Day 54, Friday, April 6. Double Springs Shelter—23.5 miles

For some mysterious reason, I was up just a tad bit after 4a peering (maybe you can leave the “r” out) around the outside corner of our cabin. I noticed a flashlight moving frantically inside of Donut’s tent. Actually, I never looked at the clock but I knew their plan was to get up at 4 and hit the trail by 5. More power to them. Our plan is to sleep until 6:45, turn on the coffee pot, nap until 7ish, drink a cup of coffee, finish packing, eat breakfast, and be on the trail as near to 8 as is Bunnily possible.

As we were getting ready, we kept trying to predict their position of where they need to be to complete the “dash” before midnight. By the time we were ready to leave, they should have been near Vandeventer Shelter (where we had planned to be last night). They were confident they could maintain 3mph for 14-15 hours and get in around 8p. We were a little questioning of the speed assumption, but were confident they would complete the challenge. We were less confident in our own ability to complete the 23+ miles we had planned.

Miracle of miracles, we were on the trail just a couple minutes after 8 and we were feeling good. I’ve found that as long as I let Bunny walk in front of me, she hits it hard. We’ve been on the trail long enough that Bunny’s leg muscles have developed so when she gets going, I can’t keep up. Today, the Bunny had a fully stoked fire in her. We made it the five miles to the dam in less than 2 hours—much better than I ever thought possible for us. If we were doing this good, our hopes for the four dashers were improving.

The only people we met along the trail were a couple of sobo section hikers, Iron Eyes and Booking It. They were trying to make time down to Hampton to camp tonight and meet their wives early tomorrow to get them to a TV for the remainder of the weekend to watch the final two rounds of the Masters. They have been hiking together for about 4 years.

We made it to Vandeventer Shelter by 12:30 to have some lunch maintaining a slightly better than 2mph rate the entire way. We had great views of valley and lake below us. It was a little windy in the shelter which motivated us to eat quickly—only 30 minutes.

The walk really wasn’t bad at all. Just small climbs of less than 300’ at a time. When we stopped for water, we finally saw our first deer of the trip. We continued to maintain our 2mph rate all the way to 4:30 when we decided to stop at Iron Mountain Shelter to cook some supper before pushing on some more.

Supper took us until 5:30 to finish up and repack. The minute we were loaded up and stepped out of the shelter, the rain started up. We only had 7 miles to go to make the next shelter. Wise planning and foresight had made us wear our rain coats and headlamps; it was going to be a late night (and miserable now).

When I was little, my grandparents had a place in Florida and we would go down to visit them every winter. At the time, there were Greyhound dog racing tracks in Tampa. My parents would go down to watch the dog parade area before each race. If a dog took a dump, my parents would place $20 on it to win—they did very well on their betting returns. If they had been watching us after supper, they would have placed $40 on Bunny to make it to the shelter—she was in the brush a surprisingly long time. When she got her pack back on, she really lived up to her name of Bunny Tracks.

The light held out until just after 8. We checked Guthook when we had to turn our headlamps and we only had 0.7 miles to go. The rain had been steady since we left Iron Mountain but the fog had also come in. When we turned on our headlamps, the light reflected off of the water particles in the air and back into our faces. We had zero visibility. I could only look down at the trail and sweep my head from side to side to see if I could see any side trails. This was the longest walk of the trail so far.

At last, the shelter magically appeared in front of us with tent inside. We stepped under the overhang and the rain immediately intensified. We tried to quietly set up the bed and get everything stowed away. I had to hang the bear bag in the pouring rain. I was a little apprehensive after the fiasco at Laurel Falls Shelter but I hit my target with one throw (and the rope was still attached to the rock). It poured all night long without any let up.

We have successfully completed our first “official” 20+ mile day. I hope the four dashers made it off the ridge before the rain and fog got really bad. This is not a night to be out.

EFG