May 18th

I've got a rare chance to actually update my own blog -- I'm behind in doing this week's entries, and I have some rare internet time ...

So I decided that I could do some yellowblazing, but I had to earn it. I earned it by doing Trail Days Hard Core. No, that's not a porn movie, it's a work project that takes place the Sunday and Monday after Trail Days. Bob Peoples, who runs the Kincora Hostel and is more-or-less the head trail maintainer for the Tennessee section, organizes it. About 85-90 people, mostly current or former hikers, met in Damascus and carpooled back to a section of the trail Bob wanted to work on near Iron Mountain. We worked all afternoon with mattocks, picks, shovels, and fire rakes rerouting a section of the AT that had some pretty bad erosion problems. It was raining most of the day, so it was muddy work, to put it mildly. Still, it was a lot of fun to do a different kind of work than the "job" of the hike.

After the day's work, Bob fed us (actually, the ATC paid for it), and everyone crowded into Kincora -- except for those who preferred to hang their hammocks outside...