Appalachian Trail: Day 37
Disclaimer: This post is NOT sponsored. All the gear mentioned in this post was purchased by me at retail prices. I have no affiliations with any of the companies or brands mentioned.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret about journalling on the trail. While I have an entry for every day, I may not actually write that entry the evening of that day as planned. This happens for various reasons. This happens to be one of those times and it's due to how late I got into the shelter.
I got on the trail from Flint Mountain Shelter around 8. Later than I probably should have given the milage that I needed to do, but it is what it is.
The day started with a climb up Lick Rock. A good 1500 ft of elevation over the course of 3 miles. That dropped probably 700 ft down to Rice Gap just to climb back up another 600 ft to High Rock. Another 600 down to Sam's Gap just to climb another 600 back up to a meadow. And on and on it went. Over the course of the day, I climbed almost 6000 ft of elevation with almost 4500 ft down.
Hogback Ridge Shelter was at 8.8 miles from Flint Mountain Shelter. I got there a little after 1 PM. It was definitely too early to stop for the day, but the next shelter was still 10.1 miles away. I decided that I would hike as far as I could and when it got to be around 6 or 7 PM, I would look at the distance to the next shelter and make a decision.
And that is exactly what I did. At 7 PM, I looked and saw I was still 2.7 miles from the shelter and decided I would stop at the next campsite I found. The issue was there weren't any campsites. Both the AT Guide and Farout didn't list any, but there are usually plenty of sites that aren't listed. Except, there weren't any to be found.
I got to Big Bald just before sunset. The last big climb for the day. It was about 1600 ft of climb in the 4 miles since the previous low point. I briefly considered camping on top of the bald, but the only place to put a tent was a gravel road, so I continued to hike on.
I watched the sunset behind the mountains while hiking the last mile into the shelter. I was able to actually make it into the shelter before the light of twilight faded. It was about 9 PM when I made it there, which is hiker's midnight.
I had pushed way past my limits to make it there and it was about all I could do to setup my sleeping gear in the shelter and make dinner by the light of my headlamp.
Because of the lateness of getting to the shelter. I am actually catching up on this journal entry the next day. 16.8 miles to get to Erwin. The guide shows it's mostly downhill.