In my mind’s eye I am still sitting at that picnic table, in the not so dark of pre-dawn. On top of a mountain sipping my coffee waiting for the sun to come up on the last day of my trip. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Three Days Earlier…

Excerpt from my trail journal:

Long day yesterday, longer day today. Should be on the trail by now but I am sipping my coffee and giving dad a head start.

It was a long and hot day. We had to climb Humpback Ridge and then walk 5 more miles to the next shelter, a total of 16 miles. We had gain 1200 feet of elevation over 7 miles. My dad started out earlier than I did. He knew that this walk was a bit long for him. He wanted to get some miles under his belt before the day got too hot. I took my time, finished my coffee, wrote in my journal, took some pictures. I got on the trail about 45 minutes after dad left. Overall, the climb wasn’t that steep (although there were some steep sections,) but mostly it just kept going. I caught up with dad near the top of mountain. By the time we had made it to the top it was noon. We relaxed and had some lunch, but we only halfway there. Going down took some time, the trail wasn’t great. Loose rocks and some very steep sections. It was just about three o’clock by the time we had descended down to the spring at Dripping Rocks. We sat there at Dripping Rocks, on the side of the Blue Ridge Parkway for a very long break.

We still had 5 miles to the next shelter, and it was getting late. We had known that this stretch of trail might prove to be too far us. I wanted to go at least a few more miles so that the next day did not get too long. (As it was, there was only 9 miles between the next too shelters, stretching that to 11 or 12 miles would be no problem.) We camel-ed up at the spring and were on our way again.

Oh… you don’t know what I mean by ‘camel up.’ I carry with me three 32 ounce water bottles. I usually will only fill two of them at any time. In order to keep myself hydrated, and make sure that the water in bottles can go as far as I need it too, I will ‘camel up’ at a water source. In other words, I will drink as much water as I can (like a camel filling its hump) usually about 32 ounces, but in this case I drank about 64 ounces. Yes, drinking 64 ounces of water makes me feel a little sloshy and just a touch nauseous, but it passes pretty quickly. I wanted to make sure that I had enough water to cook dinner if we decided to pitch tents some where along the trail. I also knew that my dad was getting tired, and was already a little dehydrated, so I was counting on him having any water if we stopped.

The next stretch of trail was horrible, narrow trail and loose rocks. The trail ran along the side of a steep ridge, water seeps on the side of the trail ran over the rocks making the footing treacherous. After two miles of this or so, I came to a small water fall that ran across the trail. I filled up my third water bottle here. I waited there for a while for my dad to catch up. I knew he was too tired to go to the next shelter and the poor condition of the trail was slowing him down. Unfortunately, there didn’t look like there was going to be any where to pitch a tent. My dad put on a brave face and said he could make it to the shelter, if there wasn’t a decent tenting site to be found.

We headed out again, this time I moved slower, not letting dad get too far behind me. Luckily, before we had walk a mile, I found a level spot, with a fire ring. Someone had camped here before. Part of me wanted to push on a little bit more, but I was afraid I wouldn’t find another tenting site. We stopped and pitched our tents. It was about six o’clock, we had been walking for over 10 hours!

Excerpt from my trail journal:

… as the day wore on and the trail conditions grew worse, it became clear to me that dad wasn’t going to be able to make the whole 15 miles, especially with the 500 foot [climb] at the end. It didn’t look promising for finding a place to camp, but we found one about 1.5 [miles] short of the Three Ridges Overlook.

We settled in and made dinner. The food and the rest began to help us recover. I was glad to be done walking for the day. We sat and drank coffee and relaxed. It had bee a long day, we got into our tents early and got a good night sleep.

That morning, I proposed that we break camp quickly and hit the trail. I wanted to walk the 3 or so miles that remained to the next shelter. When we got there we could make breakfast. Dad agreed so we packed up and headed out. The trail remained lousy for the next mile or so and there were no other viable tenting spots along that stretch, it made me very glad that we stopped when and where we did. After the Three Ridges overlook, the trail improved. We ascended a steep but quick 500 feet and then descended again before arriving at the Maupin Fields shelter. We took a nice long break and had breakfast and coffee there. We took our time and rested. Up next we had a 1200 foot ascent up the north side of the Three Ridges, followed by a steep 2000 foot descent.