Newtown Square

I'm going to add some of the previous days to make my story on here more understandable. In short, my friend Brian arrived from Australia to hike with me for about a while. Our schedules made the most sense if we hiked from the south of Shenandoah National Park (near Charlottesville) in a northward direction.

I arrived in Harrisburg on the 29th of October and caught the train south to meet him. Due to some hiccups, we spent some time in Washington and then proceeded to Charlottesville to start the hike. Later on, Brian went back home and I continued going north back up to Harrisburg.

Yesterday I reached Harrisburg and am now traveling back to Charlottesville to resume hiking south. Hope that makes sense!

Things are going reasonably well.yain concern is my Visa expires on the 1st of January, I've applied for an extension but have to wait and see how that goes. If it is granted I'll, and I continue at my current rate of pace then I'll complete the trail around mid-march.

However Hurricane Helene has obliterated some of the trail south of here. People have been telling me conflicting things about the trail opening up. Some say to fucking forget it, others say the small towns along the way are economically dependent on hikers so have been working very hard to clear the trail. Others have been saying that hikers are hiking along the roads to circumvent the damaged areas - I'm not doing this, road hiking is dicey and rarely is there room to maintain a reasonable distance from the cars.

My current plan is to simply hike as far south as I can, and when I can go no further I'll travel down to the southern endpoint and hike north from there. This way I'll complete as much as possible.

Another concern is the cold. As an Australian the cold weather is something that I'd only heard about up till now. I've added more jumpers and changed out my gloves for warmer ones. I'm still uncomfortably not-warm at night. I've got a few other tricks to try (hot water bottle, etc) and will continue to adjust my wardrobe until I find some combination of clothing that works. Oddly enough my feet are never cold and I'm only wearing normal hiking socks and trail runners. I guess the friction from stepping generates sufficient heat.

Have to do some shopping once I get to Charlottesville. I need gas for the camp stove and trail food (the holy trinity of oatmeal, Clif bars, and ramen). I also need new hiking socks as I've worn a large hole in mine (Darn Tough socks have a lifetime guarantee, and you can simply swap them for a new pair once they get a hole in them).

I'm also going to look at getting a new tent - my current ultralight lets in too much wind. I'm already not really warm enough in my sleeping bag inside the shelters, if the wind chill was added on top of that then things would get..... interesting. I've been going shelter-to-shelter since the cold started, and this limits how far I can travel each day. So I'll see if they have any suitable tents, it will be more weight to carry but I'm stronger now.

That's about it for now. I'll do some more updates for previous days.Read more