Day 54 - Another Short Day (with rain)

Wednesday, May 27th - Got up at Rice Field Shelter around 6:50 or so - various alarms went off between 5:30 and 6:30, but no one was interested in getting up with the overnight rain. I guess I wasn't the only one who didn't sleep all that well last night. As expected with the heavy rain, no one's gear dried out overnight, so it was another dress up in wet clothes. Butter Toes was the first out the door, wearing only sandals (no way could I do that!) Mark and I dressed in our rain gear, though I suspected it would be a waste of time. We ate breakfast in the shelter, and left around 8:00, in moderate rain. It rained til about 9:30 or so. Since we were already on the ridgeline, we had a fairly easy hike of it to start, stopping after a mile and a half to pick up some good water at a trailside spring (much better than at Rice Field Shelter). Then it was a decent trail along the ridgeline, with only a few rocky sections, then a reasonable descent down to Pine Swamp Branch Shelter. The day slowly improved, with a few peaks of sun.

We eventually intersected with the Allegheny Trail, which does 330 miles from this point up to the Mason Dixon line; we ate lunch here, around 1:00 pm. The Allegheny trail looked poorly maintained, so I'm glad we're not attempting that! We reached the shelter around 2:30 or so, after about 12 1/2 miles done, and again laid all our gear out to take advantage of what sunshine we could get - and also fired up Mark's radio. Criqui and Witness were already there, but moved on shortly after we arrived. Despite the name, this shelter is again in memory of Robert William Trimpi, (1951 - 1969), the second one we have seen dedicated to his memory. No register at the shelter. About a dozen other people came through, but very oddly all but one were "slack-packing" it, all from Pearisburg. They were getting rides back to Pearisburg, or were staying at "The Captain's Place," a trailside house whose owner allows hikers to sleep in an enclosed porch area (you have to use a zip-line to cross a creek to get to his house). Everyone was complaining about the weather.

We ate around 6:00, with the rain starting up again. One last hiker came in around 8:30, "Spice-Man," and he was really hurting with numerous blisters, and had virtually all his gear sopping wet (his tent is not waterproof, and he had tented out in last night's heavy storms). He had made the mistake of swapping out his boots at Trail Days for a pair of trail-runners, and had been in agony ever since; obviously, a bad mistake. We both suggested that he have his boots mailed back to him in Catawba, and I think he planned on doing so. Mark and I hit the rack around 9:00, but Spice-Man was up for another hour at least, eating dinner and stretching out all his gear inside the shelter - lucky it was just the 3 of us there tonight.