Another mileage record today, I'm amazed at how many miles we've managed to cover in the last two days in the snow. That rest day at Black Bear must have done us the world of good. Today's distance was achievable because we remained relatively level for the AT, walking along a ridge with lots of smaller ups and downs between 3525 and 4225ft so no big long ascents or descents.
We left the shelter at 8:50, behind everyone else. We're always the first up and last to leave! Our boots were frozen this morning, not very pleasant to put on but they didn't take too long to thaw, about 20 minutes of walking. There was still plenty of snow around, in fact it was even deeper than yesterday in sections along the ridge line where it had blown into small drifts a foot deep and quite hard going in places. Cloudy to start, it remained cool in the morning and took until midday for the sun come out and get warm enough to start melting the snow.
We passed a monument, the Nick Grindstaff Monument. We were the first to visit it as there were no other footprints in the snow, everyone else must have whizzed past either not interested, or more likely, heads down and not noticed it. On the gravestone it said ' lived alone, suffered alone, died alone'. Poor guy. We don't know who Nick Grindstaff is but somebody thought enough of him to build a big monument.
From the monument it was downhill for a while. We walked over quite a few wooden foot bridges all linked together, glad that the snow had cleared off them a bit. We then left the woods and came to some open pastureland where we followed an 'handicap-accessible trail' for about half a mile over the fields. Back into the woods we reached Double Springs shelter. It was ten past three when we arrived at the shelter, 14.4 miles in and we had to decide if we carry on another 8.3 miles to the next shelter as planned. It would mean a late finish but a shorter 10 mile day into Damascus tomorrow rather than an 18 mile day when it was forecast for rain. We refilled our water bottles from the stream had a quick snack and decided to carry on, using the weather to our advantage while we had the chance as it was a lovely sunny evening.
About a mile and a half before we reached the shelter we passed a 'Prescribed Burn Area', we could smell it before we saw it, it must have been burnt quite recently. It lasted all the way to the Abingdon Gap shelter were we arrived at 6:45pm in really good time. The paths got easier as a lot of the snow had melted, there were still clumps of snow drift left in places though. Iron Man and Extra Miles were already there plus a dad and two sons out for the weekend. It was only a small 5 person shelter so we pitched our tent. It wasn't supposed to go below freezing so not such a cold night as last night.
We passed our German friends in the morning but they never caught up with us again the rest of the day. They didn't arrive at our shelter either as planned so we assume they stopped at Double Springs shelter. Hopefully we'll see them in Damascus tomorrow, we can't lose them again already. We both agreed it was a great moral boost to see old friends again from earlier down the trail.
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