This has been a bit of a tought call for me but I got over it over the course of an afternoon at Woods Hole. There is a 10.3 mile stretch between Woods Hole and Pearisburg that is mostly flat and downhill. Pearisburg is an important resupply point but not a great place to overnight. The town doesn't have much to offer. So five of us got to thinking...what if we slack packed into Pearisburg, resupplied and then came back to Woods Hole through a shuttle...and we would entice Fire Fly to come back to join us and get her massage in that she missed on Easter Day? The plan was hatched and the next morning five of us took off to kidnap Fire Fly from the dredge of Pearisburg.
Hiking without a 35lb pack is like floating in space! Once we got into the feel of not having to trudge we thought it would be sort of fun to skip and run on the trail. Nero sailed passed me, Sho Fly directly behind and Shep coming down the trail with a big smile on her face. Juke Box closed the ranks strutting to the tunes on his smart phone. We blasted through the ten miles like it was a walk in the park. It got me thinking that it would be fun to do one of the legs as a trail run at some point along the way.
So anyway, we blasted into town, kidnapped Fire Fly, had a great lunch with margaritas at a Mexican resturant and we were back at Woods Hole by 2:30 pm. Don Raines shuttled to six of us for $16.00 - about $3.00 each with tip. We liked it so much that he offered to shuttle us the next day for a 19.2 mile slack pack hike to Pine Swamp Branch Shelter - pretty cool - for $18.00, or about $5.00 each with tip!
Slack Packer and proud of it!
No comments:
Post a Comment