Vandeventer Shelter to Iron Mountain Shelter

Appalachian Trail, 6.9 miles

Why do I keep thinking the trail is going to get easier as the week goes on? Today seemed hard again, even though it was a short mileage day and the climbs weren’t as difficult as the previous two days. Not sure what’s up with that. Maybe the trail name Cupcake is really starting to take hold of me…

Tim has taken to brewing a mid-morning cup of coffee right on the trail. Which makes sense because we are in the habit of getting up early and hiking half of our mileage by about 10:30am. Here’s a shot of the trailside barista.

As we expected, there was very little water available today. I found one spring about halfway through the day, but it was just a trickle. Definitely not enough depth to sink the filter bulb. So I collected what I could by using a small cup and pouring it into one of my empty bottles, and then filtered it later. Inconvenient, but do-able.

Today we reached our highest elevation of the trip, around 4100 miles. I am my usual sweaty self as a result. The cute haircut I got right before this trip is not quite so cute today.

I miss my fam. I’ve texted with Jay and Maria a few times just to check in (Joe is incommunicado because he’s on a youth group service trip), but I haven’t called because I am trying to make my phone battery last through the whole week. It sounds like they are doing just fine.

I hiked most of the day solo today, because Tim went on ahead to get past the church boys. I actually kind of liked to hike on-and-off with them throughout the day, because they are funny and they remind me of my Joe.