Friday, July 1st

Brown Mountain Creek Shelter (807.3 mi) to The Priest Shelter (829.7 mi)

Hiking Miles: 22.4

Total Ascent: 6,526.2 ft

Total Descent: 4,014.4 ft

Total Grade: 471.2 ft/mi

Steps: 53,284

I woke up early to get a head start for our hike to the Priest Shelter. We talked about how the other tramily would be picking up the pace to reach the shelter first, but given we stayed in the Brown Creek Shelter last night, we would have gladly offered it to them anyway if we reached there ahead of them. I stopped to watch a spider spin its web in the darkness of the morning. First hikers on trail typically cleared the path of spider webs for trailing hikers. This little guy was working hard this morning.

Just before lunch, I stopped at a stream where Billie Goat was scooping some water, to talk with her a bit. I later caught up with her again at the Lovingston Shelter and sat with her and Crocs while eating my lunch. Stevie showed up while I was there and we chilled awhile.

With only a few miles to go before reaching the Priest, Green caught up and hiked with us. And with a mile to go, DT caught up with us. After we arrived and were in the process of cooking dinner, the Ostermillers rolled into camp.

There were swarms of mosquitoes, but fortunately our other tramily friends reached the shelter before us and started a raging fire to keep them at bay. The Ostermillers set up in the shelter with Billie Goat and Crocs, while everyone else pitched their tents. We boiled water for Marty, Smiles and Kai, and we all had our dinner together at the table.

Smiles, Kai and a few others were reading aloud the sins that hikers wrote within the confession journal. A good number of them I swear were made up, while others were somewhat boring. But everyone shared a few laughs when the teenagers read them while smirking. While that was going on, a really cute ridge runner named Flossy showed up and she described the Priest terrain to me in detail. (she nailed it!).

Soon after the fire died out, the mosquitos came back in droves and started biting my feet. So we all collected more kindling/branches and Stevie and DT built another fire. It was bittersweet tonight as we said our good-byes to our amazing tramily whereas this would be the last night that we all were together. DT gave me a big hug. We chilled at the table one more time and we all listened as DT recapped our 16 days together reading from his electronic journal.