Day 9: Listening to My Body

Standing Indian Shelter to Carter Gap Shelter

Mikes Hiked: 7.6

AT Milage: 93.5

This morning I slept in til 7:15, a little later than usual. I woke up feeling sicker than I had the other days. I took some medicine and started getting ready. I believe I was the first one out of camp again.

The climb up the Standing Indian mountain was long but very gentle. At the top I went on the side trail to the peak with a view. At the view was a large grassy area where an old fire tower used to be. There was a single tent up there and the person was still sleeping in it. I sat down for a solid hour. My body was hurting and I was feeling sick. It was a nice break. Eventually the person in the tent woke up and started talking to me. His name was Jason and he was from Tennessee. He told me how he really wanted to give up and the day before he only hiked 3-5 miles. I encouraged him to not give up, but I’m interested to see how he does. Eventually I left the view and continued on down the trail.

Today’s hike was just what I needed, lots of down hill. I keep getting all these weird aches and pains in my foot and I always wonder which one is going to be the one that doesn’t go away. Today it seems I have found the pain that will linger for a while. I have a sharp pain near the base of my right heel and another one shooting up from the middle of my right shin to my knee. These pains feel familiar from sports I used to do in high school. I wasn’t expecting them to start hurting this soon.

I took another long break at Beech Gap. It was shady and provided relief from the intense heat. I keep getting sunburned because I forget about putting sun screen on until I’m in a good hiking groove and don’t want to stop. As a result I have some burns on my arms and backs of my legs. At Beech Gap I ate my favorite meal of tuna, crackers, mayo, and relish, and took time to rest my feet. I have two irritated spots on the outside of my big toes that I don’t want to turn into blisters. I put some duct tape on them and it seemed to help for the rest of the day anyways. I tried to sit at Beech Gap for an hour but I got bored so I hiked on. I found a creek and soaked my heel in it for a tiny bit. It was ice cold. I hope it did something to help. I barely passed anyone today which I was really surprised about because I was the first person out of the shelter. Apparently everyone else is moving really slow too.

Today I really wanted to go 10 miles to camp at a nice view. However, my body was hurting and I know I need to listen to it. I decided to stop at Carter Gap Shelter instead which made my daily milage 7.6. This is the second shortest day of backpacking I have ever done. Doing short days in nice weather bugs me because I know I won’t want to go far in bad weather. I have been incredibly blessed with great weather so far. Tonight I will be figuring out my resupply strategy for the next 100 or so miles.