Running Downhill until Total Dark

Rolex demonstrating his technique


Running Downhill until Total Dark
Groundhog Creek Shelter to Deer Park Shelter: 24 miles

Last night the two cats who rolled in, turned out to be four cats; young fellas from North Carolina. There were no spots in the shelter and they had no tents. They spread out a big tarp and slept out in the open air on that thing. It drizzled a little in the night but they didn't seem to mind. I stayed in my hammock and it was a very comfortable night despite the rain. It was warm enough that I didn't even zip up my bag.

My socks smell so bad; every pair I have smells like wet dog and stale popcorn. I can't figure it out, that's just what they smell like. When I hang my wet socks on the pack to dry while I hike, I keep getting whiffs of wet-dog-popcorn and the hoagie-like smell of my armpits. My ex-wife used to say my BO smelled like a delicious, Italian hoagie and when I take an honest sniff with an objective olfactory, I have to agree with her. Such as it is, I find that it only makes me hungrier as I motor down the trail.

We started off pretty early for us and I quickly degraded from neutral to foul mood. I encouraged Cyclone and Rolex get up ahead of me. My legs were hurting and I was having an unusually tough time climbing. In reality, I'm probably climbing three times faster than I was two weeks ago; but, today it feels really slow. I knew my brothers were going to be running down hills again today and I'd be far behind if I didn't keep up. I reluctantly started jogging on a sore calf and a questionable knee.

I sometimes get grumpy and cranky while I hike for no particular reason. I don’t know where it comes from but I go through some wicked mood swings. This one was particularly violent. I was going through this aggressive fantasy anger thing and I was concocting all these plans that were really unhealthy and disturbing. I was livid at my brothers, the hill, my pack, the air, gnats, God, my sweat, you name it. I was getting very distracted while plotting the murders of hundreds of people. I'm not sure if it helped my hiking or not. The initial climb of the morning was tough; but then, once I summited, I started running the trails again and actually caught up with Cyclone and Rolex. Fortunately the ill conceived notions had passed, and I didn’t stab them with my trekking poles like I had planned earlier. I later found out that the only reason I caught them was because they had been filming an idea for a commercial for Leki that involved Rolex, flying down the hill, about 20 miles an hour, swinging his trekking poles in a marvelous demonstration of dynamic trekking pole application.

They keep taking off on the uphills. I'm just not as fast as them yet. With the extra weight in my pack and on my stocky body, I just don’t have the cardiovascular power to maintain the pace they set. Downhill is another story. I haul ass on the downhill sections; but, it’s pretty rough on my knees and feet.

We decided we were going to go all the way to the Deer Park Shelter because it was only three miles away from Hot Springs, a town right on the AT. The fact that here have been several instances of bears taking packs from hikers recently had nothing to do with it… Sure it didn’t… My right calf was really locking up and it hurt pretty badly before we got about 13 miles. We had to stop at the Walnut Creek Shelter to resupply our water. There was a sign that said, “Don’t leave your packs unattended at this shelter.” I guess the bears were getting smart here and waiting for people to drop their packs. We cooked some dinner because we knew we wouldn't get in to Deer Park until after dark and didn't want to have to cook and clean in the dark. We ate and rested and my leg felt much better so we moved on.

At about six more miles we stopped again. My calf was killing me again but the light was dying and we had to keep moving. I felt like the muscle was actually ripping off of my leg. I took the lead since I was going to be the slowest but everyone was tired and we started hauling up the hill. We were running the hills again and as the light fell, Rolex missed a root and went down hard. We were pretty sure he had hurt something but he expertly rolled onto his pack when he went down, so everything was cool. In fact, the only reason we knew he went down was because his pole hit Cyclone in the leg. We decided to slow it down and hike it in. The trail was hard to see even though the darkness came on surprisingly slow. We managed to get in to the shelter area just after total dark. We ran into the four guys from NC. They had passed us while we were eating dinner at the other shelter. We set up camp, hung the bear bags and went to sleep. Town is tomorrow; full of the promise of fresh, laundered clothing and proper meals. Maybe my socks won't smell like wetdogpopcorn; not at least until Monday night.

David AKA "Jukebox"

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