Another monster day; this is the week where you earn the right to climb Katahdin. Haven’t seen the sun in three days, spent the night in the Glasgow town shelter (no motels) that was nearly flooded, sleeping bag is damp, rain again all day, 20 miles and over 5000 feet uphill. When I started this morning I didn’t know how I was going to do 20 miles, my left foot had another blister in the recurring spot that makes me forefoot strike and the trail was about to go straight up.
It wasn’t long into the climb that I decided to collapse the trekking poles and throw them onto my pack. My hands were getting rubbed raw from so many hours of holding onto soaking wet grips. I went at a slow pace up the mountain but made steady progress. The blister thing is weird because once I walk a few miles it doesn’t really hurt to step heel first, but unless I consciously force my foot to land that way every step it reverts back to landing flatfooted for a day or two. I was still going slowly up along the ridge until I decided to go for a dose of ibuprofen. Seems like months since I’ve needed any but it worked wonders today. I was able to walk correctly and faster, then I had a nice lunch of peanut-butter tortillas and felt almost as good as new for a while. At the shelter for lunch we also saw in the log book that Wilderness had been in earlier for lunch so we were looking forward to seeing her again at Brown Mountain Creek.
While this stretch of middle Virginia has some big climbs and long days the forest has been spectacular since leaving Daleville. Even at the lower elevations everything is verdant green with moss covered logs and dense trees. With the massive amount of rain yesterday and steady sprinkling today the forest is even more alive with water. Every stream is brimming with water, every hillside cascade is running, every leaf is glistening, and every creek is roaring.
Before leaving Glasgow this morning another thru-hiker asked me, “what will you do if you get a couple miles past the first shelter and it starts pouring?” “I’ll keep walking man, it’s just water.” I replied. This was one of the few things that actually kept him quiet for more than 10 seconds. It never did pour today, but I got plenty wet and somehow I felt better during the last two miles than the first two. The soreness where the blister was has gone down and now I’m finally dry again in the shelter. The long 20 miles put me right at the base of an even fiercer looking mountain to climb first thing tomorrow. Gonna take it easy on the Fourth though – only 15 and change miles!