100 miles down

April 17-18, 2025

Pen Mar to Tumbling Run shelter

Mile 1075.9

Hoody, who runs the Zero Day Stay, was kind enough to give me an early shuttle to Wal-Mart before I left Pen Mar to pick up the very few things I still wanted for resupply after the bounty I’d gotten from Tom and my fam. It meant starting a little later, but this section of trail was familiar, because I was aiming to cover the same ~8.5 miles my brother and I had hiked last year.

To my delight, it did feel easier, if only because the season meant less oppressive heat. To my surprise, I ran into the mother-son combo who  had stayed at my hostel last night, coming south. They’d gotten ahead of me somehow, but were now giving up the hike they’d planned and headed back to get a shuttle home. The son, apparently, had had enough. 

Today I met Been There at Old Forge Park (blessedly, their restrooms AND their water spigot were open for the season).

We were both headed to Tumbling Run shelter. Later, a section hiker, trail name Calculus, showed up. He talked about a run-in he’d had with two hikers and a dog down at Raven Rock. As he described them, I realized he was talking about Twisted, Taz, and Deuce—the hikers we’d met on our first day down in Virginia, the ones I kept hearing about third-hand from folks all the way north, and whose signatures I kept seeing on hostel walls. When I’d met them, they were going south. Fern said these guys just hang out and move up and down the trail almost all the time—they pretty much live there. Taz had said something to that effect to me when we met, but at the time I hadn’t been sure what to believe. That first day they had shown up with an enormous bag of food including supermarket-size packages of ground beef and beverage cans. They’d sort of taken over the shelter (the rest of us were all tent camping that day), cooked in it despite the warning to use the pavilion, and played music.  My own experience with them was relatively benign. Deuce, the dog, barked a lot every time I passed, but was otherwise fine, and the only conversation I had with Twisted was him letting me know that the dog was harmless. Taz was the talker, in general. I was obviously new and probably visibly stressed, and so a great target for advice. Taz had a lot of that for me, and several stories about unsavory characters and problems at the shelters up ahead. (“That guy who attacked the women with an axe—they saw him back on trail down at ______,” for example. Or, “You’re gonna watch out for those two meth-heads once you get to ______.” I am happy to inform you that as of this writing, no axes or meth-heads have been encountered.) He had opinions about the good ol’ days of hiking the AT, not like the folks all doing it  now, etc., and what seemed like some lingering resentment against some nearby property owners who had reported them for something (I confess I didn’t really understand what he was talking about, there). Nothing confrontational or bad, but it wasn’t a terrific vibe, especially for my first day.

Calculus called them scary guys, and had chosen to move past the shelter and stealth camp beyond it to avoid further meetings. From the sound of it, he’d intended to use the shelter, and they’d had some words. If I had to guess, they’re the kind of folks that are used to just taking it over for themselves when they stay somewhere and maybe resent any disruption to that takeover? I confess I’m curious. They’d said they were going south. Why had they switched direction? Were they going to keep showing up, either directly or as an unseen spectre, like the Kurtz of my own little journey here? (The horror!)

I slept in the shelter again, and this time was joined around 8 by Candyman, a thru-hiker who’d come up from Georgia. I’ll be meeting more of those soon, I reckon. As I drifted off to sleep, I realized that I’m 100 miles into this thing, more or less. Banzai!