Section hiker!!

I am just beginning to realize how much I trash-talked section hikers when I still considered myself a thru hiker. I am officially now a section hiker. I injured my knee near Front Royal, Virginia, and now I am off the trail and am about 90% sure I will not be going back this year. My aunt Karen picked me up from the nearest road I could hobble to and brought me to stay with her in Arlington. I am currently recouperating and exploring my options as far as what to do with my life, up here in DC. I apparently have some severe tendinitis in my left knee. It is starting to feel better but I still can't walk very far without getting a stiff and burning pain sensation and you can forget about inclines, descents, and stairs.

I might write some sort of final post for this blog but I don't want to be too sentimental or belabor the point or anything, and also I don't want to write a final post as if this is the last of my backpacking. I love backpacking and I intend to attempt another thru hike, maybe the AT, maybe another trail. PCT, or Continental Divide.


I hope you have enjoyed reading. Expect to hear more from me in 2012 :)

Manassas Gap shelter

I feel about 100 percent better today :) I walked 23 miles, and my knee hurts a little bit, but I feel like I am already getting back into the groove of the trail. Tomorrow we will resupply in Front Royal and then enter Shenandoah National Park, where every ten miles or something you can stop and get a soda or something. It was a beautiful day today, breezy and perfect. Skittles and Hit Man will be joining us in the shelter tonight and the shelter also has a fabulous water source which may not sound particularly exciting to you but it is for us:)

Just wanted to let you all know, after my Debbie Downer post of despair...

Bears den hostel, VA

Wow talk about a morale low. I was ready to quit the trail today. It was really really sucking. It was hot. There was one viewpoint and it was crappy and plagued with attack bugs. My shoulders are hurting because they are not used to the weight of my pack anymore, and my trail legs are basically gone (though I am still luckily faster than the weekenders). Oh and in case anyone was wondering, if you continue to eat trail food like pop tarts and cream cheese on graham crackers and pbjs as though you are on the trail but you're not, well, you're going to get a little bit FAT. Which naturally is UBER bad for morale.  

 I felt like a failure and now that I am in VA I have lots of family who would probably come and pick me up if I called them crying or something, thus it is logistically now possible for me to quit (no one would have picked me up in Maine or Massachusetts or anything that far north). 

Hit Man, a cool new Sobo I met this evening, said I should call all my family members and tell them that no matter what I say in the future they should not help me quit. Take that option off the table. 

It's true. I need to take the quitting option off of my mind's table. Then I will be content with what I am doing. Only then can I be happy. 

The trail feels lonely now. It is about a tenth as pretty and majestic as the northern section I left (and about a one hundredth as majestic as the mountains out west).  

We really had it good at first, Flora and I. Chip, Walker, and Brookie were some seriously good trail family members.

Well I'm tired of complaining. Goodnight.   

Staunton VA

I am going back to the trail on Friday, in Harpers Ferry. I am very very excited about this. Harpers Ferry is where the Appalachian Trail Conservancy is headquartered and is near the halfway point and thus is considered a psychological halfway point and so basically I have half the trail ahead of me. This is good for me, as far as morale goes. Whatever shenanigans I pulled during the northern half, I will still be able to say I have hiked the southern half of the AT all in one go.

Statistics: 
Hiked 741 miles
Skipped 425 miles
Miles to Georgia:  1,013

I love my Virginia family and I wish I could see them all more often.

I might go back and do the 425 skipped miles next year before June 17th, then it would still be considered a thru hike. I missed some stuff, most notably the half gallon challenge, in Boiling Springs PA, where you eat a half gallon of ice cream in under 30 minutes. I am a Hammond and thus I am genetically predisposed to being able to knock that challenge out of the water, and I was really looking forward to it. Also I missed the lowest elevation on the trail, in a zoo in NY. Also missed the Hudson Bridge. And I'll never know exactly how bad the rocks are in PA. 

I have so much to look forward to!!  

Yes I will be going back..

I just realized that I failed to mention that I will indeed be returning to the Trail, meeting back up with Connor wherever she is and hiking home. Flights back east are cheap on September 11, naturally, so I will be flying to my Aunt Karen's in DC on that day, and she has graciously offered to drive me to where Connor is. I am having a great time out here, but I am also excited to get back to finish the trail!

Yellowstone National Park

I guess I have a fair bit of stuff to write about! 

So NYC was nice, we were able to see Chip and Brookie came to see us also, and the four of us had a nice day/evening galavanting around the city- we went on a ferry to see the statue of liberty, saw the world trade tower site, had some good food, walked around Central Park, and saw Chip's studio and his amazing artwork :) 

Connor and I went shopping with Jessy so we had some normal clothes to wear around. Oh jeans, I missed you:)

Then... I made a (rash) decision to help Brookie drive to Montana. Well, first Wyoming, then Montana. He's moving to Montana from Maine. But first, he was stopping in the Grand Tetons for a much- anticipated climb up Mt. Moran, which is over 12600 feet high, with some AMC friends (former caretakers in the White mountains). 

So, in short, so far on my side trip:

We drove 36 hours straight, between Brookie and I, to Grand Teton National Park. 
I slept by myself in a campground the first night in the park, my first night ever sleeping alone in the woods. Was too tired to be afraid of grizzlies or crazy people. (I was invited to go up to high camp on Moran with the boys, but I was afraid I didn't have warm enough clothes)
Went on a beautiful hike through Cascade Canyon- diappointing to not be hiking on the Tetons (rather just viewing them) but the weather was too bad to go up higher (snow and hail). The hike was still awesome! Saw a moose, ate some raspberries, looked up into the horrible weather at the mountain Brookie and his friends were climbing, Moran, and wondered if they were alive. 

I met back up with the boys, who unfortunately did not make it all the way to the summit. They made it to a high col at about 11,800 feet (humorously) called Drizzlepuss, named by some Germans who first summitted it (in the rain). The weather was too bad to go on safely:/ 

We left the park, and went to stay with some friends of Brookie's in Rawlins, Wyoming, near Split Rock, where I had lots and lots of fun bouldering. I got some impressive battle wounds on one leg from sliding down a rock. I love climbing! I am getting better and better at it.

Now I am in Yellowstone park, sightseeing, hiking, camping, and backpacking. Wherever the wind blows us:) We just watched Old Faithful geyser blow of, among the masses of people eating ice cream:)         

NYC!!!

This morning I was hiking through pouring rain in the middle of nowhere, soaking wet and dirty, eating cookies out of a Tupperware on the side of the trail. Right now I am clean and dry, having eaten tasty Mexican food and ice cream and having watched a romantic comedy, in an apartment two blocks from Time Square. Or is it Times Square? Small world.

Right now I am feeling bombarded with advertisement and I am just getting over the motion sickness I got from the train ride and taxi rides. I know city life is not for me anymore... It is so good to see Jessy though!!