Appalachian Trail - Day 063 - Chester Gap to Brook (AT Mile 994.1)

Day: 063

Date: Monday, 26 June 2023

Start:  Chester Gap (AT Mile 972.1)

Finish:  Brook (AT Mile 994.1)

Daily Kilometres:  36.0 (Ascent 4232', Descent 4137')

GPX Track:  Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos

Total Kilometres:  1672.0

Weather:  Overcast, very warm and very humid.

Accommodation:  Tent 

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Breakfast sandwiches & choc chip muffins 

  Lunch:  Turkey, bacon & salad rolls

  Dinner:  Rehydrated meals 

Aches:  Nothing reported

Highlight:  The severe weather forecast for the afternoon - strong winds, thunderstorms, heavy rain and possible tornadoes - that had us considering what our back up plans should be, never materialised.  Not even one drop of rain (so far).

Lowlight:  Indications were that we should be able to get an Uber back to the trail this morning, but we could not. We ended up walking to the main road and hitch-hiking for about half an hour before getting a lift with a kindly young Hispanic woman on her way to her cleaning job.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We hoped for an early trip back to the trailhead using Uber and, after eating our Dunkin' Donuts breakfast from across the road, we tried booking one at 7:00am, but with no luck.  We then reverted to Plan B (see above) and got back to the trailhead at 8:00am, a little later than hoped, but not too bad.

There was a severe weather warning out for the afternoon and we did wonder whether we should have played safe and stayed at the motel for another day, but decided against.  The weather did seem a little ominous, with a heavy cloud cover and high humidity, but was otherwise OK.  Our plan was to go from shelter to shelter for the day, reassessing the weather forecast at each before continuing on.  Conveniently, there were shelters at approximately 5, 10 and 15 miles.

We reached the first, which was a "model" shelter with a deck, chairs, shower and horseshoe pitch soon after 10:00am and took our first break.  The hiking had been sweaty, but the trail was mostly good and Dave's new boots seemed to be doing the job.

We made good time to the next shelter through forest that varied from having dense undergrowth to little at all.  As usual, an undulating trail, but nothing too difficult.  We had our lunch there and checked the forecast which seemed less ominous though all of the warnings were still in place.

By the time we reached the turn-off for the third shelter, the bad weather should have arrived but all we had was cloud and humidity.  We decided to just keep going, passing through Sky Meadows State Park which had some welcome open meadow sections.

After the Park and after crossing a busy road we began our last few miles of the day and met a day-hiker who gave us each, and two other thru-hikers there, a can of Coke, which was much appreciated.

Just before 7:00pm we reached a stream with a really nice tentsite alongside and set up camp.  It had been a reasonably long day, but had gone well.