75 miles of hiking • 3500' elevation gain • 6 nights
My husband, Alfie, and I planned to hike SOBO from Rt. 11 (from where we left NOBO for our previous hike) and go all the way on the AT to Springer Mtn in GA. We left April 2nd and were aiming to be picked up the first weekend in June, which would have left us time to go slow and possibly take some side trails through the Smokies...
Day 1 / April 2 / Hiked 9 Miles — Decided to set up the tent at a campsite along the trail.
Day 2 / April 3 / Hiked 11 Miles — Hiked Tinker Cliffs and McAfees Knob. Before hiking up the McAfees we had a delightful lunch in a meadow. Called Grandmama from McAfees, who immediately asked worriedly if we needed to be picked up. Stayed at Johns Spring Shelter, where we met a couple of NOBO thru hikers who put our mind at ease about cooking in camp, hanging food, and other things that were still a bit mysterious to us at this point. Also learned the real reason to use earplugs: snoring in the shelter. I also realized that I sleep fifty times better with the earplugs, and of course never wake up worried about what that strange noise was.
My right shoe (Vasque Breeze), having given me NO problems for 50+ miles, began to rub against my outer ankle. It seemed to be the hard structural piece within the shoe, causing me sharp, cutting pain every time I put my foot down. Being only Day 2, I would not have this. After wedging a piece of our sham-wow beside my ankle, and having it not help nearly enough, I decided the perfect solution would be a small inflatable piece, similar to an air cast. Eventually I remembered that we had these "Buddy Fruits" liquid fruit snacks that had a plastic pouch with a screw-on top. I ate the fruit, blew into it, closed it, and wedged it in, thus ending my foot pain for the rest of the trip. Awesome.
Day 3 / April 4 / Hiked 14 Miles — We walked a half a mile to a convenience store and ate hot dogs and drank Dr. Pepper, both of which were amazing. Then we went up to Dragons Tooth, where we ran out of water and passed no water sources until we reached Pickle Branch Shelter, thirsty as hell. There we met Gadget who was trying to hike the AT in 100 days to raise money for St. Jude's. He was moving fast; I hope he reaches his goal. This night Alfie and I realized that we could zip our sleeping bags together! Snuggling is a huge morale booster. A crazy thunder storm also went through that night.
Day 4 / April 5 / Hiked 16.5 Miles — This is the day that Alfie's knee started to bother him (or at least this is when he let me know about it). It became hard to judge whether we should stop or continue at each shelter, because it really did hurt him, but he still wanted to get to the next one (bringing us closer and closer to Pearisburg). I decided to listen to music for the last part of this day, which made me feel amazing as we went across the rocky ridge of Sinking Creek Mountain with beautiful views on both sides. It did rain, snow, and hail on us a bit during the last few hours, and Alfie's knee was killing him so we were going very slow. When we arrived to the sign for Sarver Hollow Shelter, we still had to detour .5 mile downhill to get to it. Despite that, it was a wonderful new shelter with a covered porch, and we had it to ourselves.
Day 5 / April 6 / Hiked 12.2 Miles — Despite the lower mileage, this day felt very long. We did cross a lot of crazy rivers. I just felt bad for Alfie, as it was obvious by now that he didn't need to be walking. At War Spur Shelter that night I met my first female hiker other than myself. All the people coming NOBO told us the first part of our day (Day 6) would be brutally uphill. Something to look forward to...at least uphill hurt less for Alfie than downhill.
Day 6 / April 7 / Hiked 12.7 Miles — The 2000ft. uphill in the morning wasn't actually that bad, and I wonder if it was because I had been warned and anticipated the worst. At this point we were both just focused on getting to Pearisburg, still two days away. When we were close to our shelter for the night I noticed we were really close to a road that seemed to get a good bit of traffic. I knew the route went to Pearisburg...when we got to Pine Swamp Branch Shelter we were excited to see it was made of stone and had an "indoor" fireplace. I ran up to the top of a nearby hill and got enough reception on my phone to call my dad and get the weather report for the next day...which was not good. With another day to Pearisburg and Alfie's knee messed up, we did not need bad weather. That night by the fire we decided to hike back down to the road and get a ride into town.
Day 7 / April 8 / Hiked 1 Mile — We backtracked down to the road and after a mile or so got picked up by the Captain, whose place we'd passed the day before. We were in a motel room in Pearisburg by 9:30am. The hope was that the next morning, after staying off it the whole day and night, his knee might be improved and we could either wait another day or continue on. It definitely just continued to get worse so our friend Kaili drove from Roanoke to pick us up.
We will definitely be continuing to section hike the AT, hopefully starting where we left off some time this July.
Kyle Meyer
April 29, 2011
Great story. Thanks for posting this, and welcome! I really wish there were shelters out west like there are along the AT…