Day 40 (5/30) - I Stand Alone

Day 40 - 21.7 mi/454.2 mi tot
1 mi N of Vandeventer Shelter to Abingdon Gap Shelter

A huge day for me but not a ton of other hikers around me today. Somehow a ton of people are at this shelter though...looks like a tent city.

This was my biggest mileage yet and sets me up well to get into Damascus in the morning tomorrow. Got some trail magic near TN91 where a cooler full of sodas was left. Took one with me for lunch to go with my PB&J on a tortilla.

Other than that just a bunch of walking today through the woods. Hopefully Goat, Buck 20, Burl, Tabasco and Brandon catch up in Damascus tomorrow for some R&R.

And wow is this tent big with me just in it alone...the new smaller tent that is coming will be quite a change when it arrives.

Everything that I can see is changing

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek

Leaving on a jet plane (or a matrix)

Well as you may have figured out I am no longer on the AT.  I spent about 1.5 weeks coming to this decision and it was not an easy one to make.  I was having some major foot pain that wasn't getting any better and because I have chosen a career that requires me to be on my feet all day I was concerned about long term damage.  Also, I really really didn't like the hiking part.  I was hoping that it would get better and I would learn to like it, but after 400 miles I think I hated it even more, especially the stupid uphills.  I loved everything else about this trip, the people, the camping, being with Matt....I really didn't even mind being dirty and smelly.  So, I'll be bouncing around a bit and meeting up with Matt to provide trail magic.  I'll also be spending some time in Spokane before heading back to find an apartment.  It makes it a little easier for Matt he now gets to come back to an apartment with everything moved in :-) 

Lindsay was awesome and drove 6 hours each way to come and get me, so I would like to nominate her for sister of the year.  

On the plus side I have lost several inches and my clothes don't fit anymore....all while eating anything I wanted and in just over a month.  It's the new fad diet :-)

Princess out....back to real life and Sabrina.

Day 39 (5/29) - walk it out

Day 39 - 18.6 mi/432.5 mi tot
Braemar Castle, Hampton, TN to 1 mi N of Vandeventer Shelter

A good first day of solo hiking for me with a good start covering about 9 miles in 3 hours. This put me at the Shook Branch Picnic Area on Watauga Lake. There I ran into a hungover thru hiker who gave me some good advice. He said that when you are down or things aren't going well out here, the best way to deal with it is to "walk it out". Also conveniently a song title :-)

I feel like things are going well even with Princess not here but it is still a different feeling after spending the last 38 days together 24 hours a day. I will just have to get used to it and move forward on my way north to Maine.

That will be one of the biggest changes for the trip now. Since there is still a good chance that I would be able to complete the trail straight through to Maine without flip flopping moving at a slightly faster pace, I am going to attempt to do just that and work on making the miles to make that happen. There is also incentive to move faster to get back to Princess sooner and maybe get a short break before returning to work.

Some of the highlights of today:
- McDonalds breakfast burritos
- a fawn deer on the trail right in front of me that did everything but rub itself on my leg (which I didn't let it do so its mom would still take care of it)
- some cool trail magic from a couple of campers on the lake. They were just fixing lunch as I walked by today and as I was playing with their dog they asked if I would like some pork chops and eggs for lunch. Of course I would so I hung out there for a while and had a lunch that was way more exciting than my PB&J on a tortilla that I planned.
- completing my longest day yet and camping relatively early on a small bluff overlooking the lake from 1600 feet above.

(I have no witty song lyrics for this one since my rap song lyric knowledge is extremely limited past the late 1990s)

- Snowfox
Sent on the go from my Peek

Day 38 (5/28) - zero

Day 38 - 0 mi/413.7 mi tot
Kincora Hikers Hostel and Braemar Castle

Spent the whole morning at Kincora eating several breakfasts and hanging out with the hiker crew on Prncess' last full day out here before returning to the "real" world. Lindsay drove down to pick up Princess and drive .me into Damascus to pick up some new warm weather gear and drop some food boxes there for Goat, Buck 20 and Burl.

Sent the night at Braemar Castle in Hampton to get me ready to move on in the morning. It is a great house and really nice place to stay.

Heading out in the norning for my first day solo hiking.

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek

Day 37 (5/27) - every day for us something new and nothinf else matters

Day 37 - 11.8 mi/413.7 mi tot
Laurel Fork to Kincora Hikers Hostel, Hampton, TN

Today was a difficult but good day all at once. We did the 11.8 mi into Kincora in great time but Princess did decide that it would be her last day of hiking on the AT. She will post more info on that later.

Kincora is a great hostel and run by Bob Peoples totally on donations but the place is really nice. We stayed in the treehouse room, and yes it is actually in a set of trees, which was pretty cool except for the number of spiders we saw near the room which cut into Princess' sleep time.

Not too much else to talk about today but there will be more posts in the near future. I am still moving forward on the AT and we will have to see what my pace and mileage will be as I keep moving.

She will be missed.

Open mind for a different view.

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek

Day 36 (5/26) - cold hearted snake

Day 36 - 12.6 mi/401.9 mi tot
Mountain Harbour B&B to Laurel Fork

The breakfast was unreal this morning and we all ate until we were stuffed. French toast, biscuits and gravy, egg scrambles with fresh veggies, cinammon rolls, ham, hash browns, bananna pudding and fresh fruit. She even served chocolate milk. How could a bunch of hungry hikers ask for more!

Anyway, that translated into a late start for us, making it unlikely that we would actually go the 18 miles we had thought about doing. Oh well, along our shortened day we had several wildlife sightings:
- a turtle: we finally caught up with the turtles we have been chasing each day (that is one of our running jokes that we move slower than a herd of turtles)
- a 3.5 foot long black snake: probably not poisonous but Princess jumped and said some things that I can't put in a PG-13 blog.

We got pictures of both and will get them posted soon. We are about 4 days away from Damascus VA and are looking forward to another zero day. Should be there for Memorial Day.

He's a lover boy at play he don't play by rules...ahhhh back when Paula Abdul wasn't nuts.

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek

Day 35 (5/25) - its your chance do the dance do the hump

Day 35 - 15.9 mi/389.3 mi tot
Roan High Knob Shelter to Mountain Harbour B&B, Roan Mtn, TN

Who knew I would actually get a chance to complete the Phi Delt '02 trifecta on this trip? But with a day where we crossed Little Hump Mtn and Hump Mtn it was too good to pass up. Not a bad day overall where we made good miles, had some great views, saw a cool barn-turned-shelter at Overmountain Shelter, missed a quick afternoon rainstorm and pushed past our planned stopping place to make it to this B&B. We are set up in our tent on the lawn and got a chance to take a shower too. We also get what is supposed to be a great breakfast in the morning before moving on. Overall a success.

We were talking and thought that some of our dedicated followers might be interested in knowing more about our day to day lives here on the trail so we plan to include posts about various aspects of what we do. Today's topic is my favorite - food.

In general we eat whatever we can get our hands on, like today where we showed up at one shelter to find a cooler full of sodas (some nice trail magic). What we generally plan to eat usually looks like this:
- Breakfast: a granola bar and a smoothie. The smoothies are things that Princess worked hard to make before we left (see some of our old posts) and contain freeze dried fruit, dried whole milk, protein powder and instant pudding. We have a bunch of different flavor combinations and they get made while we pack up the tent in the morning and the pudding is rehydrated by the time we are all packed and ready to go. A nice quick way to get out of camp in the morning without firing up the stove, although oatmeal is always an alternative.
- Morning snack: a candy bar. Snickers, Twix and Zero bars are our favorite choices.
- Lunch: we usually carry a jar of peanut butter premixed with jelly that we spread on tortillas, pitas or some other form of bread. Sometimes we do PB with honey. We also mix in some tuna packets with some jerkey or power bars for some more variety. There is also usually some GORP consumed here (we do cashews, raisins, reeses pieces and candy corn) or some type of dried fruit snack.
- afternoon snack: we usually have a protein drink (Scivation Extend orange flavor) or an electrolyte drink with some Cliff Shot Rocks during the afternoon to keep us going until dinner.
- Dinner: ahhhh, the only meal we cook. We have a bunch of meals we made ahead of time (spaghetti with beef, hamburger soup, mac and cheese, mac and cheese with beef, orange pepper chicken, and chicken curry). Any of these meals get supplemented with a package of ramen noodles for bulk and a package of instant potatoes as a second dinner. For the plain mac and cheese we also throw in some meat (tuna, chicken or sausage) for some extra protein. If we eat a dinner we buy along the way we prefer the ramen, potato, tuna mix with a second dinner of more potatoes. Good stuff. We also add olive oil to each meal for extra fat and calories in the meal.

More episodes to come later.

Stop what you're doin' 'cause I'm about to ruin.

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek

Day 34 (5/24) - I'm your ice cream man

Day 34 - 11.3 mi/373.4 mi tot
1.2 mi N of Iron Mtn Gap to Roan High Knob Sheter

A short day planned today due to the longer than planned day yesterday and the longish steep climb to go up to the Roan High Knob Shelter. So the best idea we have had yet was to take a 0.6 mi side trail to the Greasy Fork Friendly Hostel for ice cream, honey buns and soda this morning. The trail there was nice since it was all downhill, but that did mean we had it all uphill on the way back to the AT. Connie, the owner, was super nice and the whole place was very clean and welcoming. We demolished a pint of Ben and Jerrys Peanut Brittle Ice Cream along with two honey buns and a coke while we were there. Not bad for a 930 am snack.

Other than that it was a pretty tough day ending in a big climb up to Roan High Knob. We are tenting here at over 6200 feet and watching the clouds swirl around our tent. A pretty neat view and experience.

Stop me as I'm passing by.

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek

Day 33 (5/23) - its a beautiful day

Day 33 - 17.1 mi/362.1 mi tot
Curley Maple Gap Shelter to 1.1 miles N of Iron Mtn Gap

Today was all about beauty. We started the day with an ascent up to "Beauty Spot" where we got some great views back over towards Erwin. Its too bad we couldn't have timed a day to end there and be there for a sunset or sunrise. Oh well, we will get one of those soon enough.

The weather today was great also with temps in the 70s and 80s, a breeze on most of the ridges and sun for nearly the whole day. After all of that we got to Cherry Gap Shelter ate dinner and with 4 other people (Goat, Buck 20, Puck and Brandon) decided to hike another 4 miles to a campsite near an apple orchard. It is a awesome site with a few trees, a nice campfire ring and some great sky views. Tonight is almost completely clear and should be a really nice place to spend the night. Tomorrow we are actually on tap for a short day (11.3 miles) so we can go over Roan High Knob and stay at the shelter there tomorrow night. This is the highest shelter on the AT (6285 feet) and our last time above 6000 feet until NH.

Time for my beauty sleep (and Princess' too...not that she needs it).

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek

Shake it like a Polaroid picture

Hi everyone - this is Snowfox's sister (the photo admin). I have received the first batch of photos from the hikers, and have posted them here: http://sabrinaandmatthiking.shutterfly.com/ . I'll post on the blog each time I add pictures so that everyone knows.

Thanks to Adam for helping me think of a song lyric for the title so I can be as cool as S&P.

Day 32 (5/22) - five...five dollar...five dollar footlongs

Day 32 - 4.2 mi/345.0 mi tot
Erwin, TN to Curley Maple Gap Shelter

Ahhhh...the joys of a short day leaving a town in the afternoon. That's right, you guessed it, we each carted a Subway sub up the hill out of Erwin for dinner. Sure beat the rehydrated meals others were eating at the shelter. Also lugged up a few pears and cookies for dessert. a nice end to an easy day.

The rest of the day was pretty relaxing too. Had breakfast #1 of cereal, donuts and hostess cupcakes at 730 at the hostel. The onto Huddle House at 930 for breakfast #2/lunch before hitting the post office to send some food forward to a hostel halfway to Damascus to pick up later this week. We then managed to run into trail legend "Miss Janet" as we were heading into a supermarket to try to get subs there and she volunteered to drive us to Subway, wait while we got our food, then drive us back to our hostel. This is the kind of trail magic that keeps hikers going forward on the trail and coming back to stay involved after finishing. Both Princess and I are planning on providing some trail magic next year at Snickers Gap as hikers come through there near us. We had a great conversation with her and look forward to meeting up with her at The Gathering later in October.

Also a big thanks to the staff at Uncle Johnnys for all the suttles around town so we could all get our errands done and get back on the trail.

We are sitting here now around a campfire near the shelter after a very relaxing day as we are set to head towards Damascus and hopefully make it there on Memorial Day in time for me to catch the NCAA lacrosse championship game at 330.

Someone save me a seat at the bar and have a tall cold one ready for me!

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek

Day 31 (5/21) - mmmm Bop

Day 31 - 9.4 miles/340.8 tot
3 mi south of No Business Knob Shelter to Uncle Johnnys Nolichucky Hostel, Erwin, TN

Got an early start to this day and bopped along, killing the 9.4 miles before 11 am. We got the last two spots in the hostel for the night then made our way to the all you can eat pizza and salad buffet (mmmmmmmmm). Did some real damage there and got our share of calories for the week.

Other than that, just bumed around Erwin doing resupply chores including burning a CD of pictures that is being sent to Katie to get some posted. Hopefully she will have time to take care of those and get them up for people to look at sometime later this week. We are back moving in the morning and should be in Damascus, VA in 9 or 10 days.

I can't beleive I actually used this song title on the blog...good thing I owed Katie for doing the picture management for us :-)

- Snowfox

Day 30 - I can't get no satisfaction

Day 30 - 17.6 mi/331.4 mi tot
Hogback Ridge Shelter to 3 miles south of No Business Knob Shelter

Today was one of those days where we just couldn't get any momentum going in many areas:
- lack of quality water sources, most were not worth putting the filter into
- an unreal amount of climbing for what was supposed to be a generally downhill day
- a very slow rate of progress despite our early start and long hours (730 am to 730 pm)
- a lack of campsites noted in our guidebook from Spivey Gap north. We felt good but decided to stop at the first one we found and save our night hiking debut for another time

Overall a long tough day with a pretty big mileage total for us. We are just about 9 miles south of Erwin, TN and will unfortunately probably arrive too late for the Pizza Hut all you can eat lunch buffet - maybe some other time. The plan is to get into Erwin around early afternoon and get our resupply chores done on Friday and spend a relaxing Saturday morning around town before picking up some Subway subs and some fruit to haul on a short 5 mile day out of town Saturday afternoon.

Things are going well and we are abou 9 days from entering Virginia to spend a month working our way north through the Commonwealth. Visitors, day hikers and food deliveries are welcome just email us to let us know where you might want to meet and we will let you know what the schedule looks like.

And I tried, and I tried and I tried...

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek

Day 29 (5/19) - Baby Got Back

Day 29 - 14.7 mi/313.8 tot
Jerry Cabin Sheter to Hogback Ridge Shelter

Some might wonder how the heck I could find use for Baby Got Back during this hike. Well I have done it. We went over "Big Butt" today. Nope I didn't make this up, it is an actual place on the TN/NC border. I feel very honored to have found a place for this special song on this hike.

Another long day today with a lot of up and down to keep our quads and especially our glutes working. We passed a number of small family-type cemetary plots from a very wide range of dates. Supposedly that is typical of this type of rural area and both Princess and I are interested in learning more about the history of the area as there is supposed to be a very interesting Scot-Irish heritage of the area. Seems very cool to try to learn more about it.

Princess is really doing well and seems to have her trail legs underneath her now and I am being forced to develop mine now (finally) since we stop less, hike farther and are carrying more food weight to keep up with our growing appetites. This makes for a tiring day for me now and sore muscles I haven't had to deal with yet. Oh well, that's why they make ibuprophin.

It looks good for getting some pictures posted from Erwin in 2 or 3 days (well at least getting them sent to our expert photo-archivist for her to get them available for public viewing). We are also traveling with some others who have blogs or trail journals so we may have some other links to their thoughts too soon.

But Fonda aint got a motor in the back of her Honda!

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek

Day 28 (5/18) - I walk the line

Day 28 15.4 mi/299.1 mi tot
Spring Mtn Sheter to Jerry Cabin Shelter

We got our first real taste of a long, exposed ridge today in Firescald Ridge. Good thing the weather held out for us since it could have gotten really ugly really fast up there. We did get some great views of the surrounding valleys and the rhodedendrums are just starting to bloom. That means two things: the trail is becoming very colorful and our allergies are going nuts. For a while today we could actually see the pollen in the air it was so thick.

We are now kind of linked up with another group for this stretch and are moving shelter to shelter with them now. It will be interesting to see how long we stay with any of these groups as we keep moving north since they will all have to start making bigger mile days so they can get to Khatadhin before October 15th when the park closes and they can no longer summit. Just another benefit of flipping, we do not have the schedule constraints that others do.

Tomorrow we will cross 300 miles and we get an easy song title for the post. Any of the 2002 MIT Phi Delts reading along will appreciate the 2nd reference to our set of 3 favorite songs.

Stay tuned...

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek

Day 26 (5/16) - Zero, Day 27 (5/17) - on the road again

Day 26 - Zero miles in Hot Springs
Day 27 - 11.0 mi/283.7 mi tot - Hot Springs to Spring Mtn Shelter

The zero day was great and we definitely took care of our calorie defecit there with the aount of food we ate there. Another soak in the hot springs at night got us pretty much ready to go.

The hike today was easier than expected and we are spending the night at the Spring Mtn shelter with 5 other people (that is a total of 7 people in a shelter built for 5...amazing how much space you can find when rain is threatening). Our new tyvek groundsheet is coming in handy in the shelter to protect the sleeping pads.

Had a few rainstorms today and made the mistake of trying to weather the storm without our rain gear since it was warm but we should have put it on since the rain kept coming. Oh well, lesson learned and we won't screw that up again. We are dry in the shelter and will be dry when we get started tomorrow.

aiming to get into Erwin in 5 more days and into Damascus in about 2 weeks.

putting the miles behind us...

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek

Day 25 (5/16) - I gotta say it was a good day

Day 25 - 3.2 mi/272.7 tot
Deer Park Mtn Shelter to Elmer's Sunnybank Inn, Hot Springs, NC

Had a quick short hike this morning into Hot Springs and managed to get a spot at Elmer's, an old victorian house. We got the last two spots in the house for the night and a really nice room. Elmer is an ex-philosophy professor from Duke and runs the B&B here for hikers when he has the room. The meals are all organic gourmet vegitarian and we are planning to eat breakfast and dinner here tomorrow.

Other than that we spent most of the day either eating, doing laundry, hanging out with our hiker friends or sitting in a hot spring fed hot tub. The hot tub felt great and was very relaxing after our many days in a row of hiking. it was als nice to get clean and well fed too. Probably ate too much today but it was hard not to. Oh well, have to keep the weight on some how. also got to sit outside under a roof drinking a beer and didn't have to set up a tent or hike in it. All that after a huge breakfast at the great, cheap diner in town.

More relaxing tomorrow and some gear maintenance tasks before we get started again on Monday.

I hear banjo music...got to go.

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek

Day 24 - its 5 oclock somewhere

Day 24 - 15.6 mi/269.5 mi tot
Roaring Fork Shelter to Deer Park Mtn Shelter

This was supposed to be a relatively easy day just over two smaller mountains then start the big descent into Hot Springs. Turns out that our elevation profile forgot about the last up that we had to do right at the end of the day. That turned out to feel harder than it probably actually was due to the anticipation of our first full days break since Day 4. A trip into the 102 degree hot springs is also planned for tomorrow night.

To be honest there isnt much to say about today other than we had perfect meal planning out of Standing Bear Farm and will eat our last drops of food for breakfast then walk into Hot Springs for breakfast number 2 at about 9 am.

Saturday and Sunday will be nearly two full days of "5 oclock" for us. A nice break after 20 days of at least some hiking mileage.

Yo bartender Jo Boo needs a refill!

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek

Day 23 (5/23) - Leaving on a Jet Plane

Day 23 - 14.6 mi/253.9 tot
Standing Bear Farm to Roaring Fork Shelter

Wow, today was a bitch of a climb. the entire day was up, up and more up over Snowbird Mountain and Max Patch. We saw a FAA radar tower closeup on Snowbird and Max Patch was once used as a landing strip for military airplanes, I believe during WWII. Max Patch was a really cool expanse of grass on the top of a mountain in the middle of a forest and it seemed to stretch on for a long time. We had originally planned to camp up there tonight but a bad weather front was moving in and I didn't really want to be stuck up there if the bad weather turned out to include lightning athough the morning would have been really cool. Oh well maybe the next bald will come on a better weather day.

The other thing that Princess and I noticed today was the discrepancies in mileages between our guidebook and the actual mileage we walked. The mileages we list at the front of each post are from our book but we are pretty sure that there are some issues with their relationship to reality.

Tonight was the first time in a while that we have gotten separated from our trail family and in talking to some other hikers it sounds like there are some foot issues so hopefully those get fixed and everyone gets into Hot Springs as planned. I forsee a huge breakfast on Saturday morning in my future.

Met a guy today who carries a hockey stick as a trekking pole. Great idea!

Now boarding flight 2179 to Hot Springs...this is your final boarding call.

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek

Great Smoky Mtn Ntl Park Mix Tape

Due to a combination of connectivity, temperature and battery issues, here is a 4-pack of AT updates for everyone. We are going to start putting locations with each day also for those playing at home.

Day 19 - 13.5 mi/194.8 mi tot (Spence Field Shelter to Double Spring Gap Shelter) - Ice Ice Baby

Day 20 - 13.8 mi/208.6 mi tot (Double Spring Gap Shelter to Icewater Spring Shelter) - Stairway to Heaven

Day 21 - 12.6 mi/221.2 mi tot (Icewater Spring Shelter to Tri corner Knob Shelter) - Jump in the Fire

Day 22 - 18.1 mi/239.3 mi tot (Tricorner Knob Shelter to Standing Bear Hostel) - Down

OK, here is the quick summary of the song titles:
- Day 19 - it was 35 degrees in the tent when we woke up and it was frosted all over for most of the day. We ended up hiking with socks as mittens for most of the morning to keep our hands warm.
- Day 20 - Climbed Clingmans Dome, the highest point on the AT at 6643 feet ASL and had a great 360 degree view in the clear morning.
- Day 21 - A wet day where Princess melts part of her shoes in the fire in the shelter trying to dry them out.
- Day 22 - We drop from over 6300 feet to under 1500 feet during our longest day hiking so far at over 18 miles.

We made it through the Smokies in 5.5 day (we had planned for 7 days) and it was a tough set of days. We had 90 degree days going in and 35 degree days up at altitude. The terrain was tough with lots of rocks and a ton of ups and downs.

The saving grace through the Smokies was the forced company since we had to stay at shelters each night due to bear concerns. We had a group of 11 or 12 thru and section hikers who stayed together the whole trek through the park and it worked really well. To use a line from Brett - "we are one small disfunctional trail family". And that is about how the past portion of the week went for us. We will try totalk some more about this group as we get into the next week or so, but need to check with everyone to make sure they are OK with us talking about them on the blog here. Should be a fun "turtle trail days" we are going to have in Hot Springs when we get there in a few days.

To use another great quote from the famous Vanilla Ice - "Yo man I'm outta here, word to your mother"

- Snowfox

Sent on the go from my Peek