On my own

April 1, 2025

Whiskey Hollow Shelter, mile 987.6 

Miles walked today: 4.5 on purpose/7.2 by accident 

Trail miles covered 15.2

After two days together, my brother set off at his own pace this morning. We’d originally planned to only be together that first night, but the thunderstorm had other plans. We took a picture before he left, and shortly afterwards, I moved out myself to start my first-ever solo hike.

I’ll admit I felt a little bereft at first. But as I queued up a playlist (something I hadn’t yet done because there was a person to talk to) and set off, I felt better pretty quickly. The day was crisp, slightly chilly, and so much nicer than the oppressive heat of the last few days; it was muddy and wet after last night’s storm, and there were a lot of downed trees, but the first real ascent of the day was a few miles off, and I was feeling ok about what I had in front of me in terms of the day’s hiking.

Lots of stuff like this on the morning after the storm

I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

Taking a descent about a mile out of the shelter, I slipped on a wet rock and went down. Walked it off, checked the ankle, mopped up my bloody nose, and moved on, but I was shaken—as it turned out, shaken enough to take a wrong turn at the next trail intersection. It took me just over 1 ¼ miles to realize I was, perhaps, No Longer Hiking On The Appalachian Trail. A quick look at the GPS confirmed it, so I backtracked carefully to the intersection and started again. At that point, it was still mid-morning. 

As I kept going I found myself thinking that a lot of the things I’d been worried about on this trip have already happened. I got lost. I fell. I blistered out. I camped outside in a lightning storm. I had to deal with falling/fallen trees and blocked trails. All these things I was afraid of actually happened, and I handled them, and somehow, it still ended up being a pretty good day.

I rolled into the shelter mid-afternoon, with time aplenty to figure out how to pitch my trekking pole tent on a platform with no purchase for stakes. I handled that too, as I handled the realization that the ankle from this morning was swelling, that today’s blister solution had also failed to stick, and that I was running out of supplies to deal with it. I looked at my route for tomorrow, made two or three contingency plans to get what I needed, depending on how strong I felt. It was a start, at least.