May 19th

Second day of Hard Core has us driving all the way back to Roan Mountain, on the TN/NC border, then hiking 3 miles just to get to the work site. We're again doing a reroute on a section of trail where the trail is badly eroded -- one of the places where the AT basically becomes a streambed when it rains -- and in the process also eliminating one of the AT's ten billion "PUDs," a Pointless Up and Down where you go uphill and then down for no real reason. After we're done, the trail will run along the side of the mountain instead of up and down.

It's a very hard day, and I spend the entire time working on a single 50-foot section where the hillside is especially steep and we need to build stone retaining walls to hold the trail up against erosion. Find the rocks, move them down the hill, fit them into a stone wall, and then sledgehammer some boulders into more-or-less gravel for the trail to run over. I spend two hours with the hammer, and by the end of the day I'm feeling it in my shoulders and back.

Coolest part of the day, however, is at the end -- since this is now the official trail route, we have to mark it with white blazes, and all the first-timers get a turn. Three miles north of Carver Gap, there's a rock wall I helped build (look for the massive boulder I named Grendel's Mother), and a white blaze I painted. Very, very cool feeling to be part of the AT this way.