Wednesday, June 10th - Got up at 6:30, giving me extra rime to get packed up. Got Mark up at 7:00, and we finished packing. Grabbed the Continental Breakfast again - a little thin, but more than we'd have gotten out on the trail, right? Moved our gear out of the room and down to the entrance area, where Dave Berry picked us up around 8:00. Quick drive back up the hill to the Dripping Rock parking area, arriving at 8:25, and Dave was quickly on his way. About two minutes later Solar System and Naneek pulled in, in a van driven by "Rusty," another A.T. legendary character. Solar System and Naneek were hiking into Waynesboro today. We were all on our way around 8:45. Semi-overcast today, and sultry even to start, so it's gonna be a sweaty one.
Climbing up our first slope (Humpback Mountain), we had a nice view over our shoulders of the Wintergreen Resort - kind of a castle on the hill appearance. Lots of water today, and a good thing too, because we ended up drinking over 2 gallons each through the course of the day. We encountered a rather aggressive black snake on the trail today, about 5 feet long, that required some "persuading" to move on. Lunch at the Jones Mill Shelter; nice spot. Mixed bag on the hiking today - started out with nice trails, especially from the shelter to Rockfish Gap. We reached the gap (the southern point of the Shehandoahs) around 3:30 or so, stopping at a self-serve registration point about a mile in. Surprisingly the trail became much more rugged once we reached the Park, so a pretty tough end to the day's hiking. Kicked out our first SNP deer along the way, the first of many to come I'm sure. Climbed two more peaks - the first was Bear Mountain, which was unusual because it had about half a dozen, very large microwave relay towers on top, very incongruous in this setting. Then over Calf Mountain, and on to the Calf Mountain Shelter, with the skies looking increasing thunderstormish (but nothing yet). The huts in the SNP have bear poles, which are a lot more convenient.
About a dozen people were at the shelter, the largest crowd we have seen in some time - but most were section hikers. One had graduated from Georgetown in 1967, so we enjoyed chatting for a bit. Surprisingly, most of the people there opted to tent, even though the bug problem here was minimal. We stayed in the shelter because of the threat of rain. In fact a heavy thunderstorm passed by us between 8:30 and 9:00, but we got nary a drop. All told we did between 21 and 22 miles; good day.
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