Hot and Stormy

I am now in Waynesboro, PA 1,057 miles from Springer Mtn. I couple of hours ago I finally crossed the Mason-Dixon line. Unfortunately I missed the sign marking it. So I was a little disappointed. Crossing into Pennsylvania ended up being fairly anti-climatic. Just hot. It has been hot since we left Harper's Ferry.

We got a late start leaving Harper's Ferry because I was waiting for a delivery of new trekking poles. Those arrived at about 1pm, and then Peacock, Daddy-O and I headed out. Shadow had left earlier since he needed to pick some things up from the hostel where we spent the previous night. So the three of us headed out into the heat and humidity. We knew that there was a potential for thunderstorms but we were not too worried. The trail starts out on the C&O canal and then heads up a ridge. As we started going up, we also started hearing thunder. We put on our pack covers and picked up the pace. It was so humid that we were sweating rivers. Then it started to rain. Peacock did not think it would rain hard enough to wash all the sweat off. He was wrong. As the rain started coming down the wind picked up and the thunder and lightning continued. The wind got so strong that the rain was coming in sideways. It was raining hard enough that the trail became one giant river with puddles above our ankles. We ended up being very lucky. After the wind died down we started coming across trees in the trail. In the last half a mile before the shelter we climbed over 4 or 5 trees in the middle of the trail. When we arrived at the shelter we stripped down, dried off and talked with Shadow and a couple of other hikers who had waited out the storm in the shelter. One tree had fallen about 50 feet away from the shelter. At this point even though we had originally planned on continuing on, we changed our minds and decided to stay.

The shelter was a double decker and the four of us stayed in the bottom that night with Bad Idea, Rhino, and Rhino's dog. Rhino is a fire builder extraordinaire. He even puts PeakAxe to shame. In the wet he gathered logs and stumps and put together a fire that was still going strong the next morning when we left. We had a little kid staying on the top level roasting marshmallows over the fire for us. He became more efficient when we suggested roasting more than one at a time on the stick. However, Rhino's dog was not the most shelter trained dog. When he arrived, the dog went straight to my sleeping pad and lay down. He was quickly removed, but he did spend the whole night cuddling with Shadow, much to his disgust.

On the upper level were two sets of section hikers, a father-son and a mother-son. After dark, as we were getting ready to sleep, we heard a cry for help. We listened and heard it again. We were not sure where it was coming from at first. We thought that it might be someone hurt from a tree falling, or from climbing over one. Then we realized that it was coming from the privy. Shadow went over to the privy and after a couple of minutes was able to open it up for the mother. The next morning we named her Breakout. The privy had a handle that you needed to turn, very unusual for a privy. That was what took Shadow so long to open it. The handle on the inside had broken off, and after Breakout closed the door, she was unable to open it. This made me feel better on a couple of levels. Now I am not the only person who was been stuck in a restroom on this hike. Second, I did not lock myself in, and thirdly, I was able to get out on my own.

The next morning we set out again. The forecast we had seen said this was supposed to be another 85 degree day with a chance of thunderstorms. As we hiked the trail we were able to assess the damage from the day before. Some sections were worse than others, but most had a fair number of leaves or small branches on the ground. Other sections we littered with small to large trees across the trail. One section was so bad that we climbed from fallen tree to fallen tree and briefly lost the trail. When ever we were close to roads or power lines we came across the sounds of chainsaw. The more we saw, the more we realized that we had been lucky the previous day. By the time we stoppped for lunch we were tired of flinging the branches off the trail.
Around 3:30 and about 3.5 miles from our destination for the night we came to the Washinton Mounument. This is not the one in DC, but the one in MD which was the first mounument built for George Washington. From the top we saw a thunderhead to the north and heard some thunder. We decided to play it safe and go back to a day shelter at the base of the mounument and wait out the storm. The water was out in the park because a tree had fallen on the building housing the pump the night before, but the caretaker was able to give us enough water from a 5 gallon jug so we could cook dinner while waiting out the storm. We ate dinner, and the storm didn't arrive. Around 6:30 we decided that we had waited enough and pushed on. The storm never materialized. We pulled into the next shelter around 8, set up camp and went to bed.
The forecast for the next three days was 95 and humid. When we woke up it was foggy and we went back to sleep. We finally hit the trail around 8:45. It stayed foggy for the morning. As we approached the next shleter it was starting to get sunny. Unfortunately our favorite homeless person's stuff was there. So instead of napping for a couple of hours we had lunch and kept going. At this point it was horribly hot. Luckily we can across a nice stream and spent a while lying in it, washing off and cooling down. We had the thought of hiking slowly enough to not builld up a sweat. Once we started going uphill it was hopeless. Part way up the hill was a rock outcrop that Peacock and I checked out. We came across a copperhead resting in a crevice. He was not bothering us, so we decided to not bother him.
This morning we decided to get up early and beat the heat. We were able to do half of it. We were on the trail at 6:30, but by 7 we were sweating rivers. By 9:30 we were at the road and hitched into town. The plan is to stay in AC as long as possible today and then hit the trail again around 5 or 6 tonight when it we hopefully be a bit cooler.
I have not been able to update pictures recently, but Peacock and Daddy-O are also keeping a trail journal that does have a fair number of pictures, including some of me. That is at www.trailjournals.com look for it under Daddy-O's 2008 Appalachian Trail hike.