5/28/01
This morning Red Pepper and I packed up and left Charlottesville fairly early. We drove back to Montebello and decided to stop at Crabtree Falls before going our separate ways. The walk to the falls was beautiful and it was a shame that we didn't have time to walk up to the upper falls. Red Pepper dropped me off at the parking lot at the Fish Hatchery Road near Montebello and I began the 900' climb up the road to get back to the AT intersection with the road. When I hopped back on the trail I soon reached Spy Rock, a huge outcrop with a 360 degree panorama. The students from the Discovery School from Virginia were resting at the top so I got the chance to check in with them on their hike and to see how their trip was going. The view was great so I spent some time on the rock before climbing down to continue to the Priest shelter. (Hip would have hated Spy Rock!) The Priest shelter was empty when I arrived at 2:30 p.m. It was an opportunity to sit on the picnic table in front of the shelter and read the shelter register to see who had passed through while I was taking two zero days. Only the folks I had hiked with last week and Yolo had passed through. I read up on the Shenandoah National Park while a doe ate grass about 15 feet away. Finally the silence was broken by Boot Stew who showed up at the shelter around 4:30 p.m. His wife Day Dreamer had quit the trail over the weekend so he was on his own for the first time since Springer Mtn. I convinced Boot Stew to go with me to the next shelter even though he had already hiked 21 miles, so we took off at 5:00 p.m. and did 7.5 miles in 2.5 hours. Our only company for the evening was Wild Bill, a section hiker from Vermont. Boot Stew and I split a bottle of Zinfandel with dinner that I had carried in from Montebello. The evening was peaceful and quiet and the sound of the water from the nearby stream lulled us to sleep quickly after nightfall. Today's stats: low 55 degrees, high 65. Partly cloudy to cloudy. Today's mileage: 12.0; cumulative mileage 815.3.
