Day 60

Day 60 -May 6 2017 – 20.1 miles – Knot Maul  to Jenkins Shelter

It was cold and raining and we hiked with flashfire, Zeus, and Grumpy for most of the day.

After an uneventful morning we came to Chestnut Ridge.  The ridge was a two mile long clearing that had a great view of the surrounding mountains.  The wind was really pushing us around as we passed through.

 

At the end of the two mile clearing was Chestnut Knob Shelter.  The shelter was fully enclosed so we decided to get out of the wind a rain for a while a have lunch.

 

As we ate we could hear the wind buffeting the shelter.  I could see why the builders made it out of rock.  A wooden shelter wouldn’t last long up there.

The view near the shelter was pretty nice.

The terrain up until that point had been similar to the terrain from the day before.  After the shelter everything changed.  All of a sudden the trail was very rocky and we entered another death squiggle zone.

If it hadn’t been raining the rocks wouldn’t have slowed us down.  The rocks were about the size of two bowling balls put together and were flat on the top.The rain made the rocks slippery and that really slowed us up.

By the time we got out of that section we were ready to be done for the day.  About a mile or two from the shelter there was a gap in the rain.  Zeus took the opportunity to record the first twenty miler that Stoat and I had done on the trail.

 

You can tell by our faces that we were tired and were more concerned with getting dinner than recording the event but I’m glad Zeus took the time to record it.

That night I went to sleep with the comfort that a hot shower was only a day away and that my belly would be full of town food very soon.  The town of Bland was up next.

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Journal excerpt 5/6/2017 – “Beware the Death Squiggles!”