6/14 – Day 45
19 miles from Pine Swamp Branch Shelter to House Ruins
This morning, Candyman and I woke up in a puddle. The condensation from our single wall tent, yet again, drenched our sleeping bags and pads. It was still raining when we dragged our things from the tent to the shelter in hopes of eating our breakfast somewhere dry. We ate our poptarts in the shelter while chatting with Gandalf, an older thru-hiker with an impressively long white beard. He told us about a 75 year old hiker that fell out of the top bunk of a shelter and landed on top of him the other day. (Everyone was okay.)
We bid Gandalf adieu at around 9:30am and started our hike for the day. The air was damp and the trail was slick with mud. Candyman and I slowly climbed our first of two ascents that day. After that climb, it was evident that we both were tired and had low energy. To compensate, we each popped a caffeine pill and waited for it to kick in while eating neon-orange Cheetos and mixing fruit punch Gatorade powder into our water bottles.
The caffeine pills worked like a charm and we hit the trail again in a much better mood. Candyman and I chatted about future jobs and post trail plans as we tiptoed through mossy rocks. The trail eventually opened up to a beautiful view of the mountains of West Virginia, where we ate lunch and I ordered new shoes.
The second ascent of the day proved to be much more challenging. We hiked up the steep mountain in the hot sun. I was sweating buckets and anxiously kept looking at the trees to maybe see if the sky was peeking through (meaning we are approaching the top). Eventually, we made it to the top, high-fived each other, and excitedly made our way to Kelly’s knob. At Kelly’s Knob, we saw a black vulture perching majestically on a boulder. We walked down and made camp at House Ruins campsite.
6/15 – Day 46
22.4 miles from House Ruins to Pickle Branch
Candyman and I woke up Wednesday to the hottest morning on trail…so far. The heat (and our shortage of water) made us dismantle camp quickly and get on trail by 7:45am. We had about 3 miles to get to the closest water source. Piece of cake. As we approached the stream, we saw a man stepping out of his truck and setting up chairs in a parking lot. He had a large cooler that read “Drinks for Hikers” in the bed of his pick up. Trail magic!! We each picked an ice cold Mountain Dew and sat in fold out chairs to cool off.
We waved goodbye to the trail angel “Longhorn”, filled up water at the stream, and headed back up the trail. A couple miles later, we came across the Keffer Oak. The Keffer Oak is a huge 300 year old oak tree. I hugged the tree and we continued on through a cow pasture then up a steep mountain with two hundred man-made rock stairs.
Twelve miles in, we stopped for a quick lunch at a shelter. By this point, we were both absolutely drenched in sweat and ready to take a break and drink as much water as possible before our next ascent up Brush Mountain.
We climbed up brush mountain in the heat of the day. The switchbacks seemed to just keep on coming. We would round a bend just to see another one pop up. Eventually, as always, we made it to the top and celebrated. The feeling of reaching the summit of a big climb is indescribably amazing. It gave us new energy to work our way back down, in spite of Candyman’s knee bothering him.
We flew down the pine padded trail and reached the road below. The road had a large creek running parallel to it. Dripping with sweat, I rushed over the bridge to find a place to hop in. Two men were sitting by the creek and offered us beer and hard cider! Trail magic twice in one day!!! We drank as we splashed around in the creek. All cooled off, we happily hiked another mile and set up camp for the night.
6/16 – Day 47
16.8 miles from Pickle Branch to Campbell Shelter
I woke up Thursday morning feeling good and excited for the day. We got moving fairly early and hiked 1.5 miles to the first milestone of the day. We hit 700 miles! Happer, Candyman, and I took a picture by the 700 spelled out in rocks right off the trail.
Then, we made our way up a rocky scramble climb to get to Dragon’s Tooth, the first of three landmarks of what’s known as the Triple Crown. Dragon’s tooth is a giant, pointy rock formation that resembles what I would think a Dragon’s tooth might look like. We rock climbed to the top and snapped a couple of photos. Candyman even managed to bravely stand at the top.
We left Dragon’s tooth and started an incredibly steep descent. At several points, I had to toss my trekking poles down, turn around, and climb down with my hands gripping the rocks. We were making extremely slow progress. We had 2 miles to get to Catawba Grocery for lunch and I was starting to get very hungry and anxious to finish. All I could think about was how hungry I was, how hot and humid that day was and how hard this descent was. I really wanted to stop hiking forever.
Finally, we reached the road and walked the 0.35 miles to Catawba Grocery gas station to fill up with burgers, fries, Gatorade, and, of course, ice cream. Then, I decided I wanted to keep hiking despite wanting to give up an hour before.
We hiked a couple more miles taking long breaks in between to cut out hiking during the dreaded, brutally hot 11am-4pm hours.
We eventually made it to the shelter two miles before McAfee Knob, the second of the Triple Crown landmarks. At the shelter, Candyman spotted a mama bear and 3 cubs. We watched the bears for an hour and decided to get up to McAfee Knob for sunset. We were able to make it to McAfees Knob. In the distance, we saw a lightning storm. It was really neat to watch rain and lightning on other mountains. We didn’t think it was going to make it over to McAfee Knob tonight. We snapped some pictures, watched the sunset, then hiked in twilight to the next shelter where we cowboy camped on the porch, assured we were safe from the storm…
6/17 – Day 48
15.4 miles from Campbell Shelter to Daleville
Although we started the night cowboy camping, we ended up moving our sleeping pads into the shelter because it was hard to sleep with the strong winds. That proved to be a good decision because just an hour later, the biggest thunderstorm I had ever seen whipped through our campsite. Candyman and I were kept awake half the night watching the lightning strike and listening to the rain pound on the tin roof of the shelter.
The next morning, we slowly got our things together from the lack of sleep. Several other Hikers that caught the sunrise at McAfee Knob passed through. Today, we had 15.4 miles to get to Daleville, VA for our next resupply and a much needed zero day. We quickly hiked 4.5 miles up to get to the third and final Triple Crown formation, Tinker Cliffs. We sat on the cliffs and ate snacks and booked rooms at the Super 8 motel right off the trail.
Then, we hiked to some huge rock formations that we climbed for good views. The last few miles seemed to drag on. We didn’t eat lunch in anticipation of getting town food and frankly we were sick of all our food. Bad idea. By the time we rolled into town, we were ravenous. We emerged from the woods to a large highway. There was no crosswalk so we had to Frogger our way over the roads hoping not to die in our dehydrated daze.
We went straight to the first gas station we saw and got Gatorades. As we approached the front of the long line to purchase our drinks, a man came in and said he would pay for our drinks (and skipped the large line to pay for his gas). Win-win.
We dropped off our packs at the Super 8 motel and walked to a Bojangles where Candyman and I ate a family pack meal meant for 4 people. I felt disgustingly full and yet I was still hungry. Weirdest feeling ever. We did some other chores like stopping at an outfitter and buying snacks at Krogers. Then we went back to the hotel, showered, did laundry, and aired out our things.
We found out Roanoke has a movie theater so we ubered there, got Chipotle, then went to watch the new Jurassic World movie. We ubered back to the hotel and passed out for the night.
6/18 – Day 49
0 Miles in Daleville
We slept in as late as possible at the motel and enjoyed every minute of it. The only thing that got us up and moving was the thought of getting breakfast. We decided to go to Cracker Barrel. To get there, however, we had to cross an interstate. We crossed one of the roads and were in the median when a police office pulled up near us and told us it was illegal to walk on an interstate. Even though we were already half way across with Cracker Barrel just on the other side, he made us cross back on the interstate the way we came and take a 1.5 mile detour crossing multiple dangerous roads without crosswalks, sidewalks, or even space to walk without getting hit. I’m glad our police officers are looking out for pedestrians and keeping us safe. We made it to Cracker Barrel, ate a ton of food and walked back to the motel.
Later that day, we went to a BBQ place in town. We were seated with menus and took our time deciding what we wanted. Our waiter was taking a while to show up. After 30 minutes, no one had even taken our drink orders, so we left and went to a Chinese place next door. After that, we went to Kroger to resupply and get snacks and ice cream for later. Then, we went back to the motel and watched movies while eating ice cream.
6/19 – Day 50
18.6 miles from Daleville to Bobblets Gap Shelter
Candyman and I slept in trying to get the most out of our motel stay. We packed our bags with our things laying all over the room and depackaged food and shoved it all in our food bags. We left the motel at exactly 11am (checkout time) and started back on the trail.
After just 1.5 miles, we made it to the 1/3 done sign. We high-fived, snapped a picture and kept on moving. The hiking was very easy today. The ups were steady and not that steep, and there were a lot of flat sections. The sky was blue and the temperature was 70 degrees, the perfect hiking weather. We crushed a ton of miles very quickly. We had fresh sub sandwiches for lunch that we packed out.
Toward the last couple miles of our hike today, we came across something that we have been anticipating for almost the entire hike. Ripe black raspberries and blueberries! I excitedly pulled out my cold soaking jar and started picking berries as I walked. I fell behind Candyman, and walked by myself for the last 2 miles to camp. I really enjoyed hiking by myself for awhile.
I eventually joined Candyman and Happer at the shelter. We had the whole shelter to ourselves which had never happened before. So, we spent the night eating berries, sitting by the fire, and roasting marshmallows for smores. At around 10pm, we retired to bed.
6/20 – Day 51
19.2 miles from Bobblet Gap Shelter to Black Rock Overlook
I woke up Monday morning to Candyman making a fire. I sat up on my sleeping pad, wrapped myself in my quilt, and watched the flames grow. As Candyman toasted his poptarts by the fire, I twisted my hair into braids. I browsed FarOut to see what awaited us on our hike – an easy peasy flat 9 miles, a one thousand foot ascent and descent, then a 3,000 foot ascent.
Candyman and I got going by 8:45am and cruised through the first 9 miles. Around 1pm, we stopped at a road that led to a campground two miles away. The campground had a restaurant that serves burgers and milkshakes and had a pool and ping pong table. We pondered for a bit if we should try to hitch over to take a lunch break before the big climbs (walk 2 off-trail miles? no way!) I was pretty hungry so I decided it was worth trying. Very few cars came by and each passed my thumb and I right up. After 20 minutes, we sighed and headed up the mountain.
Disappointed from the burger debacle, I trudged up the baby hill as if it were the hardest mile of the trail. I stopped every few feet to pluck a couple blueberries and Candyman and Happer went ahead to the top. I finally made it to the top, and sat down to cold soak some Ramen noodles and stuff my face with rice crispy treats.
The food helped and I was back to myself again. We hike 3 more miles and got to one of the nicest shelters on trail. It was enormous. We saw a little bat sleeping inside and named him Bruce. We left the shelter and headed up the big ascent. 5 miles to the next shelter and we took just one break. Before arriving to the next shelter, a southbound hiker informed us that there were “like 12 kids there”. With this new info, we decided to push another mile past the shelter and stealth camp at Blackrock Overlook. We set up our home for the night and headed over to watch the sunset, then went to bed.
What’s next?
I really enjoyed writing the journals for this week! Candyman and I may start switching off every once in a while to shake things up. I am missing everyone at home and can’t wait for Sam, Abby, Bill, and Dev to visit in Shenandoah National Park! It will be nice to see some familiar faces. We are less than a week’s worth of hiking away from Waynesboro, VA and SNP.
Also, thank you to everyone who donated a coffee or two to our hike with the “Support Us” button. We greatly appreciate it!
Stay Dirty,
Spout and Candyman
Y’all don’t even realize it, but Spout is a hiking machine! I can’t believe how hard she can hike. As long as she’s not all grumpy, in which case I call her Pout.