Day 13: Peter’s Mountain Shelter

Start: Kind of Outdoorsy (AT mi 1149.2). Stop: Peter’s Mountain Shelter (AT mi 1160.6). Today’s miles: 11.4 miles. Total AT mileage: 135.6 miles

I got up around 6:30, tried my best to tip toe around the room of sleeping hikers, and quickly got ready for the day. By 6:45 I was at the little restaurant across the street waiting for them to open. Uphill, one of the hostel hikers last night came over and was waiting with me for a few minutes before the gentleman opened the door and let us come in. We decided to eat together since we were the only ones there, besides two other local men. It was kind of cute, one of the “regulars” brought us our menu and brought Uphill his coffee, saying, “I like to be helpful when I can.”

Uphill is section hiking Maryland and Pennsylvania. He’s from Roswell, GA.. not far from my hometown at all! It was neat to chat him up this morning. The guy working the restaurant was also pretty cute. He says the owner is his best friend, so he came out of retirement to help her out when she can’t be there. He only charged me $2.65 for my egg and cheese sandwich. After we ordered, Cholula and Curmudgeon came in and ordered their breakfast, too.

I was the first one out the door and on the road to start the day.. simply because I knew they’d all catch me on the uphills. The bad part about being the first out, I walked into like 58472528393635383937253 spider webs crossing a bridge. I’ve never been happier to have my rain jacket on (it literally caught the majority of the webs). I started off swatting each one off of me-and then that turned in to just going for it and wiping them off at the end of the bridge.

After the 2 ish mile road walk, the trail went over some railroad tracks and then straight up into the woods. Up, up and up I went, then rocky scrambles for a while before walking along a ridge. The whole way up I was praying to see some pretty views of the town and water below-but it was all obstructed by the trees.

There were a few nice view points though, and I took my time and explored every single one of them! The last one, I sat at with Curmudgeon, Cholula, Towely, and Uphill and ate my Combos from town and finished off a Gatorade a trail angel gave us on the way up 🙂

We hiked the last little bit to the shelter. It’s a huge nice one, and I’m going to sleep upstairs in the shelter tonight. The privy is “full” so that’s a no go (not that I’d be successful there anyway, I’ve already dug a hole once today).. and the water source is straight down 300 rock “steps” and roughly 0.2 miles, but it felt farther. Going down isn’t bad, coming back with 8 pounds of water.. holy hell. My heart rate got up to 178 bpm on the way up! Hahaha

Lizard made it to the shelter before the water venture and she filled up to. I swear out of the 7 people I saw come up from the water (myself included) she was the only one that didn’t look completely wiped. Bad. Ass. She stretched a bit and headed on down trail, looks like someone has her trail legs!

We also met Quicksand and Hawk.. both of which are pretty AT famous. Quicksand is on his 4th AT thruhike and Hawk on his 6th. They were pretty awesome and very humble for all the popularity they’ve achieved on trail/YouTube.

Curmy, Cholula, Towely and I all ate dinner together. Mine was just a Knorrs pasta side with Buffalo chicken (from one of those pouches like tuna fish) mixed in. I won’t lie-it was weird, but so good. Cholula dehydrated her own meals from home over last year and had them sent in their resupply boxes. Tonight they had an italian Mac and cheese with veggies in it. I got to take a bite-it totally put my weird concoction to shame.

The 4 of us are staying in the shelter tonight, several other folks are tenting nearby. It’s not even 7pm yet and I’m slap worn out. Maybe my trail legs will show up tomorrow! hahaha