Reuniting with the Tramily

This morning I woke up feeling pretty unrested after the mouse incident last night, and having a really hard time falling asleep afterwards. Nobody seemed to be in a particularly big rush to get going and we all tried hanging our clothes to dry off in the morning sun. The plan today was to hike to Carter Gap shelter, which was only 7.6 miles away. 

I chatted with a section hiker who had already hiked the PCT and over a thousand miles on the AT. He was planning on doing over 20 miles today but wasn’t in any rush. A few hikers showed up already a few miles into their hikes and took a mid morning break. 

Eventually I managed to get packed up, but not before a big guy showed up with an even bigger pack and a sweet German shepherd. He was 5 miles in and planning to call it for the day. His pack weighed over 75 pounds and had an exterior frame. It was wild to see but awesome how different each person’s hike can look like. He and his dog hiked a few miles each day, getting an early start and an early finish. Before I left, he gave me his dog’s food bag to hold and it was so heavy! It must have weighed half my entire pack. 

Surprisingly I was the first thru-hiker from the shelter crew to head out, and the day started with the one and only significant climb, a nice change for once. I moved at a manageable pace, enjoying hiking in the sun for the first time in a few days. I continued listening to the Ali Hazelwood book I started the other day and was amazed by the one dimensional characters and cringe dialogue. For a book about NASA scientists, it was surprisingly stupid. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good stupid romance novel, but this was just really bad. It was still borderline bad in a good way, and the plot was just compelling enough that I didn’t stop listening, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend. 

Great views along the way

Even though it was the middle of the week, there were plenty of day hikers out in big groups, and I passed and chatted with lots of people. When I made it to the top I wasn’t ready for a break, so I didn’t look for the view point and just continued down the trail. Somewhere along there I finished the book too which had a predictable but satisfying ending. When I got to the bottom, there was a nice log that seemed like a great place for lunch so I pulled out my tuna packets and had some dill pickle flavored cashews which was a great snack! 

Honey and Moonie passed along, and we chatted for a few minutes. Apparently Honey had started reciting books to Moonie from memory to entertain them on trail, and they’d already gone through half the Lord of the Rings trilogy today. That sounded so fun and I told them to sign me up for tomorrow. They were headed to the same shelter and I was excited to hang out with the crew again.

When I was mostly finished with lunch, Baby Feet showed up and said Big John was just behind us too. He left before me and I got going a few minutes later.I continued along, enjoying the mostly flat trail with a few ups and downs here and there. There were some fun stream crossings that were difficult rock hops and then before I knew it I was at the shelter, which was just a bit off of the trail. 

Honey and Moonie, Baby Feet and John were there. John’s new trail name was now Ultralight, on account of his starting the trail with over 70 pounds and shaving it to close to 30, including a heavy CPAP machine that weighed around 10 pounds. Tortuga was apparently at the Muskrat creek shelter with Honey, Moonie and John last night, but they weren’t sure if he would make it here tonight. He’s still been dealing with injuries unfortunately. Islan showed up at some point and we all hung out for a couple of hours. 

It wasn’t supposed to rain tonight so I took the opportunity to tent, since I’ve been having such bad sleep in the shelters. I headed to my tent pretty early and felt so tired that I went to sleep around 8:30.