Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Day 17, Monday, May 23


The plan was to leave Daleville early and cover big miles today.    Only one problem, I was still trying to get my hiking poles back from the ATC Ridge Runner Matt.   So Runner Mink and I decided to go to breakfast.   After breakfast, I started calling the ATC number hoping they would open at 7.   At 7:30, we started out and hiking a mile to I-81 where we waited and finally reach the ATC at 8:50 a.m..   It took until 9:00 to get a call back from Matt and we made a plan to meet at the next road crossing in 30 mins..   We arrived at the cross road first but right on time Matt pulled up and within a few minutes I was reunited with my hiking poles.    What an amazing bit of trail angel work that was.   I left them on the edge of a busy parking lot full of casual day hikers, where a ATC Ridge Runner, who I happened to speak with on the trail earlier, saw them recognized them and picked them up and walk to the next shelter to leave a message……AMAZING!   Hats off to Matt the ATC Ridge Runner.    So around 10:00 a.m. we start our hike in earnest and hiked hard for most of the day.   The hike was rolling ups and downs all day but no significant changes in elevation.  We crossed the Blue Ridge Parkway 5 or 6 times throughout the day.   It was around 6:00 p.m. went we arrived our destination of Cove Mountain Shelter.   We had hiked 25.0 miles, my longest day ever.      

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