Damascus, VA to Pearisburg, VA

Day 1, Thursday, September 20

"The Place", Damascus, Virginia to Lost Mountain Shelter, 15.8 miles

Not a bad night's sleep. I got numb lying on one side after a while, but overall a restful night. I'm awake and up at 6:45 AM. I take a quick shower before packing up. When I return to the bunkroom I can hear the rain pouring on the hostel roof. We pack up and leave at 7:30 AM, after the short rain shower has slackened. We're hiking today unless we're underwater. We'll be wet from sweat after the first uphill section anyway. As long as we can keep our packs dry, we're good to go.

We stop at the Trailside Café next to the Virginia Creeper for breakfast. The Virginia Creeper is a 35-mile long rails-to-trails path that runs from Whitetop Mountain to Abington, Virginia. It's part of the old Virginia-Carolinas Railroad track that crossed the mountains. We cycled part of the Creeper a few years ago from Whitetop Mountain down to Damascus. It's mostly downhill from that direction. Today we get to reverse the route, uphill.

No one is at the Trailside Café so we get served right away. After a couple of eggs, bacon, grits, and toast, we're ready to hit the trail by 8:30 AM. Uphill, of course.

The AT and the Creeper share the roadside heading east out of Damascus for a few hundred yards before the AT turns sharply left uphill into the trees. By the time we get twenty minutes up the trail, it begins to softly rain on the trees above our heads. The weather forecast for toady is for rain up through lunch, and so far it's right. It's not raining hard enough to get wet, just enough to feel good.

We cover the first 5.6 miles to US Highway 58 by 10:30 AM. Good hiking so far. We hit the base of Straight Mountain by 11:30 AM; the top and Saunders Shelter at 12:30 PM. We take a long break and have lunch at the shelter until 1:30 PM. It's too early to stop for today so we decide to push on for Lost Mountain, 6.4 miles away.

We reach the Virginia Creeper Trail again at 3:15 PM and take a break until 3:30 PM. We've got 1.8 miles more to reach the shelter. As usual, it's uphill the last 1.8 miles. We take a short break before crossing the VA 859 dirt road. Only 1.2 miles to go now….uphill.

We finally reach the top of the hill and the trail levels out below the ridge until the shelter trail. We reach the Lost Mountain Shelter at 5:15 PM. There is no one at the shelter. We drop our packs and head for the spring across the hill.

We've been short on water all afternoon and I'm very thirsty. The spring is almost a dry hole. I guess the drought plus the fall season is taking a toll on the water supply. I hope things aren't worse up the trail. The mountains of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia have been in a drought condition for last several years. In fact, where I live, we are over three feet of rain behind over the last three years. That's a lot.

I dig a small hole in the bottom of the spring to catch water trickling out of the mountainside. It takes over thirty minutes to pump enough water out of the spring. When we return to the shelter, one hiker from New York has come in. I guess there will be three of us here tonight. We cook noodles, regular and Ramen. I finish off supper with some beef jerky and some hot chocolate.

It's going to be a relatively warm night, so far very pleasant. I take a couple of Advil for dessert and we're ready to turn in before 8 PM.