Day 83, Saturday, May 5. Lamberts Meadow Shelter—16.3 miles

I awoke to the smell of brewing coffee. I was so impressed that my little Bunny took the initiative to get up and get things going, then I remembered we were in a hostel. I looked over and saw Bunny still asleep. It was then that my world turned upside down when Buttercup flipped on the lights without warning. It was already 7:30. Patches had said she was contemplating getting up early enough to make sunrise on McAfee Knob. I checker her bunk to find her stuff still there.

Donna, the hostel owner, brought in a pan of breakfast casserole that she made for us to have. I was grateful because we only had a protein bar and coffee planned and I was still hungry. She told us that we could expect and easy walk today since we were nobo. The people slack packing or sobo all had worse days ahead of them. We said our goodbyes to everyone and headed out with Gnome right at 9:30. Patches said she’s be just a few minutes behind us—we may never see her again.

It was a very nice walk out. The rain of the last couple of days has really helped to green things up and get flowers blooming. We had an idyllic walk along a mountain stream for about a mile. We left the stream and climbed up to some open pastures. Bunny was slightly ahead when we heard her yell “habanero.” Gnome and I started looking around for them. We gave up trying to find them and asked her where. “What are you talking about? I said kind of narrow.” She was going through a stile.

A little later, I heard a thump of something behind me and Gnome said something. I asked Bunny what he dropped and she said “wooden leg.” I’ve been hiking with Gnome for almost 3 weeks and this is the first time I found out he had a wooden leg. “What are you talking about? I said sleeping bag.” Bunny mumbles a bit and tries to blame me. True dat.

The rest of the morning was a very easy hike. We decided to not eat lunch until we came to Johns Spring Shelter in the hopes of scoring some trail magic at the road crossing before we begin the climb to McAfee Knob. What an ideal location and time for trail magic—the first Saturday after the trail opens back up after being closed for a forest fire. The closest we came to magic was a groundhog eating flowers along the trail.

Johns Spring Shelter is just a mile after the road. We decided to take a nice long lunch break to give Patches a chance to catch up. Iron Man and Murphy passed us and told us that she was still at the hostel looking “mighty comfy” when they left and they thought they had heard her say that she should get going—this is bad. That’s what she says just before falling asleep almost every night since we met her on the second day. She might be taking another zero.

A young fire fighter, Brian, walked into the shelter area to check things over. Up to this point, we could smell the burnt wood (which we mistakingly thought was a fire for trail magic about a mile back) but couldn’t see any evidence of the burn. He told us that almost 150 acres of woods had caught on fire, but it was just a leaf and duff burn. The fire hadn’t gone vertical. He shared a lot of information on how they combat fires and what has to be done to contain them. He was originally from PA near Gettysburg and he, one day, hoped to hike the AT from there to where he lives now near Asheville.

Bunny went down to the privy before we left. When she came back, she told me she could see the fire burn below the privy. I went down to look and saw it was only about 5 feet from the privy. The shelter area was one part of the containment area for the fire. As soon as we left the shelter, we could see that the trail was fire block for almost a half mile up the mountain. The fire had burned right up to the trail from the east. We could see where the fire fighters had made the containment trench down from the trail to stop the fire from spreading.

There were a lot of day hikers and weekend campers out in the area. I’ve often thought that we are not getting any stronger, but today I felt pretty good about our progress. We were passing groups of people not even carrying packs as we climbed toward McAfee. Our goal had been to make it to the knob on a weekday to avoid crowds that swarm the area on weekends. Even though it was a weekend today, we had a couple things working in our favor: it was finals weekend at Virginia Tech which meant there wouldn’t be as many students out, and rain was predicted which meant there wouldn’t be as many families out since Americans tend to be fair weather hikers.

McAfee Knob was more amazing than we expected it to be, yet not as dangerous as it appears in pictures. If you fall, it’s less than 40’ down to trees and brush that will break your fall. It would still hurt, but now I understand why some people risk doing hand stands on the edge. I was tempted but Bunny was too afraid to let me try. (Yes, that’s the only reason I didn’t do a handstand.). There were probably only 20 other people up there so we had plenty of opportunity to get pictures near/over the edge of the cliff.

We had met Sebastian (from the Netherlands) just yesterday at the shelter and when we all went to dinner at the Home Place. He got to McAfee Knob just after us, so we took pictures for each other. There were also 3 girls going out for their first overnight backpacking trip that asked us to take some pictures for them; they had an older version of the same camera that I use. It was also up here that I discovered Gnome is afraid of heights. I’m learning all sorts of new things about him today—first a wooden leg and now this new fear.

We still had another 9 miles to go with another mountain to climb to get up to Tinker Cliffs before we could stop for the night Donna had told us that she finds Tinker Cliffs even more impressive than McAfee. I will go with equally impressive. There just isn’t as dramatic of an overhang to get pictures from. We started to descend McAfee and found ourselves in a maze of rocks comparable to Giant City in Southern Illinois except on a grander scale.

The sky was getting pretty dark by then and it even started to sprinkle a bit. We decided to duck into Campbell Shelter to get ready for the coming rain and, possibly, have a snack. Wood Chuck and Miagi were already there and looked like they were calling it a day. Wood Chuck’s shin was aching so he wanted to give his body some rest before it got worse. We told them that there were three young ladies on the way here for the night and that seemed to perk them up a bit. We also told them to expect Patches if she did actually make it out of the hostel. We didn’t anticipate her going beyond here because of the late hour (it was already 5 and we still had 6 more miles).

The three of us headed on to the next shelter fully expecting to have to do some night hiking to get there and then having to set up camp in the dark. We met a fourth, Farm All (as in Allis Chalmers Tractor) while we were doing some small climbs before the next mountain. Farm All is from Vermont and lost his dad when he was just a young kid. There were 7 kids in the family with him being one of the 3 oldest. After his dad’s death, their mother piled all the kids in a station wagon saying they needed to get away for a while. They ended up in Baxter where the 3 oldest climbed Katahdin. His oldest brother had a St Christopher medal that his dad had hanging on his rear view mirror and he left it under a rock on top of Katahdin. Now, almost 50 years later, Farm All was hiking the entire AT carrying another St Christopher medal that he was going to leave on top of the mountain in memory of his father.

Having a new hiker to walk with always energizes everyone. We get to tell stories again that people around us have already heard a few times, but it gives us something to keep our minds (and mouths) occupied so we don’t notice our walking. We made the remaining 6 miles at least a half hour faster than we had expected. Tinker Cliffs was impressive as we had anticipated.

When we got to Lamberts Meadow Shelter, we were completely surprised. There were 6 people already there, but they had decided to pitch tents instead of sleeping in the shelter, so we had an empty shelter to ourselves. Not only that, the forest service has provided a new bear safe so we didn’t have to hang any food bags tonight. These two things saved us 20 minutes of preparation for the night. It was still dark by the time Bunny and I were ready for bed, but we were snug and warm before the rains started. I’ve got to remember to give Bunny a good dose of Benadryl before a storm so she will sleep as peacefully as I do in thunderstorms. Tonight, I forgot, so we were both kept awake until the worst part passed.

EFG