Without Ana to moderate my pace, I attacked the mountains with foolish vigor. Her keeping of a reasonable pace was definitely the smart thing when we were together, but had meant that I never really opened the taps and pushed myself hard. In the first four hours on my own, I did ten miles, carrying close to 40 pounds, and across a section with more than 4000 feet of climb. If you're not up on your distances and weights, that is a pretty beefy walk. Felt outstanding as I bounded over obstacles, sweeping other hikers into my dust.
Approaching the Summit to Snowbird Mountain, half a mile vertically above the hostel
Snowbird Mountain had stunning views - possibly the best on the trail to date. I highly recommend checking the Flickr set to see some of these panorama shots in larger sizes. I stopped there for 20 minutes or so and had a snack so I could enjoy the views for longer.
After Snowbird, the terrain dives down to make room for the next big up-a-mountain stretch, which climbs to Max Patch. Now, in the guidebook, it lists Max Patch as having scenic views, but it lists that for a lot of places. What Max Patch actually has is the best views in at least the first 375 miles of the AT by a meaningful margin, in my book. I thought Snowbird was something special, but Max Patch just clobbered me. 360 degrees of green mountains and nothing else. I really wish it had been a reasonable place to stop for the night, so I could have stayed for several hours, but I had to settle for another snack and a lot of pictures before moving on.
Max Patch itself
One of the views from it
After the four-hour speed binge, I realized I probably needed to turn it down a couple of notches so as to not die, and since I'd already done 90% of the hills for the day, I could still make good time on the flats while putting in less effort. Since I'd had to split the gear with Ana in haste for her early-morning departure, the job wasn't particularly cleanly done and I'd given her the tent to make up for some of the other extra weight I was carrying. Given the distance to Hot Springs, I would only need to stay in a shelter for one night and we hadn't encountered a completely full shelter in some time - it was a risk, but not a particularly stupid one.
Around 5 in the afternoon, it started to look like a storm, and I was close to an empty shelter and ducked into it to avoid the downpour. It seemed to slow after about an hour, and I wanted to get to the next shelter which was only five miles and a 900 foot climb away, so I headed out in a lull. I got rained on pretty well after that, but I did make the shelter, which proved to be one person short of full, which was very lucky for me as my backup plan would have been to walk either 5 miles back to the first shelter or the additional 13 miles to town, at least the second half of which would have been in the dark with my headlamp.
The shelter is in the book as a 6-man, but five men and a dog (not shown) was definitely the limit. Also, since people are taller than they were when the shelter was built in 1938, it was impossible to get both feet and head on the sleeping platform at the same time.
The shelter was up quite high and the wind was blowing so it was cold up there, but well within the abilities of my gear - I put on almost everything but I was toasty warm all night long. A mouse did run across my bag towards morning, but nothing of mine got gnawed on so that was OK.
The next morning I had an easy 13 mile downhill jaunt to Hot Springs, where I found Ana at the conveniently located hostel.
National Forest on the left, hostel on the right - it is pretty much on the path
As a matter of fact, pretty much the whole town of Hot Springs is on the AT, and they mark the path down the main street with signs in the sidewalk and along the road.
The two-day rest that was supposed to get Ana fully rested to get back on the trail was not successful, and she was feeling much worse than she had two days ago. I took a zero day and the awesome hostel staff gave us a free ride to a clinic 30 miles away to get her tested for mono, which she didn't have. Her bloodwork also showed normal iron. So, we were a bit confused and decided to give her another several days off to see if she got better or worse. I'd walk the 67 miles to Irwin, the next town, and meet her there.
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