May 7

May 7 AT 2024, Day 8: 100 Miles! And Sings with the Pines.

Roo Giordano

long distance hiking, roulette

Scarlet Tanagers are so vibrant, they’ll take your breath away when you see one.

Day 8, Monday, 5.7.2024

Start: M. 590.8, Stealth Site on the side of the trail

End: M. 605.1, Creekside Stealth Site

Miles Hiked: 14.3

Total Miles: 102.7

100 Miles! YAY!

I passed my own private 100 mile marker today. And my body feels good, which makes this first hundred feel special. Especially after last year’s two separate debacles on either end of the Continental Divide Trail.

My body just would not cooperate. From the southern terminus, I made it to Hatchita, the first trail town only 45 miles into the hike. Sinus Tarsi Syndrome sent me packing after three days.

Sun setting on Hatchita, NM. And my 2023 CDT hike.

A month later I was ready to try again, this time from the Northern Terminus. After 73 miles, IT Band syndrome did me in and just for chuckles, the ankle issues returned and made sure I got on the train to Portland after just six days on trail.

Sigh.

Glacier National Park was epic and I’m grateful to have experienced just a little of it.

Evils Conspiring to Stop Me

Both of these evils have stopped my hikes before, so I vowed to figure out what was going wrong and fix it. One thing I knew then, and ignored, was that I need to start slowly or else I’m fucked. And I did manage to get myself better enough to hike an additional 262 miles on the AT in October last year. Just making sure I didn’t need to cultivate some life passion other than long distance hiking.

Good news! I’ve still got it! Things go more according to plan when I start slowly.

And strengthen my gluteus medius. But that’s a story for another day.

Just a little painting I did in after I got home, inspired by the beauty of the trail.

BTW, This is Just a Little Warm-Up Hike

And because I’m paranoid about my body and its rebellious nature, this particular LASH is actually a warm up hike for my planned trek on the PCT later this summer. My plan is to hike from Tehachapi to Truckee, knocking out the Tahoe Rim Trail along the way.

These 500 miles are in service to tuning up my trail legs. I’ll need to be able to hike 17 miles on the first day, with a stupid amount of water, to get from Tehachapi to the first water source, sooooooo, Virginia, work your magic!

So far, so good.

Plus, the AT is always so much fun.

It offers Trail Magic. Today in the form of lemonade and skittles and other sugar bombs today at a random road crossing in the woods.

It offers wildlife. Today in the form of multiple black snakes doing their thing out in public today.

Getting a drink exactly where I was going to fill up my bottles for the night.

It offers characters. Today, in the form of Sings with the Pines, who was wearing an elaborate plaid garment that was a kilt with a bib pinned in place with a brooch, all worn over a billowy, puff-sleeved blouse. He told me about Albert Schweitzer, a polymath and philosopher way better, in Sings with the Pines’s opinion, than Frederich Nietzsche, who was addled by opium & syphilis. Who knew?

Also, thank god for spell check and google.

I don’t have the bandwidth, or knowledge, frankly, to contribute to a conversation about Nietzsche. I can barely spell it. So when SWTP met and bonded with another hiker in a kilt at trail magic, I was happy to walk away without giving another thought to German philosophy. Or syphilis.

But I did think about SWTP and wish I’d taken a photo. Here’s a drawing I did in my journal, instead.