The Road to Damascus, Part Deux

After a way-too-long hiatus, tomorrow I am back on the Appalachian Trail! My brother Tim and I drove five-hundred-thirtysomething miles to Damascus today, for a repeat attempt at finishing the section hike in which we were foiled by a blizzard last time.  

No chance of a blizzard this time around, as the forecast is calling for temps in the eighties and nineties all week.

We arrived in Damascus around 4:30pm to park the car and meet up with Lone Wolf, a guy I know from whiteblaze.net, who shuttled us to Kincora Hostel. Wolf (as his friends call him) is a cool cat. He’s like a blend of Duck Dynasty and Matt Graham of Dual Survival. The dude has thru-hiked the AT five times and loves the trail so much that 15 years ago he moved from his native Connecticut and settled in Damascus (the most storied trail town on the AT) to work at an outfitter and just be around trail people. We spent the 75-minute shuttle ride peppering him with all sorts of questions about his hikes.   Wolf delivered us to Kincora Hostel, where we are staying tonight in preparation for the beginning of our hike tomorrow.

Kincora is owned by trail hero Bob Peoples. Bob is legendary among hikers for his many years of AT trail maintenance and general bad-assery, as expressed by this graffiti penned by a fellow hiker on the wall of a nearby AT shelter.

While it was great to see Bob, his hostel was in really rough shape. And I mean really rough. Eighteen cats (no that is not a typo) were swarming around the main room when we walked in, and they immediately began circling our legs and hiking poles, meowing and hoping for a handout. Everything smelled like cat pee. We decided to investigate the bunkhouse out back to see if it smelled any better. I was relieved to find it didn’t smell too bad - however, as I was getting my stuff situated, Tim casually observed that “It looks like there’s a spider on your bunk.”

Well people, spider is really not the word for it. This thing’s leg span was as wide as a softball. It could have carried my backpack if it wanted to. When I took its picture, the flash made its (huge, scary, evil) eyes light up.

Tim rolled up a magazine and gave it three hard whacks, smearing guts and legs all over the bunk. When he scooped up its carcass with the magazine and flung the spider outside, it made an audible thud as it hit the ground.

I could have gotten over all this if that spider hadn’t had friends. But as soon as the first spider met his demise, we found another. And another. And another. And just when we thought we’d obliterated them all, I spied the biggest one yet, directly over my bed.

“That’s it,” I said. “I’m done.” I abandoned Tim and chose the cat-pee-smelling hostel over the spider-infested bunkhouse. Which is where I sit now, with cats crawling all over me as I write this. It’s going to be a long night.

Tomorrow’s supposed to be a good weather day, which is good because we are doing our steepest incline of the trip. Also, we will be tenting out in the open tomorrow night, instead of near a shelter, because the Watauga Lake Shelter (our original destination for our first night) is closed due to bear activity.