Warm-up day 2: Rock Gap to Big Spring Shelter

The night of 1/31 was nasty. Temps dropped well into the 30s, rained pretty hard, and was fairly windy. All-in-all, my hammock setup performed beautifully. When I got in at night, I was thinking that I'd be cold before dawn; in point of fact, I was already bit chilly when I first got in at 8pm. But I nodded off to sleep, and woke up at 10 sweating like a pig. This was my first time sleeping out in down, and it was amazing to discover how much of your body heat it retained. I was actually having to pull the covers back to let in some 35-degree air. Even as the night went on and it began to get windy and rainy, I was able to be pretty comfortable.

It was raining in the morning, so I definitely took my time getting started. Today's goal was pretty modest -- Big Spring shelter, 5 miles away. But it was 5 miles uphill the whole way, and today I was carrying the 35 pound monster on my back.

The woods are bit spooky in winter. Even after the rain lets up, it remains overcast all morning, dark and cold. It's almost totally silent -- no animals that I can see, no birds to speak of and a thick layer of dead leaves that seem to soak up all sound. The trees are bare as skeletons, and the wind through their bones makes them ache and twist; I think about the feel of cold air blown onto a cavity. In places, the trail ducks into narrow little notches in the mountain that are always in shadow, and there are little patches of snow, unmelted since it fell days or weeks ago. Several small creeks cross the trail, leaving little splashes of ice on the rocks as they hurry down the mountain.

I think about third grade, when the quickest way to walk home was to cut through the graveyard next to the Methodist church. It was no problem at 3 pm, but if something kept me at school late, and I was walking home at 4:30 in November when the sky is just starting to thicken into evening ... well, it wasn't much farther to walk all the way to the corner before turning left, and there was really no big rush to get home anyway.

By afternoon, though, the sun is coming out, and the spookiness leaves. I lunch by the side of the trail at Glassmine Gap (an energy bar, water, dried cranberries) and meet a couple of older local gents out dayhiking.

I make Big Spring by 4:30 and call it a day.