Thursday, June 16th

Damascus, VA (470.7 mi) to Lost Mountain Shelter (486.7 mi)

Hiking Miles: 16

Total Ascent: 4,123.7 ft

Total Descent: 2,666.7 ft

Total Grade: 423.1 ft/mi

Steps: 39.780

We began our day with a wonderful breakfast prepared by Lady Di. She cooked the entire meal herself, and you could see the joy she had during each step of the process. I poured a cup of coffee, sat on the front porch for awhile, then got up and read a news article on the wall which described her 2019 thru hike and hostel opening. I also grabbed another cup of coffee and sat quietly a bit on the upstairs porch while overlooking the neighborhood.

Upon returning downstairs, I searched for hiker names on her chalk board who had stayed there this year and last. I added both Stevie and my trail names to the board just above Yota’s (the cool hiker we met at the Town’s Inn back in April).

Stevie and I sat at the end of the dining room table, and all guests enjoyed their breakfast along with us. A group of four hikers who had called themselves the “Core 4” discussed and decided that they all would drive to Harpers Ferry and continue their hike north, then return to finish the miles they skipped southbound ending up back at Lady Di’s. I don’t think they will finish the way they planned – their decision helped more to mentally motivate them to continue hiking (like a refreshing “pick me up”).

Stevie and I departed around 8:30 am after we devoured our delicious breakfast, paid our bill and said our “good-byes” to Lady Di. She was AMAZING! I am sure we will return sometime in the future just to experience the great stay again.

We intentionally made it a leisure day today and hiked only 16 miles, mainly due to the number of ascents we were scheduled to climb. At the end of our day, we stopped at the Lost Mountain Shelter and met “Fisherman” and “Dorothy” (two friends from Arkansas) there who were setting up for the evening stay. I believe Fisherman earned his trail name when he caught a fish in his filtering water bottle, which was cool.

The other cool thing that happened was “Harrison” showed up with his heavy backpack – we finally got to meet the Celtics fan on trail who Chloe (Cricket) was talking about. We hit it off pretty quickly engaging in good conversation, and we actually planned to do three 24-mile hiking days to eventually stay at a hostel to watch Game 7 on Sunday. All the Celtics had to do was win Game 6 tonight to stay alive in the series to make that happen. And unfortunately, we had no service at this site so we could not check in on Game 6. Harrison is from Reading, MA (neighboring town to Stoneham where I grew up!) and his trail name was “Tuna Bomber”. He acquired that name when his stove (with tuna and ramen) was cooking one evening with the Bic lighter still attached below it, and it exploded.

Our buddy Smiles also showed up with new shoes that he had bought while staying in Damascus, so the six of us all stayed in the shelter that evening because it was about to storm. We contemplated hiking to Buzzard Rock, a much higher elevation to acquire reception to watch the Celtics game, but the skies were threatening and the rains were coming in heavy. So we were all heading out tomorrow including Smiles, who decided that he would hike with us and Tuna Bomber, and that was the start of our 4-person Tramily.