Monday, March 26, 2012

Pinhoti Trail Day 12

Today had a rocky start. The trail was entirely covered by a thick layer of leaves, which covered all the tough rocks underneath. Not a good situation for footing.

First thing in the morning I hit the state line and passed into Alabama. The trail is supposed to improve from there south, with almost no roadwalk until the very southern end.

About 11 miles into the day I came to the highway where I was planning on hitching into town for my newly planned resupply. The hitch down took almost an hour and a half to get someone to pull over for me. I guess they don't see too many hikers in the area. Even the guy that pulled over for me wasn't familiar with the trail, but he had been hiking on the BMT as a kid, and as a former marine. Then a 10 minute ride to town, a 5 minute stop at Dollar General, and another 45 minute wait for another ride. The ride back up to the trail actually passed me, and then turned around and stopped. The guy asked me if I was headed back to the trail, and I was almost too surprised to answer. I wasn't really expecting someone who knew that much about the trail. It turns out that he is an instructor at the local college, teaching camping and outdoor education.

After all that waiting around I was ready to get back to hiking, and ended up getting another 10 miles in to get to the next shelter. The last mile or so was well after dark, but I figured that '65' might be at the shelter, so I wanted to get there for the night. I had hiked with him on the Florida Trail, and he was headed north on the whole ECT, so I wanted to make sure I ran into him again. As I was getting close to the shelter I saw a fire going, a sure sign that 65 is at work. I yelled out to him, and we spent a few minutes going over everything we had both seen, going through the standard nobo-sobo questioning. By that point it was getting pretty late, so we both went to sleep. Then a few hours later two ATVers went blasting by the shelter. Not fun.

206.1 miles down

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