The party's over

So yeah, it was pretty disappointing to have only covered about half of our intended mileage. But it was the right decision to stop. As Bob Peoples shuttled us back to Damascus, we learned that the temps in that area were actually in the teens at lower evelations, and into the single digits at higher points, which was where we were. No wonder our water bottles froze into bricks. And even colder temperatures were on the way for the following night.

We also learned that we weren't the only ones who got blindsided by the weather. The cold and snow were originally expected to hit mostly the regions north of us (West Virginia reportedly got ten inches!) but the front extended further south than anyone predicted. Schools were shut down in the three surrounding counties.

The blessings out of this? Well, we learned a lot and were grateful to have gotten through it without injury to ourselves or to the hound. We also got the pleasure of befriending Bob Peoples, a truly extraordinary man whose Kincora hostel will definitely be the launching point for my next section hike. And hey, I did get a little closer to Katahdin... 410 miles down, 1,765 to go!

On our way out of town, we stopped at a diner and I consumed the most delectable bowl of vegetable soup ever concocted in the history of the planet. And by nightfall we were at a hotel, showered and jammied, and can I just say that we will never take for granted the pleasures of a nice warm, clean bed? Least of all Buster.

AT: Moreland Gap Shelter to USFS 50

I have never been so cold as I was last night. There are no words to describe it.

When I woke at about 4 a.m., all my water bottles were frozen solid, and there was a good inch of snow covering everything in the shelter, including us. Tim and I discussed contingency plans in muffled voices through the layers of our respective cocoons. We both knew Buster's feet would have a hard time going very far in the new layer of snow, and Tim's feet weren't doing so well either. Last night he wore three pairs of socks, topped by my fluorescent orange hunter gloves, and a raincoat wrapped overtop of all that, and his feet were still numb. I too was starting to feel like I would never get warm. We decided that the best and safest next step would be to go to a hostel about six miles out, called Kincora.

We summited White Rocks Mountain, hoping for an easy descent, but even that was perilous. The plentiful snow, combined with a blanket of fallen leaves and the sharp grade, made it impossible to step carefully. I wiped out again several times, once banging my elbow and leg hard on the rocks (and I now have some nice purple bruises to show for it). I was hiking sloppy, I think, because I'd had nothing to eat or drink that morning — our water was frozen into blocks and so was undrinkable, and it was so painfully cold that to pause and feed ourselves seemed unwise — we just wanted to get to Kincora. So by about an hour into our hike, I was so thirsty that I was scooping up snow from the trailside like a cave woman, just trying to hydrate myself a little. I felt like an animal.

Tim offered to take Buster and clip him to his own pack, which was a big help because even at a petite 30 pounds, that dog can pull like nobody's business. So I gratefully accepted and then spent the rest of our descent fretting that both Buster and Tim would go careening swiftly down the mountain — and then where would I be!? Fortunately, Tim was more surefooted than I, and no further wipeouts ensued.

Finally the trail evened out a bit. The descent became more gentle and I knew the hard part was over.

We made it to the spot where the trail crosses US Forest Service road #50 and hiked the quarter-mile to Kincora, where we gratefully found proprietor Bob Peoples (the same guy who helped build Mountaineer Shelter, where we stayed earlier in our trip) available to shuttle us back to Damascus.

I was really disappointed that I didn't capture more of our experience in photos, but to my delight, I learned later that a fellow Whiteblazer happened to be at Carvers Gap just before we passed through, and he got some great pictures. Many thanks to TwistedToad (yes, that's his trail name — and I'm sure there's an awesome story to go with it!) who was very gracious to share the following photos with me.

AT: Mountaineer Shelter to Moreland Gap Shelter

There was more snow on the ground when we woke up this morning. Where is all this snow coming from!? This was not in the forecast!

Buster did much better hiking today. He seems to be getting the hang of hiking on a lead. I am concerned about his paws, though. The last mile or so today he was limping a lot and I had to stop many times to clear the ice chunks out from his toe pads. I'm pretty worried about this. I know that if this persists, the webbing between his toes will start to tear and bleed. Today we covered a fairly moderate 10 miles, but later this week we have a 13.5-mile day and a 15.9-mile day. I don't know if his feet are going to hold up.

Here's a view of an Appalachian rhododendron that I photographed today. Snow-covered rhodo leaves just don't compute! I'm accustomed to seeing them vibrant green and decorated with big pink flowers — not frigid and drooping under the weight of snow! Um, hello? Whose idea was it to come here in November!?

We are at Moreland Gap Shelter tonight... not nearly as nice as last night's shelter. This is an old one, built in 1960. Some goofball decided that its open side should face northwest, which means all the cold and wind comes blowing right in. Which maybe isn't a bad thing in the summer, but right now the weather is continuing to decline and snow continues to fall. Tim's got a little portable radio with him, and he picked up a weather report, but there's no way it could be right. They're saying the temp is in the 20's, but we are experiencing terribly bitter wind and cold. As an old mountain man and fellow hiker told me several years ago, the mountains make their own weather.

We tried like crazy to build a fire this evening to dry out our snow-soaked boots, but the fierce wind and dampness from the snow made it impossible.

I cut the sleeves off my wool sweater tonight, so that Buster could wear it more comfortably without getting tangled up in it, and Tim gave up one of his polypropylene hiking shirts so that Buster could also have a base layer to wear. He's making quite the fashion statement in this get-up, let me tell you. He's very, very cold, even when wrapped in the fleece pad that I brought for his bed. Right now I have him bundled up in my sleeping bag with me and he is still shivering.

AT: Route 19E to Mountaineer Shelter

When we woke up this morning and started getting ready to set off, there was about an inch of snow on the ground at the hostel. Whoa. Didn't expect that. And to Tim's chagrin, since this is the off-season, Mountain Harbour doesn't serve a humongous breakfast like they did when we were here last May. So instead, Tim scored a couple packages of oatmeal from the hiker box and I ate a Clif bar. Buster dined on several pieces of pizza crusts that the 50-mile-runner-guy gave him. Then we were off. I'll admit it was a little hard to leave the cozy woodburning stove at Mountain Harbour.

We got started about 9 a.m., and here's Tim making his way up the side of Buck Mountain in his signature red hat. As we picked up more elevation (about a thousand feet in the first mile and a half), the snow definitely became more plentiful, and more of a problem. Not only did it make for some slippery hiking, but in many places it made the trail almost invisible. It was pretty easy to lose the white blazes on the trees, too, because of the snow clinging to the tree trunks.

The snow really does make the view beautiful, though. It feels a lot like cross-country skiing in Stinchfield Woods — only with 40 pounds of dead weight on my back and an over-anxious dog bumping into the backs of my heels every third step or so. Buster's doing fine overall, but hiking with a lead attached to my backpack definitely takes some getting used to. I can't risk letting him off-leash, because he does have a history of running off after interesting scents or animals, and I would have no way to find him easily if he decided to go off on a wild romp. I don't love hiking with a leash, though. I wiped out a couple of times today because of his pulling.

Right now we're finished with our 8-mile day and snuggled down in Mountaineer Shelter. It's a deluxe place, and only two years old. A very well known trail maintainer named Bob Peoples helped commandeer the team that built it.

Tim's got his hammock strung from the rafters in the upper part of the shelter, and I pitched my bivouac on the lower deck so that I could have a little extra protection from the cold and wind. Buster's curled up inside with me, and he's definitely very cold. In fact I put my wool sweater on him to try to help him conserve some heat.

Here he is all bundled up with Tim. It is going to be a wicked cold night.

The Road to Damascus

No, not the biblical Damascus where Saul became Paul ... I'm talking about Damascus, Virginia, which is where Tim and I left a car this evening, and where we will eventually end up after hiking north for a week on the Appalachian Trail.

After studying up on the weather forecast all week, it looks like temps will be in the 20's at night and up to the high 40's in the daytime. And no thunderstorms predicted! Woot! So guess who got to come along? Yep, Buster. This will be his first long-distance trek on the AT. If there had been any chance of thunderstorms I would've had to leave him home, since he is deathly afraid of those. He is carrying a small pack which contains his food for the week, two collapsible dog dishes, and about 20 ounces of water. He is rarin' to go. I took this photo of the noble beast taking in a nice deep breath of mountain air.

That red house you see in the background is Mountain Harbour, the same hiker hostel where Rob and Tim and I stayed on the eve of our last big hike in May. Last time we did a southbound segment, and this time we're starting at the same spot but heading north instead. They're very pet-friendly here, as you can see from the treats that were on their shelf.

Also on the shelf here is a "hiker box," which is a common thing to find at a hiker hostel. It's just a big huge box full of all kinds of stuff — food, gear, fuel, maps — and you can take anything you want. Hikers leave whatever they're not going to use, and they take anything that might be helpful to them. How cool is that! Obamanomics, trail-style. Love it.

There are two other guys staying here tonight. One is Ben Davis, an elite athlete who is running (not hiking, but running) the entire AT in 65 days to raise awareness for ALS (see his website here). Sixty-five days!! I think the current speed record is something like 61 days, but to put that in perspective, most thru hikers take at least six months to finish the whole thing. Ben's support person, Rick Cheever, is here too... he meets Ben at specific points along the trail each day and provides food and other resupply items. Right now it's about 8:30 at night, and Rick told us that Ben started running at 2:30 this morning (!!), and he's expecting him to roll in about 11:30 tonight, for a total distance today of 54 miles. Unbelievable.

There was lots of rain all day today on our drive down, but that's supposed to go away overnight and give way to clearer skies for the week. I'm pretty excited.

Terrorist? Hiker? Terrified Hiker?

Check out the new headgear. No, it's not a terrorist get-up... it's my latest in a string of purchases in preparation for next week's adventure on the Appalachian Trail.

On Sunday, my brother Tim and I are setting off from Roan Mountain and hiking north toward Damascus. With temperatures predicted in the mid-20s at night, this Cupcake is, frankly, terrified of freezing her frosting. I've never done an extended hike this late in the year. Last week's snowfall in Michigan didn't help the fear factor.

Hence the headgear: the black thing is called a balaclava (not "baklava," nor "burka," as Joe and Maria have taken to calling it). It's made of fleece and covers my whole head and neck. The hat underneath was a knitting experiment with wool, based on a pattern from my friend Sue. The combo is certain to launch a fashion trend while at the same time (I hope) keep me from dying a cryogenic death in some A.T. shelter next week.

Here are the rest of the layers I'm bringing:

• On the top: polypropylene tee, longsleeve synthetic UnderArmour shirt, short sleeve synthetic tee overtop of that, zippered fleece, thermal jacket, vapor-barrier raincoat.
• On the bottom: long undies, synthetic lined workout pants, lined ski pants.
• On the tootsies: synthetic sock liners, Smartwool socks, fleece booties.
• On los manos: I've apparently lost my mind completely and might've singlehandedly rescued the economy from the recent financial collapse, because I blew $55 on a pair of Black Diamond gloves. In a kind of funny twist of irony, overtop of them I'm going to wear a pair of blinding-orange hunting gloves, which I picked up at the thrift store for 85 cents. During the day when we're hiking and I don't need the double layer of gloves, the orange ones are going to be clipped to the top of my backpack and double as the universal sign of please-don't-shoot-me-Mr.-Hunter, since it will be deer season.

As you can imagine, all this extra stuff means that I won't be bringing my usual sassy little ultralight pack, as it can't accommodate all the bulk. So I've upsized to my bigger green Kelty backpack, which I haven't used for a couple of years now. It feels funny to have all this room to spare. I'm pondering bringing along a space heater.