There’s now 300.3 miles of trail between me and Springer mountain. Hard to believe it’s been almost a month already, the days go by pretty quick. The daily routine of wake up, pack, hike, unpack, eat, sleep has become ordinary; the 15+ mile days less intimidating.
Firescald Knob was the featured climb of today’s 15.7 miles. In addition to the cool name, Firescald provided views of something I hadn’t seen before from the AT – flat land. The trail is still following the NC/TN border so looking west from the ridge the Tennessee Valley was visible a few miles down the mountainsides. Lots of farms stretched out across the valley floor, a far cry from the tree covered mountains dominating every other AT biew to date. The terrain coming down from the ridge was rocky, more like climbing boulders than walking trail in places. A few rocks were big enough that I had to take off the trekking poles and kind of slide down. Those extra treacherous sections have been pretty small and relatively infrequent. It transitioned back to normal terrain shortly and the mile before Jerry Cabin was probably the smoothest, flattest mile yet.
I think I’m going to be changing my trail name from Raven to Rylu. I’ve been hearing for most of the trail that there is another Raven. This other Raven is just a few days ahead, and a girl about 25, from Germany. It would be one thing if someone else weeks ahead was Raven, but some of the northbound hikers have met her, and most of southbounders have, so the most common response I get when I say I’m Raven is, “there’s another Raven, and she’s hotter” No one can come up with anything better for me, so Rylu it will be. Doesn’t really mean anything in particular, just a name I created so hopefully no one else has this one. Hopefully I’ll be able to update the blog graphics at some point.
Even with relatively long, almost 16 mile days there is a lot of extra daylight to spare. I’m so accustomed to Arizona’s lack of daylight savings time that I’m still getting used to having good daylight past 8 and no darkness until after 9. Still three weeks until the summer solstice too. I took an extra long break at lunch today in the middle of the big climb, about 45 minutes, and still finished the day by 5 o’clock. My feet felt better at the end of the day than they have in a long time. The zero day at Hot Springs, low miles yesterday, and long midday rest all seem to have helped.