SNP Hike Day 3: Going to Town

Monday, 8th of September, 2003

Blackrock Hut to Pinefield Hut, 15 miles

I wake up in the morning early, with another night of surfing back and forth between sleep and half-wakefulness. As promised, the snakes have not taken me in the night. I do check my boots carefully for uninvited guests and slap on new moleskin patches on the blister spots on my heel. I listened to Poor Richard and Almost There last night talk about their plans to modify their hiking to take in a night at one of the hotels in the park, probably at Big Meadows and perhaps again at Skyline. A soft bed and a hot running shower does sound awfully good, but I still have a long way to go afterwards, so I’m sticking to my plans of hiking between the huts all the way through. I have three full changes of clothes and I’m trying to save one for Saturday morning, so I’m in less smelly clothes come the time I meet Meredith at Gravel Springs Gap. But there is no missing that I will be a little ripe.

Suarte and Sweat’s talk of routinely kicking out 20 to 22 miles a day has me feeling a little inspired, so today’s 15 mile hike, the longest so far, is sounding quite do-able. I’ve looked ahead and after Pinefield Hut, there is another hut just eight miles on, then another twelve miles further. So tomorrow I am thinking about kicking forward a full day. But we will have to wait to see what fifteen miles today is going to be like. I get my breakfast bar, don boots, consult the map, and head off with my hat on my head. It’s getting a bit salty around the rim from two days of heavy sweating, but it has been sunny every day, so with my hairline, the hat is quite necessary and welcome.




About a mile down the trail, I get to where the Appalachian Trail wraps around the peak of Blackrock Mountain. This is definitely worth pulling out the camera! I have a view in three directions from well above the land around me here, even though I’m nowhere near the peak. The mountain is a huge pile of rock rubble, and looks like it would be a fun and challenging scramble up to the peak to look around. But I decide to stick to hiking today and put the pack back on and head off.




My goal is to make it to Loft Mountain around lunchtime. It’s about seven miles from the hut. And it is time to break my promise to myself about being full self-sufficient through the park. I’m just a tad nervous still about how fast that last gas canister ran dry on the campstove and I want to see if I can find another option.

The hike is pleasant, though I can feel the blisters are growing a bit and the moleskin patches may not be staying in place. When they stay in place, the blisters are present, but don’t intrude on my awareness. When they slide out of place, it is a little more obvious.

Around 11:30 AM, I roll into Loft Mountain and find the campstore and, glory be, a bathroom. I’m tempted by a shower, but getting clean just to get grubby all over again seems a bit much. I do, however, appreciate the flush toilet. The latrines so far are all perfectly fine, but a pit toilet is still a pit toilet, and they are usually bring your own TP affairs: if they do have paper, often it has been nibbled or maybe even gotten mold, so not stuff you want to use. I came with my own in a ziplock bag so it does not get wet. Thank you Mary-Ann Ray (of D.C. Appalachian Mountain Club fame) for teaching me to always bring your own!

I do splash a goodly bit of water on my face and it is a little amazing just how much salty grim builds up when you sweat all from the exhertion of hiking and have nothing more than a wet washcloth at the end of the day to clean yourself. Feeling a bit refreshed, I indulge in a cold soft drink just as Poor Richard and Almost There wander in to the campground. They head right for the store to get cheese and some other things, then across the way to the showers. I think I hear the sound of two very happy men back there when the water starts to run...

There is something to hiking 27.4 miles (yes, the guidebook is quite specific about that distance) to get a store to really appreciate it. Ah, it’s marvelous. Mind you, a good bit of it is highly impractical: I think a microwave dinner is not a good idea. In fact, even campers can’t make them, so why are they here? Nothing withstanding the happiness of Suarte and Sweat last night, I decide not to get a six pack of brandless beer, as it is still eight miles to go and the pack is heavy enough already and I don’t want beer that much.

The stove selection is about what I feared: the canisters for my stove that I cannot find anywhere else are not here either. I would have been surprised. They do have Coleman fuel stoves, but the models are large and heavy and so are the cans of fuel. But I do spot one little thing that takes solid fuel tablets. I read the label and realize that to boil water, I am going to need about three or four tablets a go and there are twelve in the pack, so I pick up two more extra boxes of tablets and put them in the equipment sack in my pack.

It’s been a non-issue on this hiking trip with all the nice weather, but I have packed my pack with garbage bags, each one seperated from the others in terms of what is in it. One for clean clothes, one for dirty, one for food, one for equipment. This trick is one I learned on a backpacking class run at the Mohican Center with the Appalachian Trail Club last fall. It’s a good trick to keep things dry even when it rains as no pack is waterproof even with the fancy rain covers and such they sell these days. It is nice to have my dirty undies seperated from the clean ones, but another advantage is packing seems to go pretty quickly. I also realy appreciated this this past winter when I went back country skiing on the Appalachian Trail near Zealand Notch in New Hampshire. I fell over a good deal and of course I was the one carrying the blueberries in my pack... Blueberry juice got on everything in the food part of my bag, but nothing else and even the food was largely stained on the ziplock bags it was in. The blueberries in the pancakes in the morning tasted just fine despite their “pressing” beforehand!

Anyway, I get the stove, tablets, and a block of cheese as a small indulgence. I notice Naglene bottles, but I have been getting moderately adept at filling the bottles I have with the pump, so I don’t see a compelling reason to get a new bottle that will screw onto the filter. Still, it does amuse me that on this first ever trip with this filter, I have managed to fail to use one of its selling features. I also have bear line with me, another thing I learned about in the backpacking class, and I’ve had no need for it staying in the huts with the bear poles provided.




Anyway, after a nice lunch break, and a quick conversaton with Chef when he rolls in looking for any and all possible shortcuts, and saying goodbye to a happily cleaned up Almost There and Poor Richard, whom are now enjoying a cold soda, I’m off. I notice just as I am getting onto the trail a patch of milkweed plants and sure enough, there’s a few monarch catepillars crawling around on them. Cool! They are so interesting and different looking than your average wooly bear or generic catepillar...




The hike through the woods is uneventful, but I am very ready for the end when it comes. I’m starting to have what J.R./Easy calls “Shelter Delusions.” I look through the woods and think I see what looks like the roof of the shelter through the woods and pick up the pace with a little excitement only to find, of course, it is just a shape of a fallen tree. But I do finally find the path down to Pinefield Hut and it is time for the most estatic moment of the day: taking off the hiking boots. The blisters have spread a bit and one of them has popped. And the socks, of course, have a lot of dirt in them, so there is crud getting in the open spot. It hurts to brush it off, but there is a wonderful little stream running right through the middle of the shelter area. I go downstream a little to find a nice spot where I can put my feet in the wonderful cool stream water. Oh man... This is good...

While I am soaking, Almost There and Poor Richard come into camp. They shed packs and shoes and shirts and join me with feet in the stream. Almost There sees my blisters and gives me a good run down on advice about treating them and ways to avoid them in the future, all of which I have heard. Except wrapping my feet in duct tape. I have a small roll with me for emergencies, but the thought of what it will be like to pull that off each night is more than I can bear right now. I’ll try putting on a bigger patch of moleskin in the morning on the spot.

Chef lumbers into camp a while late grumbling and moaning and gets stuck into his dinner. I gather he had little luck hitch hiking today and the road is not much shorter than the trail to this hut on this hike. He probably managed to cut a mile or two, but had to walk it all. I have to admit that, if I do kick forward a day tomorrow, I will no longer have these guys for company every night. I am prejudiced by the whole scene the first night with Chef talking about how awful homeless people are, so I am not going to miss him. I’ve warmed a bit to Almost There and Poor Richard, who both are talking about how much they are enjoying semi-retirement and doing hikes like this and wishing they had started doing them when they were my age. I know, it is very self-affirming and so I like them better for it. But there it is. They also don’t snore: I may not be being woken by Chef’s snoring, but once he gets going, there is no getting back to sleep until he shifts positions and stops snoring again.

This hut is easily the nicest one I’ve seen (yes, all three of them!) with a pretty stream running right through the middle of the area, and a bit oak tree behind the hut. Of course it is fall, so acorns are plinging off the hut roof all the time, especially when the squirrels get perturbed by something and rain them down on us.

I study the hiking guide again to see if there is a better way to get a day ahead to meet Meredith on schedule Saturday morning, but tomorrow still is the best day if I am going to stay at shelters each night. Even if I relent and try a hotel room for a night, I don’t see a better day. Fifteen miles today did work, but I was very ready to be done. I’m not certain 20 miles is going to happen. I could try to do 18 miles to get to Lewis Mountain Campground and see if I can find something there, but without a tent... I can also, courtesy of the permit, back country camp anywhere as long as it is at least 100 feet from any trails and at least a quarter mile from any campground (and not in some special places in the park like Camp Rapidian or near the peaks of Stony Man Mountain or Old Rag, but none of those places are nearby). But again, without a tent, this is potentially unwise especially since I may not be anywhere near a spring and will need to set up my own bear line and so on. I’m pretty keen to stay in the shelters if I can every night.

I doze off lightly for the evening after a good dinner of curry and rice and listen to the acorns and the snoring through the night. Big day ahead and I still can’t get a full solid out for the night sleep. But tomorrow, if all goes on plan, I cross one major milestone on the hike: I go through Swift Run Gap, which takes me out of the South District of the park. Of the three districts (South, Central, and North), the south is the biggest. So tomorrow will be my first day moving onto a new map.

Ta ta for now, and tune in tomorrow for Adventures In Stealth Camping!

J aka “Red Sock”