Today's miles 19.3. AT miles 837.
It was a tough hiking day today. We were on the road at 8am today, early for us but we knew we had a big day ahead. People kept telling us the hiking gets easier in Virginia, they were lying. The first few miles were OK a few smallish up and downs, past Spy Rock, a rock outcrop requiring a bit of a scramble to get to the top. Nigel went up initially thinking it was part of the AT, we took a wrong turn, but then carried on regardless anyway. I didn't, I wanted to reserve my energy. Uff-da caught up with us here and we walked with him for the rest of the morning. We eventually climbed up to The Priest (4063ft) and then the fun began.
We had a 4.3 mile, 3000ft descent to Tye River which started off slow as it was steepish and quite rocky for the first 1000ft but then the paths became easier with a gentler gradient and switchbacks where we could actually pick up some speed on. As soon as we got to the river at the bottom and crossed over the suspension bridge we were back into uphill - 3000ft straight back up again to Three Ridges Mountain. The uphill section did give our legs a little bit of a reprieve, 1000ft, one and a half mile up then a short downhill for half a mile then started back up again. Just as we started ascending again we reached Harpers Creek shelter where we stopped for a break and get more water. It was thirsty work today, I drank three litres of water. It was a cloudy but warm humid day, very warm walking uphill so we both changed into our new shorts. The first time we've worn shorts on the trail. Our legs are lily white compared to our suntanned arms. We'll have some strange tan lines by the time we've finished.
From the shelter it was a further 2000ft, three miles to climb. Initially the path wasn't too bad, a fairly easy gradient and lots of switchbacks but it eventually hit rocks again and became more challenging. At one point there was a steep climb, almost a scramble, over a rocky outcrop. The uphill continued, there were a few false summits. We made it to the top for 4pm, our legs were quite tired, the most tired they've felt so far on the trail we think. We had another three miles to go to get to our camp spot for the night, Maupin Field Shelter. To get there was another 1200ft descent over more rocky paths. We took it steady going down the final descent and arrived at the shelter about 5:15pm. Thankfully there are not any more really long ascents/descents on the trail for a while, things get easier from now on they say!? We'll wait and see?
The shelter was full, we were going to camp anyway, there were some nice camp spaces around the shelter area. There was also a 'bear pole'. A different version of the bear cables, the first time we've seen one of these. Uff-da arrived a short while after us. Pa Burt was also at camp, a retied guy we met a few days ago at Thunder Hill Shelter, he's hiking the AT for the third time. He said the trail gets a bit easier now too. The first third and the last third of the trail are the harder sections and the middle third easier. We'll look forward to this middle section.
We ticked off a few more flowers in our wild flower leaflet today too, Large-flowered Trillium, Fire Pink, Diapensia we think, plus one little white flower we couldn't identify, it's not listed in our guide.
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