VA 620, Trout Creek 1496.4 to Sarver Hollow Shelter 1511.3 (14.9 miles, 1511.3 total miles)
The night had been very cold, and I’d woken up with my leg extremely itchy near where the bee sting had been. My ankle was no longer swollen, but random bites had popped up in the area and I lay awake for a long time, wondering what I’d do if bugs had infested my gear.
It was difficult to change into my hiking clothes in the morning, though hot coffee definitely helped. We woke up earlier than usual, leaving camp at 9AM, pleased with the timing.
Before we left, we met Slice’s friends Mikey and Pearl, who’d both either thru hiked or section hiked the AT previously. Based on the years, we were sure we must have crossed paths at some point before.
There was a climb up to the ridge to start the day, and I began hiking with Sydney, who was still fighting feeling sick, but had been much warmer in her hammock due to Sprocket’s kindness of giving her a new sleeping pad.
We passed Pearl and Mikey removing their warm layers partway up the climb, and stopped to chat with them for a minute. I saw Pearl had bites on her legs too, and she told us about “no see ums”, and we felt a lot better knowing what had been biting us. We hiked on, then waited for Iroh a few minutes before continuing.
We’d gone 2.1 miles in the first hour with Sydney setting the pace. Iroh and I were quite impressed with that as it had all been up the mountain. I took my rain jacket off, the only warm layer I was wearing over my hiking clothes, but the day remained chilly and breezy.
After another couple miles of gradual uphill, we arrived at the spur trail to the Audi Murphy Monument. I remembered it vividly from last time, as it had been within my first few weeks on trail. We also celebrated hitting 1,500 total trail miles.
We got there just before 11AM, and set up Sydney’s foam pad to take a break. That was one benefit of a full size foam pad, we could all sit on it and have some snacks.
Slice got to the monument and hung out for a bit before pressing on. Mikey and Pearl stopped for only a moment and left. I had some work to do on my phone, so we stayed an hour, and thankfully Sydney let me use her phone’s hotspot, because my service wasn’t so great.
We had a very pleasant walk into Brush Mtn East Wilderness, comprising two miles of gradual, switchbacked descent to a valley below. After chatting all morning, Sydney and I both decided to put in podcasts as we went.
The valley was lovely and the warmest place we’d been all day. We stopped for water briefly, and continued on over a series of bridges, fallen leaves crunching under our feet, the sun fully shining on us, no cool wind to be felt.
At one of the large bridges, Sydney saw a ladder leaning against a tree that had several broken branches jutting out from it, forming a series of hand and footholds that she used to spider monkey her way up several feet from the ladder.
I watched, fascinated, as she climbed up and down, admiring her bravery and adventurous spirit, trying not to picture a branch breaking underfoot, Iroh watching from below, egging her on.
We kept going to a parking lot, where we found Mikey and Pearl having lunch. After saying hi to them, we headed up a couple little more inclines toward Niday Shelter, where we having our lunch break.
It was a lovely spot, where we saw Slice just before she headed out. I lost track of time, and we ended up spending almost two hours at the shelter eating lunch, reading the log book, and taking turns using the nice privy there.
We left just before 4PM, completing another ridge climb up to the Eastern Continental Divide, where waters on the west side of the mountain flow toward the Gulf of Mexico and on the east side flow toward the Atlantic Ocean.
We continued on toward camp, though Sydney was struggling to continue. She was cold, exhausted, and sick, and we took a couple breaks for her to catch her breath and eat something.
We passed gorgeous ledges on the mountain, where we had to hike across slanted slabs of stone that reminded me of traveling through Pennsylvania. The undulating ridges of the southern Virginia mountains spread before us for miles, and the views made me feel deeply alive and grateful for my journey.
The sun sank low in the sky, as we moved through rocks and great wide fields of flowers that reached shoulder height, seeing the ridges across the way glow with pink and orange.
Sydney was struggling, and stopped on one particular rock section, breaking down into tears, while we encouraged her how well she was doing and how we were only .2 to the trail to the shelter.
Both Iroh and I had felt how she felt many times before. I’d cried while hiking plenty of times, after stubbing my toe, falling, or just because of how hard it was. I’d had moments I could barely lift my foot to get to the next step, praying for strength to get me to my destination, just a little bit further.
Sydney was tough as nails, and she’d done more than most hikers during their first week and a half on trail. Plus it was cold, getting dark early, and she was sick. It takes a lot of willpower to do what she’s been doing.
Finally, we were descending a steep .4 to Sarvers Hollow Shelter in the growing darkness, thrilled to find it was deserted, as it was after 7PM and we didn’t want to disturb anyone.
We quickly changed into warm clothes, then Iroh and I took Q another .1 with our headlamps to the water source, collecting several liters and filtering some of it there.
We passed spooky ruins on our way, pointing out the pros of hiking in the fall and cold, such as not having to travel through mud anymore, lack of bugs, and hiking clothing that isn’t always soaked through.
We cooked dinner together and spread our stuff out on the large shelter floor. The shelter was extremely nice, with a porch and picnic table. We were laying down to fall asleep around 9:30, when Iroh read some of his book that he’d gotten from Sharkey aloud to us.
As we were drifting off, suddenly there was a sound of leaves crunching, and when we turned on our headlights there were eyes in the trees. I jumped to Sydney’s side and she held me while Iroh took my headlamp and tried to scare the animal off, thinking it might be a bear.
When the eyes moved, he saw they belonged to two deer, unbothered by our human presence. Adrenaline going, I laid back down, relieved it hadn’t been anything of concern. I fell asleep in the cold air, bundled in all my layers, trying to ignore any other mysterious noises in the night.