AT Summer '16: Partnership Shelter to Trimpi Shelter (Day 1)

Appalachian Trail, 10.6 miles

We made a quick run to Mojo's Trailside Coffeehouse for breakfast so that we would have something in our bellies by the time our shuttle came. Wouldn't you know, our shuttle guy ended up being Lone Wolf, whom you might remember from last year's trip. Dude's a legend. It was fun to see him again.

Wolf dropped us off at the Mt. Roger's headquarters and we were on the trail by about 9:30 this morning. Here we are all clean and fresh-faced. That did not last long.

It was actually a pretty moderate day, since there weren't many big elevation changes across our 11-ish miles of hiking. (That's not usually the case on the first day of a section hike. It's more typical to have a huge climb on day one, since section hikes often start at a roadside trailhead or town, and those are usually situated in a gap between mountains. We were at an advantage because our dropoff point was not in a gap.) Here are the guys pausing for a little trailside lunchtime break.

So yeah, we kind of lucked out on the moderate elevation changes today. However, very little of the AT is what I would call easy! The second half of the day there were some decent hills, plus the trail was super rocky, which was pretty hard on our feet. It took us around 3:45 to cover our 10.6 miles. Near the end, I had to lecture Jay about eating more. He hadn't eaten anything substantial all day since the Mojo's breakfast quesadilla at 7am, and he was stumbling down the trail like a drunken sailor! Finally he wolfed down some trail mix and snacks. Gotta keep an eye on that guy.

We got to the shelter in the early afternoon which was great, because it gave us some time to relax a little before getting organized and making dinner. The shelter is stone and has a nice fireplace on the back wall, which Matt and Joe took advantage of by making a nice little fire. It's not a bad place to stay, but I did see a couple mice running along the walls. Despite that, the boys and Jay and I decided to sleep in the shelter tonight. Tim of course is tenting about fifty yards away from the shelter, since he is averse to mice.

After we ate dinner, two thru-hikers showed up and made it clear they would be using the shelter also. Which is fine of course, except that they were a little loud and somewhat potty-mouthed. Even worse, though, was that the bigger of the two of them ended up being a supersonic snorer. I feared this might happen from the moment he showed up at the shelter, because there was no overlooking the fact that the guy is hugely overweight. He regaled us at dinner time with stories about how he started hiking the trail at 400 pounds (!) and had already lost 70 in the three months he's been hiking. But people, listen: that still leaves 330 pounds, every one of which was reverberating with noise to rival a freight train by 10pm. I mean this is the worst I've ever heard. After half an hour of trying to block out the noise, Jay and I ended up dragging our stuff out of the shelter and setting up our tent in the dark, about 25 yards away. Impressively, we could still hear him, but at least the volume from that far away was easier to ignore.

We are trying to really rest up, because tomorrow will be our longest day of the trip: a little over 14 miles.

AT Summer '16: Heading to Damascus (Day 0)

Today's the day! We packed up the Honda and headed to southwest Virginia for another 65-ish miles on the Appalachian Trail.  This time there are five of us: Jay, Joe, Matt, and Tim. We ended up taking two cars because five people and five backpacks was too much to shoehorn into the Honda. Here are Jay, Joe, and Matt at a gas station in northern Ohio, where we stopped to meet up with Tim. 

It will be a different experience this time, not only on account of having a larger group, but also because we are hiking north to south, reason being that we really wanted to start and end in Damascus like last time. It's such a nice trail town, so we booked the Hikers Inn hostel again and are using Sun Dog Outfitters to shuttle us north tomorrow to begin our hike at Partnership Shelter. That's just a stone's throw from the Mt. Rogers recreation area headquarters.

Since we arrived in Damascus right around dinner time, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to eat at Hey Joe's in Damascus. Fish tacos and nachos all around. Here's a good shot of Joe under his namesake sign.

The weather forecast this week looks iffy. They are saying rain will start mid-week and could continue all the way through Friday. I guess I don't mind all that much, since the temps will be pretty warm. But I really want at least one clear day near Grayson Highlands so we can see the famous wild ponies! I've been hearing about these ponies for years from other hikers who have section-hiked Virginia. The ponies were brought into the area in 1974 to graze on the highland balds and keep invasive plant species at bay. Supposedly they are pretty friendly and don't mind hikers. I really hope we see some!

Abingdon Gap Shelter to Hiker’s Inn, Damascus

Appalachian Trail, 10.4 miles

Rain was predicted today, and it came right on time, just as we packed up and set off for Damascus. It got so dark just before the rainfall started that it felt like it was about 9pm! The rain felt cool and nice, and on the last day of a hike, you don’t even really care if you get wet because you know that a shower and dry clothes are just a few hours away.

We made great time today since the hike was mostly downward. It was only about 10am when we reached the Tennessee/Virginia state line. It sure felt good to put another state behind me!

By the time we got into Damascus just three and a half miles later, the rain had stopped.

Once we got down off the mountain, it was a short walk to Hikers Inn, where the owners, Paul and Lee, graciously provided us with thick, warm towels and a hot shower. It’s a lovely place and it was great to talk with Paul about his 2010 thru-hike.

And of course we then bee-lined it to Hey Joe’s for a fish taco lunch.

The day was topped off by a nice dinner at the Damascus Old Mill Inn with our Georgia friends (Zach, Scott, Jeff, and Rusty). They also finished their hike today, and were staying just a block away from Hikers Inn.

Tomorrow we head home. And I already have all sorts of plans for the next hike.

Double Springs Shelter to Abingdon Gap Shelter

Appalachian Trail, 8.3 miles

We were able to reach Jay by phone when the trail crossed 421 at Low Gap today. Thankfully, we found out that Matt is fine. Well, not exactly fine - he broke two vertebrae in his neck in a wrestling accident over the weekend, and had to have a metal rod put in to hold them together! But the surgery was successful and he’s going to be okay. He’s been in the hospital for a few days but is going home today. I texted him and his reply was pretty chipper so hopefully he is not feeling too bad.

We saw Bob Peoples today at a trailhead with a bunch of other guys wielding chainsaws and weed whips. Thursdays are trail-maintenance days for their group, and they were going at it. It is so cool the way they serve like that.

I can’t believe that tonight is our final night on the trail! We are camping with the four guys from Georgia. Three of them have hammocks, and they showed me how to hang them. I’m thinking of getting one. I’m not too crazy about the weight and bulk of a tent, so a hammock might be in my future.

I'm grateful for lots of time to relax and enjoy the quiet of the woods on days like this when we finish early. I think Tim is liking it too. Here he is, hard at work lounging and sudoku'ing. If you click the picture you can see the hammocks of our Georgia friends in the background.

Besides the four Georgia guys, there are two other people here at the shelter tonight. I yogi’d* some salt and olive oil from one of them because my dinner was so bland. Wouldn’t mind some sriracha sauce, but no one seems to have that out here. I seriously cannot quit thinking of the fish tacos I’m going to get at Hey Joe’s tomorrow.

*Yogi (verb): The art of "letting" food be offered cheerfully by strangers without actually asking them directly. Named after Yogi the Bear and his goodnatured luck in obtaining picnickers’ goodies.

Iron Mountain Shelter to Double Springs Shelter

Appalachian Trail, 7.6 miles

Finally a gentler day. Short and not much elevation gain. Despite the ease, I’ve developed a small blister on my left heel, so I babied my feet a bit today by going slower.

A mile or so into today’s hike, we passed a grave (!) along the trail - certainly not the kind of thing you see every day while hiking. A tombstone marks the burial place of Nick Grindstaff, a man who lived his last 40 years in this region as a hermit. Legend says that he was kept company only by his dog, a steer, and a pet rattlesnake. His tombstone’s inscription is rather morose: “Lived alone, suffered alone, and died alone.”

The trail also passed through a cow pasture today and it was oddly refreshing to step out of the woods into a big open space with no trees or rocks - just lots of grassy open hills (and plenty of cowpies). The cows were only mildly curious about the humans hiking past them.

A fence-hop was built into the trail as a way for hikers to get into and out of the cows’ fence (without letting the cows out).

We arrived at Double Springs Shelter in time for lunch, and it was Thai day at the Wheeler Bistro. Tim had a Thai peanut noodle dish, and I had Thai tuna. It was the best tuna I ever tasted. I am so happy my appetite is working properly on this trip! In previous trips I have had such a hard time refueling, because I seemed always plagued by a low-grade nauseous feeling, and no food ever seemed appetizing. I talked to a nutritionist about it a few months ago, and she suggested I eat a couple of dates and almonds every few hours while hiking (even if I’m not hungry), just to keep the pipes busy. It has helped a lot. I’ve had almost no nausea, and in fact right now I’m really jonesing for some fish tacos from Hey Joe’s in Damascus. Which is where we plan to eat our first “real” food after the trip is over.

Tonight we feel very spoiled to have a campsite right next to a spring. It is such a luxury to finally have as much water as we want. Tim even carved out a little pool downstream where we could soak our feet in the icy-cold water.

There is no cell service where we are tonight. Which is disturbing because Tim received a cryptic text message from Jay and we are not able to reach him to figure out what he meant. It said “I trust Jeanette told you about Matt.” (Matt is my nephew.) I have no idea what that means, but Jay apparently sent me a message about Matt that I didn’t receive yet because the cell signal is so poor, and I’m worried that something bad has happened to him. :( I’m trying not to think about it until we can reach a place where we can call someone and get clarification.

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.

Campsite Near US 321 to Vandeventer Shelter

Appalachian Trail, 9.1 miles

As we hoped, there was a faucet at Watauga Lake, so we cameled up. It was nice to have plenty of water for our long climb up to Vandeventer.

Today I lost Tim for about two hours. We came to a place where the trail diverged a couple different ways, and we were both scoping around and looking at maps for a minute. When I looked up, I thought he had gone ahead of me, but he had actually stopped to check out one of the side trails. Not knowing this, off I went toward the white blazes, pushing hard to try to catch up with him, not realizing I had actually left him behind me. We caught up with each other about four miles later at a muddy spring just shy of Watauga Dam Road. Though I like Tim’s company, I can’t say I minded hiking solo for a little bit. I do love to be alone in the woods.

We gained a lot of elevation north of Watauga Dam, so it was definitely another long and challenging day. We stopped for a fiver at the dam(n) access road and met a few guys from Georgia who were really nice and funny. Sounds like they will be hiking pretty much the same itinerary as we are this week, so I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of them as the week goes on.

I became the recipient of some awesome trail magic this afternoon. When we arrived at Vandeventer Shelter, we chatted with two thru-hikers who were resting before pushing on to the rest of their 20-some mile day. The topic of my lost sandals came up, and without hesitation the one dude unclipped his crocs from his pack and handed them to me! I was like, “Wha? No way! You need these!” But he insisted he never wears them and was planning to pick up some flip-flops in Damascus anyway. I’m telling you, I was giddy with excitement over these battered up plastic shoes, no matter that they are men’s size 12. My feet were so blissfully happy to get out of my boots! Later I found out the guy’s trail name is “Mom.” Totally makes sense.

Around 4pm, two groups of kids showed up at the shelter with guides. There is a group of girls heading southbound, and a group of boys going northbound. They are all between 12 and 15 and they’re simultaneously adorable and annoying (the girls tend to do a lot squealing and screaming). A few are teary-eyed because of blisters, so we gave them some bodyglide and moleskin to take the edge off. My thru-hiker friend (“Mom”) helpfully gave them some candy and then went on his way toward Damascus. The kids are all from a big church in Florida and they’re doing a trip through a ministry called Wilderness Trail. The boys will stay here at Vandeventer tonight and the girls still have a ways to go, as they’re shooting for Watauga Lake before nightfall. (Good on 'em... the poor things are doing a 12-mile day and seem a bit ill-prepared.)

The shelter is pretty crowded tonight, and there are quite a few other hikers trickling in still. Right now it’s 8pm and I think there are about 20 people around. Tim and I are tenting again. I usually prefer shelters, but since we have the tent anyway, and there are so many people about, the tent will do just fine. Also Tim doesn’t care for the shelters because the possibility of mice kind of freaks him out.

There is water here, but it’s almost half a mile down a ridiculously steep side trail. Still, we need to really fill up because we hear that there won’t be a lot of good water north of here tomorrow.

The view here at Vandeventer Shelter is really pretty. I didn’t mention this to anyone, but this shelter was the site of a murder in the seventies. A solo hiker was killed with a hatchet(!) by a guy who wanted her fancy new backpack. Luckily Tim’s backpack is much newer and nicer than mine, so I feel quite safe. :)

Kincora Hostel to Campsite Near US 321

Appalachian Trail, 8.6 miles

We could not get out of Kincora fast enough this morning. Impressively, Tim braved the spiders all night and was understandably ready to scram by 6:30am. As was I, since the cats had crawled all over me all night as I slept half-sitting-up on a grimey, smelly couch near the woodstove. On the bright side, maybe the lingering smell of cats on my clothes will drive away any mice we encounter in the shelters this week.

After a quarter-mile hike down Dennis Cove Road, we were on the AT! It felt good to see those white blazes again! Within only a couple miles we came upon an awesome rock wall and the beautiful Laurel Falls. I swear it is like medicine to be out here.

It was a hard climb up to the top of Pond Flats. Harder than I expected. I sweated buckets all day long and am a little concerned about water. Water is supposedly very sparse for the next 12 miles or so, and I am drinking like a fish. I don’t have much left in the platypus tonight, but there is supposedly water available from a spigot at Watauga Lake, which is a quarter mile north tomorrow morning.

In the bad news department, when we stopped for the day, I put down my pack and made the devastating discovery that somewhere along the way, my sandals had come unclipped from my backpack and apparently fell out on the trail. This seriously messes up my comfort level for the week, because it means I won’t have any alternate footwear in the evenings when my feet need a break from my boots. I am so bummed.

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.

Detroit Free Press International Half Marathon

I really should try to be better about blogging my races. I did a few good ones this past summer to get ready for the big cahuna, but honestly they all kind of pale in comparison, so they didn't feel memorable enough to blog about. The Detroit Free Press half marathon was today and it's pretty dang fun—although my left IT band didn't really think so, as I had stop a few times and give it a little love. Stretching seems to do the trick, but the moral of the story is: stretch early and often. That was really the only way I could get the job done. But done it is, and at a meh-just-okay time of 2:27. I had hoped to squeeze in under 2:20, but whatev. At least I was faster than everyone sitting home on the couch, eh?

One of the things I love about big events like this is all the signs people hold as they cheer for the runners. Some of the really good ones I saw:

• "Way to go Melissa and all you adorable random strangers"
• "Toenails are overrated! Keep running!"
• "Run like a damn Yankee" (in reference to the Tigers running the Yankees out of town last week)
• "Run like you stole something"
• "The Zombie Apocalypse just happened, and they're right behind you. Keep running!"
• Two-tenths of a mile into the race: "Just 26 miles to go, people! You got this!"

Also some of the shirts that runners wear are pretty funny. Here are ones that I liked a lot:

• "I am a bomb technician. If you see me running, you better try and keep up."
• "WTF?? (Where's The Finish?)"
• On a half-marathoner: "I thought you said 1.31"
• On a full-marathoner: "Because 26.3 miles would just be crazy"
• "In my mind I'm a Keynyan, but in my legs, I'm a chubby white guy"

Getting my groove back

Crazy how life goes sometimes. A series of unfortunate events (none of them big or catastrophic, but the sum of which has been somewhat overhwelming) has caused almost three and a half years to go by in the blink of an eye. Hence the curtailment of most things recreational, including, unfortunately, both hiking and blogging. 

Which brings us to today when, I'm happy to report, the queen mum's getting her groove back.

Oh it's not like three and a half years have gone by with NO activity. Somehow during that time I managed to complete my first half-marathon, hiked the Manistee forest with the man I love (it was part of our 20-year anniversary celebration), ran a few 5k races, a few 10k races, got myself all smitten with yoga, and a few other things. But I won't kid you—all this took a backseat to just getting by. Basically I've been kinda busy with slogging through some wicked-hard parenting struggles and general midlife BS.

But now I'm back. The ship's starting to turn in a good direction. THANK GOD. Evidence:

• I'm training for my 2nd half marathon, which will be in October. It's the same one I did a couple years ago, the Detroit-to-Windsor Free Press race. I'm pretty geeked about it.
• The general climate in the household (I'm talking emotional/spiritual, not the indoor temp) has become fairly agreeable about 70% of the time, which I can live with. Because that's a hell of a lot better than it was a year or two ago, or even six months ago. Oh and have I mentioned that parenting is really hard? Yeah.
• As part of my half-marathon training I've been doing a couple 5ks here and there and this morning I did one in Lansing to benefit the Greater Lansing Sports Hall of Fame. It was a beautiful cool morning and crazy-fun to run along the riverside boardwalk next to the Grand River, and near the Michigan state capitol (you can kinda see it in the picture below). 

Oh and guess who got first in her age group? Yeah, this girl.

Now please don't equate that with the notion that I was fast, because I wasn't. I ran my typical pace of about 9.5-minute miles. But as luck would have it, all nine of the other ladies in their forties were even slower than me! Wooty woot!

A medal for my trouble? Why yes please, I'd love one. (Excuse the hair.)

Race for the Cure in Lansing

The fam and I did a 5k race today — the kids' first one ever! It was a Race For the Cure to benefit breast cancer research. This is pretty important to us, as my sister Eva had breast cancer a few years back and, thankfully, is now doing great.

It was a cool experience to be there, especially because there are quite a few people whose T-shirts indicate that they are survivors, or that they're doing the race in honor or in memory of someone with breast cancer. And in this particular race, there were a handful of people whose shirts simply said "I love boobs." No sense mincing words I guess!

Here's Maria and Joe with the state capital in the background:

Maria taking a water break:

Joe in front of the capital (and no, he's not dancing the mambo, he's just trying to pose for my camera without breaking his stride):

Red Rock Canyon

There are few things better than uninterrupted time with your BFF - unless it's uninterrupted time with your BFF while simultaneously taking in an amazing hike. I was lucky to have that over Easter weekend when Janet and I flew the coop and landed in Vegas. And no, I didn't win big while I was there (alas). Neither of us are big gamblers, at least not in the monetary sense :) ... but we've decided that LV provides a fairly cheap getaway to someplace warm and dry, which for two pastey Michiganders is a welcome respite from the deluge of snow and cold we've had this year. Fact, the kids had a snow day just a week before we left. Snow days in April. Preposterous but true. Give me a blistering-hot desert, please, with a little sunburn on the side.

Last time we went to Las Vegas (has it already been two years?), we went to see the Grand Canyon; this time we stayed local and took a day trip to Red Rock Canyon for an amazing day of hiking and scrambling. Maybe not as spectacular as the Grand Canyon, but the climbing is way more accessible, at least for a midwesterner. It was like a playground of boulders. Beautiful, easy, non-technical, thoroughly do-able - but still pretty thrilling.

We started out attempting the White Rock/La Madre Spring trail, a four-hour loop. It looked like this:

It was cool and all, but the view from that particular trail didn't hold a match to some of the rock formations we'd seen a couple miles to the southeast, an area called Calico Hills. So we bailed on the loop and hightailed it to Calico 1 and 2.

The Calicos are much more suited to thrill-seekers, and we saw quite a few climbers ascending some of the sheer rockfaces nearby. It didn't look quite as benign as Planet Rock, I can assure you.

We busied ourselves happily scrambling and climbing over some of the "smaller" boulders, which ranged in size from a refrigerator to a two-car garage. Awesomeness all around. Here's what it looked like:

There were also some funky desert flowers blooming, including this Indian Paintbrush:

All this was just the shot in the arm we needed to go back and face a few more weeks of cold and damp until spring comes.

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.

The Great Train Race

Alright, I have to showboat a little here.

Let me preface what I'm about to say with one important fact: despite my goal of entering at least one 5k or 10k per year for the last who-knows-how-many years, I haven't placed in even one running race since high school. And I'm okay with that, since running really isn't a passion of mine — it's just a mechanism by which I try to maintain some level of physical stamina, so that I can take my twice-annual backpacking trip without fear of a cardiac event. (That, and races are just fun. You get a cool T-shirt and they feed you afterwards.)

Well. Given my past performance, you can imagine my disbelief when I placed second in my age bracket in The Great Train Race, which was held in conjunction with Ypsilanti's Heritage Festival.

I'm only a little bit embarrassed to admit that when I saw the results, for a brief and glorious moment I felt a swell of kinship to Michael Phelps. Yes, I'd like to thank my family and friends for all their support, and especially my training partner, Buster...

Okay, so there was no tear-jerker award ceremony, and at only 140 entrants, it was definitely a very small race. And never mind the fact that I was second out of only 10 women in my age bracket (which was 35-39, since I know you're wondering). And the fact that my time was a leisurely 28:38. And the fact that a 69-year-old man beat me by well over a minute. No matter. I still placed, and that was a pretty big (and unexpected) rush.

The host of the event was The Corner Brewery, a nifty little beer garden and bottler of Arbor Brewing Company beers. No beer for this runner, though, as I wanted to finish The Great Train Race without turning into a Great Train Wreck before the finish line. Plus it was way too early for beer - the race started at 8:10 a.m.

Why 8:10 a.m., you ask? Well, the starting line is right next to the train tracks by the Ypsilanti Farmers Market, and the race officially starts as soon as the 8:10 Amtrak comes barreling past. For a pretty sweet half-minute or so, all the runners run parallel to this massive and thunderous train. It's really cool.

Long story short, I ended up with this kitschy but adorable medal, which the kids are convinced is made of real silver.

I haven't tried to convince them otherwise.