On Tuesday night back at Angels Rest, I had made the decision to stay up all night in order to make it easier to transition to night-hiking the next day. On Wednesday morning we caught the 7 a.m. shuttle back to Peter's Mountain Wilderness Trailhead. When we arrived, I went first to collect water and then set up camp along the Pine Swamp Branch Stream, about 1,000 feet beyond the trailhead. As planned, we slept through the heat of the day. That evening, before we even got out of the hammocks to eat and pack up, two bear cubs came out of the woods and growled at Forest. Luckily, the mama bear herded them up and ran them off into the woods, but they had come too close for comfort. Forest never even got out of his hammock when the bears approached (I had told him to stay). He just looked at them like, "Why are these strange-looking dogs making such weird noises." He's always good for providing some comic relief, at least after the fact.
Between Monday night when we slackpacked and Wednesday evening we saw 5 bears, which made me rethink my plan to hike only during the night. Instead, we stayed put Wednesday night and headed out Thursday morning at 9 a.m. and hiked about 7 miles. We set up camp Thursday night just past the Wind Rock Parking Area/Mountain Lake Road Trailhead (mile marker 662).
Today (Friday), I went back to my original plan to hike about 6 hours, rest about 6 hours, etc. We hit the Trail at about 8:15 this morning and hiked until we passed War Spur Shelter at about 3:45 p.m. I collected water at John's Creek and set up camp just past the VA 632 trailhead (mile marker 667.6).
At 8:15 p.m. we set out again, hiking until midnight. We stopped at a campsite on Piney Ridge (mile marker 674.5), which is just past Laurel Creek Shelter. That's a total of about 11.5 miles for today, and puts us just about 1 mile from VA 42, Sinking Creek Valley, VA.
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