May 1

Remember how I said that the shelter had a view? We were up so high that the clouds were at least a thousand feet below the shelter. Total different view from night and morning. In the night, the lake and harbors on the lake were visible, but in the morning, absolutely nothing was viewable. If you can imagine seeing a cloud where there used to a be a lake! Totally weird.

After examining the map and the elevation profile for the day, I decided today would be a day to put down some good honest miles... and to get as close to town as I could before I ran out of food. I have a nasty habit of getting enough supplies in town for my time out but not budgeting the food stores. Sometimes I will get to the day before town and find myself with little to no real food for the last push into town.

I started off at a blistering pace absolutely destroying mileage. I averaged close to 3 mi/hour for the better part of the day, and I even managed to pass people who left the shelter an hour before I did. Towards the end of the day, at about mile 20, my concentration started to flag, this confounded lack of progress was heavily affected by my mp3 player running out of juice. I'd been relying heavily on that to help me keep a good pace. After almost getting passed by someone I passed earlier, I made it into Abingdon Gap Shelter for the night (456.7).

Apparently no one wanted to sleep in the shelter. This universal choice was likely due to some nasty biting flies in the general vicinity of the shelter. Who was I to argue with the common consciousness?  I set up my tent so that it was only useful to keep the bugs off me while I slept - tied up the vestibules so that the tent body, made of screen, was the only thing between myself and the wilds of the night. Someone who came to the shelter later took quite an initial fright seeing all the bear bags and no one sleeping in the shelter. Since I was the only one who appeared up at the point when he made it in to camp, he came over and asked, "Um, what's the deal with the shelter? Is there anything wrong with it? I see all the bear bags..." I should have messed with him a little more, but I just told him the biting flies were bad earlier. I can be a nice person sometimes.

Off to Damascus tomorrow. Crossing into VA for the first time!