4/21 Great camp site

21.1 miles hiked today, 557.7 miles N.
Chestnut Knob Shelter


Today I got a late start. When I awoke I found the camp site was empty. First McGyver and then Bowser had separately gotten up, packed, and were gone before I woke up at 8:30 AM. One of them was nice enough to leave my food bag from the bear hang under my tarp. I packed up in a half and hour and started with the first stiff climb of the day. In the end it took me until lunch to catch up with them a couple shelters out.
Most of the day lacked water sources being generally on the top of the ridge line. As a result I started out with a gallon of water and ran out an hour before my next chance for refill. To make matters worse the temps are really warming up. In the end today I drunk 9 liters of water.
I caught up with Bowser and McGyver at Knot Maul Branch Shelter. We ate together and then got a move on, we had a lot of distance to cover before dark. We went down to a river and through a cow pasture before our final climb of the day. This one had actual cows in it and they were right on the trail. The cows seemed spooked by us walking through their pasture and we had to make a wide detour around them.
I have learned to really dislike rivers as they are almost always a low point and this one was no exception because we had to end our day with a 2000' climb into the shelter. About a mile short of the shelter we passed a pond, the closest reliable water source for the shelter and filled up. The pond was a blast to look at as it was packed with fish and salamanders swimming around. We marveled for a few minutes and I took some bad photos before we pushed on.
The pond was in the middle of a roughly 2-3 mile section where the mountain was mostly bald except for very nasty looking thorny brush keeping up on the trail. We did get to peek as some ranges and the one to the south that we had just come down from was stunning. It looked like a perfect straight line if peaks, just like some had poured rocks into piles every half mile or so. It was so regular it was like looking at an old map where they draw mountains as a series of inverted overlapping Vs.
When we got to the shelter it was pretty full so I elected to pitch my tarp. The shelter is a awesome looking stone one on the very top of a peak giving a good vantage point if it wasn't for the trees. I found a clearing in the trees to the east and set up my tarp to take advantage of it with the west end low and east end of the tarp near horizontal. Hopefully I will wake up in time to see the sunrise. It looks like it will be a very warm night.