Everybody was AT Hiking: SR612 to SR 611, Bland, VA: December 27, 2021

Ben and I finally made it back on the AT after several months away.  We have somewhat of a loose tradition of hiking on Ben's birthday, so we planned to knock out a couple of short sections in Virginia on the 27th and 28th.  We headed up there late in the afternoon on Sunday the 26th, after our Sirknen Christmas celebration at Ben's parents' house, and stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Princeton, WV.  Hotels in this area aren't plentiful, and pet-friendly hotels are even less so.  But of course Tigger got to come with us.

Tigger has stayed in hotels before, and in fact has stayed at this hotel on another one of our hiking trips, without incident.  This trip, though, was terrible.  Our room was on the first floor at the end of the hallway, right next to the stairwell and the "back door" to the outside.  We thought that was pretty awesome and that it would make taking Tigger out in the middle of the night a lot easier.  Unfortunately, however, the hotel's elevator was not working, which meant that the stairwell was very busy ALL NIGHT LONG.  Who knew that hotels in Princeton, WV, would be so busy?  Tigger was constantly barking at all the noise, which required us to be constantly shushing him so he wouldn't wake up our neighbors.  I'm probably being generous when I say that we got maybe an hour and a half of sleep, total, in 10-minute increments, all night.  When it was time to go meet our shuttle driver the next morning (for this hike, we shuttled with "Bubba" out of Bland), I wanted to cry.  Hiking was just about the last thing I felt like doing, but at the same time, we wanted to do it and had driven all that way, so we manned up and hiked.

The hike was not long or strenuous.  It was just about 8 miles.  We had planned on doing a little over 9, but the first mile or so that we had planned was "road walking," and as it turned out, the road was pretty busy on a Monday morning, so we opted against doing that with Tigger (he hates traffic).  I'll catch that portion solo when we go back for the adjacent section.  

We had a moderately steep climb up to the top of the ridge and then pretty standard ridge running rises and falls until we dropped back down off the ridge at our end point.  Ridge running in the wintertime is one of my favorite things, because you're almost never without a view.  In the summer, you wouldn't have much of a view, but with the leaves off the trees, it's pretty awesome.  

It can sometimes be pretty cold and windy on the ridges in the winter, but the weather this week was unseasonably warm.  We ended the hike in the high 50s, and it was only slightly chilly on the ridge when the wind would gust. 

The trail was covered in dry leaves, which in some places were almost knee-deep.  It was a very noisy hike.  We weren't sneaking up on any wildlife for sure.

And while it's always important to be cognizant of the white blazes, in some places on this hike it was imperative to look for them closely, or you might lose the trail due to all the leaf litter.

Although we didn't "sneak up" on any wildlife, we did manage to see a deer.  She wasn't too concerned about us (obviously, as she could hear us coming from a mile away) and eventually moved on.

Other than the plentiful wintertime views, there wasn't much spectacular about this hike.  Tigger had a good time, except for when Ben left the trail to go to the bathroom.  He watched like a hawk until he came back.

There were a few survey markers on the trail (more than I've ever seen on another section, actually), and fittingly, one was marked with 1975, the year in which Ben was born.

We decided that was a good omen that we should consider this hike Ben's birthday hike and not stick around for our planned hike on his actual birthday, which was Tuesday.  After hiking 8-ish miles on an hour or so of sleep, the thought of spending another night in the hotel with Tigger, not sleeping, and then hiking another 10 miles the next day was more than either of us could handle.  It turned out to be very much for the best, as I came down with what I think is a mild case of the flu in the middle of the night Tuesday night, so who knows if my body would've even been able to hike Tuesday anyway.

395.3 down; 1794.7 to go