Im out of Virginia! Hooray! And cheers also for being past the thousand mile mark, the phycological half way point, Harpers Ferry, WV and the Appalachian Trail headquarters. Here they take your picture for their record of hikers that come through this point on the trail. I was number 653 of the thru hikers that have made it into harpers ferry this year.
The days leading up to harpers ferry were pretty eventful. After a nights stay and resupply in Front Royal we headed for the final push to harpers ferry with high temps in the 90's. The day looked easy enough but coming up the first hill the sweat started to pour. Soon we came to the realization that this was going to make for a long day. We decided to stop mid afternoon at a shelter for a long break to get out of the heat. On a scorcher like this one its best to get out on the trail in the early morning as the suns just coming up and plan on coming off to break during the hottest part of the day and hiking into the evening. The heat wave would still be around the next day. Same plan of stoping in the afternoon but later on this day we'd be coming into "the roller coaster". Fear the roller coaster is what I'd been hearing for awhile. Its basically 14 miles of multiple ascents and decents..its rocky and its steep. So to end the day we did two 500ft uphills and downhills. Coming close to camp the roar of thunder was nearby. I hurried to beat the oncoming storm and get my tent up. I failed. The storm came on quick turning the forest dark. As soon as I got to camp and pulled my tent out it started to rain down. This was the hardest rain I've seen thus far and it came at a bad time. We weren't staying at a shelter so there was no where to take cover. So what you have to do is just sit and wait it out…luckily my tent is made so I could use it as a tarp. So my dad and I were now huddled in a 1 person "tarp" soaking wet but at least we weren't sitting in the rain helpless and had gotten shower:) After about a hour the storm had passed and we got the go ahead to set up camp and get dry. Sitting in my tent before getting to sleep, there was a sound of what I thought was gun fire and then what sounded like a truck driving through the forest…it wasn't either. It was a huge tree coming down from all the rain that evening. It was pretty shocking and makes you think twice about where you set up your tent. The next morning we were up and realized were were missing some things.
I guess at our long break the day before we had left our water treatment drops. The only way I have to treat the water were drinking. We figured they were left back about 3 miles at a shelter on the beginning of the roller coaster. We were low on water and about 15 miles from a road to town where the only thing wed be able to get for water purification would be bleach. It was looking like we'd be hiking 6 hard extra miles that day on top of the rest of the roller coaster back to get the treatment. I thought what would probably be okay to do was to hike on without treating any water we'd drink. I had heard that people go the whole distance of the trail and not treat any water so we decided to take the risk of possibly being sick for a week and get to a town where we could look for some kind of water treatment. So were just leaving camp and I put away the rain cover for my pack and out falls our water treatment. Boom. Back in bussiness with a little weight lifted off our sholders. Taking our ride on the rest of the roller coaster that day. That evening we decided to end the day at the blackburn a.t center.
The blackburn center is a big cabin with a caretaker and is used as a free hostle. We got in and it was totally unexpected there was watermelon and beer out. We were told the buck room was filled but we could tent or sleep out on the wrap around porch. The porch sounded like something differnt. This was a mistake. That night, us and few others tired to get some sleep while being attacked by nats and mosqittoes. The screened in porch was not the way to go. By the morning there was only 2 of the 6 hikers on the porch and it wasn't me and dad. I gave in at about 1am and set up my tent. Finally I was able to sleep without itching and swatting bugs away. In the morning the caretakers cooked pancakes for the 12 or so hikers there. We were headed into Harpers Ferry that day. What a great day it turned out to be! :)
