Everybody Was AT Hiking: Cherokee Flats to SR 641, Pearisburg, VA (July 5-6, 2019)

This last hike was equal parts awesome and awful.  Well, actually, it was probably way more awesome than awful, but it was the first hike I haven't been able to finish (more about that later), and that's got me feeling kind of like a loser.  But in addition to being the first hike I was unable to finish, this was our first (1) non-family shuttle ride; (2) overnight (at least for me; Ben's done this a hundred times); (3) southbound AT hike; and (4) foray into Virginia/West Virginia on the AT.  So awesomeness abounds.

Since we had a long weekend for July 4, I wanted to venture a little further outside our backyard for a hike so we wouldn't "use up" all of our close hikes within the first year of this AT journey.  I was thinking two nights on the trail, but Ben wanted to just do one.  As usual, he was right.  Anyway, from my last experience carrying my full overnight pack (brief description in this post), I decided to limit us to ~10-mile days and found a hike just outside our "backyard" area that was 21-22 miles.  I was excited to get into Virginia since all of our AT hikes to this point have been in Tennessee and North Carolina, and as a bonus, this hike also took us into West Virginia, as we were hiking the ridge that forms the border between the two states.

Using AWOL's AT Guide and the WhiteBlaze website, I found a GREAT shuttle driver (highly recommend Don Raines anywhere in/near Pearisburg, VA) and scheduled our trip.  I had planned to go North from Hwy. 460 in Pearisburg to the Cherokee Flats NFS parking area, but Don convinced me to go the opposite direction because (1) leaving our car at Hwy. 460 would leave it in an area where there is cell service in case we had mechanical trouble or something when we got back (also a more visible area to discourage theft or vandalism); and (2) this stretch is notorious for scarce water sources in the summer, and most hikers would be going South to North, so we would meet people on the way and could inquire about any water sources they had seen on their way up.  Hence, my first southbound AT hike was born!  Don was a wealth of local info, and again, I highly recommend him if you're looking for a shuttle in this area.

We met Don at the Giles County Co-op parking lot on Hwy. 460, and he shuttled us to Cherokee Flats.  On the drive, I noticed that the rhododendron in the area were at what must be peak bloom.  You may remember from this post that we missed the peak rhododendron blooms at Roan Mountain by about a week, and I hadn't even though about rhododendron in this area when I was planning this hike, so this was a really nice surprise!  The rhododendron were plentiful and beautiful throughout the hike.

Before the blooms open fully, they're the same dark pink color as the full blooms on Roan Mountain.

But once they open fully, they're white!

I have a habit of taking pics of different white blazes (on fenceposts, trees, metal posts - some of them get pretty creative), and this one in the middle of blooming rhododendron was calling my name.

In addition to the rhododendron, there were all kinds of other wildflowers blooming on this hike.  

Blooming flowers was definitely one of the big themes of the hike.  The other was my dog playing in water.  Even though, as Don had warned us, water was scarce once you got up on the ridge, we passed several streams on our way up the side of the ridge.  It was hot and humid, and Tigger loves water, so of course he didn't miss any opportunity to cool off.

This one was actually just before we started descending the other side of the ridge on our second day.  Due to water scarcity on the ridge, there wasn't really "water" here, but due to the rain the night before, there was a good bit of mud (which Tigger also loves).

Wow.  Thankfully, Ben let Tig get in the river when they got back to Hwy. 460, so we didn't have to haul him home with all this mud all over him.

Anyway, as I mentioned, it was a hot and humid day, so we were all pretty drenched by the time we finished the climb up the ridge.  Once we got up there, though, the terrain was pretty gently rolling, so there were no more really strenuous climbs.  I was having trouble with my shoulders because I think I had too much heavy stuff in the top of my pack (I'm still learning the pack-packing process; it's always trial and error).  My trapezius muscles (trapezii?) were dying, especially on the right side; and while the second day was better (I did a better job packing, and also had less weight in the pack due to us eating our "heavy food" the night before and being low on water as we started the second day), when we got home I noticed that my right trapezius was sitting about an inch higher than the left, mostly due to swelling. I'm so swole, bro.  

In addition to the shoulder issues, I was feeling a little twinge in my right knee.  It was annoying, but nothing to be too concerned about (a little foreshadowing for you).  I was easily distracted by a couple of deer sightings and a killer view!

It's impossible to tell from this picture, but we had literally just stepped out from under a grove of trees where we waited out a short rainstorm.  When I looked back behind us, this is what I saw.  Always remember to look back once in a while - sometimes you miss great views if you don't!

We had planned to camp at a site that was 10 miles from our starting point and that was supposed to have "seasonal" water.  We passed a site just before mile 10 but didn't see any potential water source, so we kept going, thinking we weren't to "our" site yet. About a mile and a half later, we realized we had missed "our" site.  The next campsite wasn't supposed to be for three more miles.  By this point, we had been rained on once.  The rain only lasted about five minutes, so it wasn't terrible, but after it rained, we had to cross a huge meadow with tall (WET) grass, so our legs and shoes got pretty soaked in the process.  So we were wet; my shoulders were dying; and my knee was getting progressively louder in its protests.  The prospect of three more miles was unwelcome, but what do you do?  Just keep walking.  We came across another campsite at about mile 12.  It also had no visible water source, but we took stock of our water inventory (we had carried a lot of extra water due to Don's warnings about water scarcity) and figured we were good to stop here and just fill up on water at the mile 13 campsite (which was supposed to have a very reliable water source) the next morning.  So that's what we did.  

Shortly after we stopped to set up camp, we started hearing rumbles of thunder.  It was a hot, humid, summer day, so of course there's always a chance of afternoon thunderstorms.  We got busy setting up camp and cooking dinner so we could hopefully be ready to jump in the tent if it started raining.  

Our friend Russ convinced us that Tyvek is a cheap and effective alternative to a "tent footprint."  Russ's are much nicer and more tailored to the size of the tent, of course.  We planned on cutting ours to fit the tent once we got it laid out at the campsite, but I convinced Ben to leave the extra material so we'd have a place to take shoes off, etc., before going inside.  We just folded the extra stuff in when we went inside for the night to prevent rain from puddling on it and running under the tent. It worked great!

We brought burgers to cook for dinner (put frozen meat in your pack when you head out, and it's perfectly thawed for you to eat when you stop for the day!).  Cooking was a little frustrating because the rain earlier in the day left everything pretty damp.  Ben was finally able to get a decent fire going, but there was a lot of smoke.

Tigger, meanwhile, was exhausted and was sleeping sitting up.

Ben is not a big fan of carrying "bear bags" or other food canisters and prefers instead just to take all the non-food stuff out of our packs and hang the entire packs (with food stuff inside) to keep them from bears.  We left our pack covers on in case of rain. 

After we hoisted the packs, it was getting close to dark, so I went out to go to the bathroom (because ain't no way in hell I'm going out in the middle of the night to pee with God knows what kind of unseen animals lurking).  Awesome story about that: I was using my patented "grab a log and hang backwards to avoid peeing all over yourself" method, but the log was apparently weakened by the rain (and probably some termites or something else), because the part I was holding BROKE OFF mid-pee, causing me to fall backwards onto my naked butt in the middle of my own pee.  Nobody ever said trail life was glamorous.  Luckily, I carry wet wipes.  

Anyway, aside from the bathroom blunder, we got super lucky.  Several thunderstorms either went around us or dissipated before they got to us, but just after we finished with supper, pack hanging, butt cleaning, etc., it started to rain.  We were all ready to dive in the tent and just chill.  Tigger hates thunder and lightning, and especially when he's outdoors, so he was a little ill at ease in the tent for a bit, but then I think his exhaustion won out, and he went to sleep.  We followed soon after because, even though it was still a little light outside, we were tired, and the sound of rain on a tent fly is a pretty good lullaby.

We were disappointed to have to leave the rain fly on all night, but I bought this fan at the last minute to bring for Tigger, and even though it weighs about 90 pounds with its pack of four D batteries, I'll carry it again because it did a great job of pulling cool air in from under the rain fly and circulating it through the tent.  We were pretty comfortable!

I was afraid I wouldn't sleep well because I'm not a big fan of weird outdoor noises when I can't see what's making them, and I figured I'd be up all night imagining that a bear was about to attack, but the rain drowned out any other random noises, and I actually got a pretty good night's sleep.  We woke up at about 5:45AM when it started to get light outside and Tigger decided he needed to go out and potty.  We packed up camp over the next hour or so (our packs were damp from the rain the night before, but not nearly as bad as I had expected) and set out on our last ~10 miles.

As I mentioned before, my shoulders were feeling much better on the second morning.  However, my right knee was giving me little stabs of pain with every step from the beginning.  It was tolerable, and our first few miles were either on flat ground or an uphill grade (my favorite!), so I didn't think much of it.  There was a lot of rocky, uneven ground on this trail, though, which didn't help with the knee situation.

We pressed on to the next campsite a mile or so away, where we found the promised water source.  It was a really nice piped spring with plenty of water, so we each pulled out our filters and refilled our pack reservoirs and a couple of bottles for Tigger.  No need for me to refill the extra 2.5L bottle I had carried the day before because we'd be out in a few miles (and I was certainly happier without the extra 5 lbs. of water in my pack).  After that, we enjoyed some really stellar views first thing in the morning (it was still before 8:30AM at this point).

This was a little "surprise" view when we came out into a clearing created by a power line easement.  You have to excuse the power lines in the pic, but the views of the clouds rolling up against the mountains were just spectacular, even if the power lines ruined the "wilderness" feel of it.

Part of the joy of hiking in the summertime is the crazy tall grass and almost overgrown trail conditions in some places. Chiggers are always the first thought that pops in my mind (because I've been there, and it's a horrible place to be), but luckily, we didn't bring any home with us on this hike.  I think maybe the rain and wet grass helped us out.  Anyway, check out this bald we're about to climb!  You know great views are ahead.

We are literally above the clouds.  I'm thinking of all the people in Pearisburg waking up to a foggy morning and not really seeing the sun yet, and here I am in full sun looking down on a bunch of clouds like I'm in an airplane (yes, the rain cover is still on my pack so it doesn't get wetter walking through the tall wet grass).  Unreal.

Shortly after leaving this beautiful scene, we started our descent down the side of the ridge toward Pearisburg.  That's where the real trouble started in my knee.  I was moving pretty slowly, trying to concentrate on putting enough weight in my hiking poles to help with the knee situation.  The further we went, however, the less willing my knee was to actually bend.  Bending my right knee became so painful that I just couldn't do it anymore, so when we went down areas where there were actual stairs made out of stone (and there were many), I was turning sideways, stepping my right leg down, then stepping my left leg down beside it and hanging the right leg off the next step.  As you can imagine, it took forever, but it allowed my right knee to remain straight.  I couldn't just crab-walk like that down the side of the mountain when there weren't stairs, however, so I adopted this gait that I can only imagine looked like a peg-legged pirate (but probably not as cool) in which I would step normally with my left leg then kind of swing my right leg around instead of bending it at the knee to pick it up and move it forward.  Y'all, I was moving SO. SLOWLY.  It was ridiculous.  And even that became agonizing.  

At one point, my knee got so weak that it wasn't supporting my weight, so we had to stop and sit for a few minutes.  We were a little under 5 miles in to our hike for that day, which was supposed to be 10-11 miles total.  I knew there was no way I could make it 5-6 more miles, or if I did, it would literally take us all day (I'm talking a half a mile an hour pace if we're lucky).  Ben and Tigger both would have gone crazy at that pace.  So we pulled out the maps and saw that there was a road crossing about a mile ahead.  I convinced Ben to take Tigger and just leave me (Ben can really truck on downhills), go get the car, and come back and pick me up at the road crossing.  I only had to sit there for about two hours before he got back to me, and I know there was at least a mile of steep uphill in the last 5 miles of the hike, so I know he must've been killing himself to try to get back quickly (even though I told him to take his time - I had my Kindle and a camp chair and would be fine waiting).  

So, in spite of all the awesomeness of this hike, not finishing it put a big damper on it for me.  I was proud of myself because I CAMPED, Y'ALL.  And didn't complain once about it!  I even laughed as I was sitting in my own pee!  But then I couldn't finish the hike!  I'm stubborn as hell and ALWAYS push through, but I. Could. Not. Do. It. this time, and that makes me feel like crap.  

I also feel like crap because Ben said there wasn't any water between the road crossing and Hwy. 460 (where the New River was waiting), so Tigger was crazy hot and had to spend some time cooling down in the river at the end before they came to get me.  Poor Tigger was so exhausted, and by the time he rode in the car for 4 hours on the way home, his little legs were so stiff that he was limpy and wobbly all night last night, too (Ben has some pain in one of his feet and a big blister on the other, so the three of us looked like a little handicapped parade walking around - I really wish I could've gotten a video).  While I'm happy to put myself through a little bit of pain for a hike (preferably not as much pain as I was in at the end of this one), I feel really bad that I made Tigger sore, because he doesn't really get the choice of whether or how long we hike.  Don't get me wrong; he LOVES to hike and would rather do that than just about anything else, but I don't want to hurt him doing it.  I don't know whether it was the two days in a row of long hiking, the rocky terrain, or a combination of both, but I've got to do better for him.  I'm always learning lessons on these hikes (still a newbie, you know), but the lessons I learned on this one are that (1) we probably shouldn't plan on more than 8-mile days under full packs (the only other time I've had a lot of trouble with my knee was under a full pack, so I've got to believe it has something to do with the weight); and (2) Tigger may have a two-day limit for overnights.  The rules are constantly evolving.

In the aftermath:

1.  Ben says no more backpacking in the summer, so we may be sidelined for a bit (he hasn't sworn off hiking altogether in the summer, but definitely no more hiking with full packs - the heat was rough on him and Tigger both).  

2.  I'm going to have to go get my knee checked out because the pain was REALLY concerning this time.  I don't know if it's something I can fix by wearing some kind of brace or whether there's a bigger problem.  Fingers crossed that it's not a bigger problem.   

3.  The CLEAN-UP.  Holy crap, y'all.  Camp chores don't end when you pack up camp in the morning.  Especially when it rained the night before.  Oh, no.  You have to come home and pitch the tent AGAIN to let it dry out.  Along with rolling out your sleeping pads, washing your sleep sacks (ain't nobody carrying 30-degree sleeping bags in this weather) and all your other disgusting clothing, cleaning ALL THE OTHER THINGS, and reorganizing all your stuff so you know where to find it the next time.  There's crap scattered all over my house, a tent pitched in my workout room over the garage, and laundry for days. 

4.  Combining numbers 2 and 3 above, I was walking into my laundry room to drop a pile of stuff, and when I turned around to walk out, my knee buckled, and I fell face-first into the door frame, where I possibly broke my nose. It was REALLY swollen last night and is still puffy and bruised this morning.  So that's awesome.   

4.  Although I'm hugely disappointed in myself for not finishing the hike, this was a really good hike, and I'm glad we did it.  We saw a lot of cool stuff and had a really enjoyable time, minus the pain.  AND when I got home I was operating on a calorie deficit for the past two days that was more than two days' worth of my daily calorie allowance, so (before I broke my nose) I ate pizza and a DQ Blizzard for dinner.  SCORE!

~81 miles down; ~2109 to go.