Happy 4th! Taking a short break!

Hi folks!

It’s been a sec since I’ve made a post, for which I apologize. Things can get quite busy on trail!

To summarize the most recent miles on trail, it has been super hot, and super dry. I don’t know if y’all pay attention to the weather across the country all that much, but if you did, you’d notice that the temperature in the east has been hanging around 100 °F most days, and that it hasn’t really rained much. Some old timer local that I chatted with for a bit said that VA hasn’t seen such a hot, dry summer in a long time. Apparently this is pretty anomalous in the grand scheme of things.

One thing that hikers need to pay attention to is water when it’s as dry as it is. A lot of the Appalachian Trail guides list out water sources along the trail, but it’s unwise right now to rely on these, as a lot of them are dried up. Especially when one gets up on a long ridgeline hike in the mountaintops, it hasn’t been uncommon to go 9 miles without having a water source at all. Considering it is so hot, this has posed a bit of a challenge for hiking. I had been in the habit of carrying no more than one liter of water with me, but I had to buy an additional water bottle to increase my carrying capacity to two liters, making sure to drink as much as possible to make up for the buckets of sweat that I pour out. It’s not only hot, but super humid, so I’ve pretty much had to get used to being soaked with sweat while hiking at all times. Yes, it’s gross, but it’s what we deal with! It makes me look forward to the cooler temperatures coming back as I head farther north and further towards the autumn!

Here’s a fun fact about the Appalachian mountains and the east in general: it’s pretty much covered in poison ivy. Now, I’ve never gotten poison ivy before. I had, in fact, just been boasting about this with another hiker in the very recent past. I believe somebody upstairs heard me when I said that, cracked their knuckles, and slapped me for my hubris, because almost no later than that day, I was struck with a horrible blight of poison ivy all over my back and arms. I’ll spare you the pictures, as they’d be liable to convince any number of y’all never to read this blog again, but I can assure you it was bad. I think what happened is that I must’ve inadvertently placed my shirt in some poison ivy and then put it back on. What’s worse, I didn’t realize I had it until I woke up in my tent in the middle of the night burning like fire. This meant that everything in my tent, especially my sleeping bag, was potentially contaminated with the heinous chemical that causes the itchy rash. Shoutout to Stanimal’s hiker hostel for allowing me to utilize virtually their entire backyard space as I spread out every piece of my gear and scrubbed it down with soap and water. As far as treatment goes, I couldn’t recommend more highly a good ‘ol’ dose of prednisone, as nothing else seemed to work to take the itch off.

That being said, I spent a few days slackpacking miles on the AT, as my back was totally covered in rash, and the last thing I wanted to do was carry a 30 lb pack over my rashy back in the 100 degree heat. If you recall from a previous post, slackpacking is when you pack just a day pack (a smaller pack with only the food and supplies you need for a single day of hiking) and pay a shuttle service to drop you off and pick you up to hike sections of the trail. For this, I leveraged the service at Stanimal’s in Glasgow, VA, where I set up my base of operations for a few days, with the intention of slackpacking the miles between Glasgow and Waynesboro. Some “purist” thru hikers certainly consider slackpacking to be cheating, but I think the circumstances called for it.

Of all the trail so far, Virginia has boasted some of my favorite miles. If you’ve never been to Virginia, it’s a beautiful and diverse state, laying claim to beautiful cliffside vistas, lush old-growth valleys with rivers running through them, and great people in all the towns along the way. The last stretch of Virginia will be the Shenandoah National Park, which I have heard called the “red carpet” of the AT. I am greatly looking forward to this stretch of trail, as it will be scenic, well-populated with interesting folks, and chock full of waysides for tourists, meaning that I won’t have to carry as much food! That’s always a plus when you’re hiking 20+ miles per day!

Lastly, y’all should know that I am going to take a short break from the trail. In the face of the heat, the poison ivy, and, admittedly, a bit of homesickness, I’m going to take a week-ish hiatus to travel back to Wisconsin for a bit of a reset. Rest assured, I will be coming back to the trail, and with plenty of time to finish before the winter strikes up north. I’ve actually just arrived in Hayward in time for Independence Day, a great time to visit with friends and family in the northland! If you’re reading this from Hayward, maybe I’ll see you over the course of the next week! I’ll be planning on flying back to the trail via Charlottesville, VA, refreshed, ready, and poison ivy free to tackle the Shenandoah’s, and the last of Virginia.

Until next time, folks! Happy 4th!