My knees were a lot better today. I took a dose of ibuprofen when going to bed last night, vitamin 'I' as its known on the trail, plus a couple of doses through the day. I did use my walking pole for about an hour and a half, then packed it away, I don't enjoy walking with a pole, it just annoys me and gets in the way most of the time. I like my hands free, I can then snack, drink, take photos etc whilst hiking without stopping. Nigel carried on using his for a while but even packed his away later in the day saying it was making his shoulder hurt.
It was a long day today again, we keep breaking our mileage records, our biggest mileage day again, I don't think we'll beat that distance again for a while. We also passed the 300 mile mark today too. We left camp at 8:10 and it was downhill initially then lots of camel humps down and up going past lots of tall Hemlock trees, first time we'd really seen them on the trail. We then had a long 2500ft uphill over about 6 miles. It was a bit monotonous and just seemed to go on forever. Half way up was Little Laurel Shelter where we received some trail magic. Grubbworm had left some sweet treats hanging from the bear cable's whilst out on a training hike which was s nice surprise. We took a couple of treats and rested at the shelter for a few minutes before continuing uphill. We passed Grubbworm coming back again along the trail and thanked him for his trail magic.
After the long uphill we hit a rocky section of path which took us up onto a fantastic exposed rocky ridge. There were great views but the rocks were a bit of an obstacle course in places. We could see lots of flatlands out to the west. We were just saying to each other near the end of the rocky section that we wouldn't like to do that in snowy/icy/wet/windy weather. After the ridge ended we saw a sign for southbounders saying 'exposed ridgeline trail' and alternative 'bad weather trail'. We didn't see a sign giving that option going in our direction! Luckily we had the perfect weather for the ridge hike.
Not long after the ridge we reached Jerry Cabin Shelter where we had originally planned on stopping for the night. It was only a small shelter and there were a couple of section hikers already there plus Caribou who'd pitched his tent, plus we knew at least two other hikers behind us would be heading there. It was a beautiful warm sunny evening so we decided to continue on another 6 miles to the next shelter. Also, it is forecast for rain tomorrow so we may end up only doing a short mileage day, so we made up for the extra distance today just in case whilst the weather was good. We passed some interesting terrain on our extended hike, some lovely open grassland and hiked a good distance down a lovely old forest track. We also passed a grave. We've seen a few memorial plaques along the trail.
We arrived at Flint Mountain Shelter at just after 6:30pm. There was another very friendly older couple Craig and Helga and their dog Duchess there but still plenty of room for us in the shelter. We're staying in the shelter rather than tenting because of the rain forecast so we don't have to pack away a wet tent. We're not sure what time it was but about 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning Odysseys, a young lad from North Georgia turned up, he'd been night hiking - mad!
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