up dinner quickly, hung my food on the metal bear pole (a terrible contraption that is almost impossible to use), laid out my bedding and ate, and now it’s off to bed.
Mile 823.9 to mile 844.3 = 20.4 exhausting miles. On the plus side, no leg pain today.
Jack in the pulpit
The mountain on the right is Priest mountain. We climbed that, then hiked down into the valley and up the ridges in sunlight
