Appalachian Trail (day 45) - Whiskey Hollow Shelter to Blackburn Tent Site / mile 1014

Today I was taking a ride on Appalachian Trails official rollercoaster.

I didn't even realized but PATC, the group of volunteers taking care of stretch of the trail between Front Royal and Harper's Ferry made "The Rollercoaster" an official thing adding a fun twist to this otherwise quite boring stretch of the trail. Personally I thought it was quite entertaining but some other hikers disliked the concept of constantly going up and down for 14 miles.

Halfway through this section we also passed the 1000 mile marker, which was a cool achievement for many thru hikers myself included, it was the third time I've ever completed this many miles in one continuous push.

The rollercoaster itself wasn't too bad but it was definitely tougher than I anticipated, especially as the terrain was extremely rocky, hopping and skipping over rocks made this stretch that much harder and somewhat technical.

I've also had two very interesting animal encounters today. First was seeing a copperhead snake, I've never seen any of those guys before, copperhead was next to rattlesnake one of the two venomous snakes on the AT and it's bite, although not as potent as rattlesnakes would send you to the hospital. I've seen it by the stream, it must have been quite young, no longer than two feet. The second it saw me it started to swim away eventually disappearing in the water. I've later read that they are excellent swimmers.

Second animal encounter was quite dramatic and unexpected. I just finished hiking the rollercoaster when suddenly a small grey chick, the size of baby chicken started to run away from me on the trail, I must have scared it. Before I managed to process what it was, a wild turkey momma jumped out of the bushes and started to attack me! I kind of lost it at this point, I haven't seen wild turkeys since Smokey Mountains and they were always running away the moment they saw me. Momma's defence systems must have kicked in though and she charged me, beak low to the ground, wings spread out. Wild turkeys are quite big, roughly the size of regular turkeys, which from the experience of spending summers in the country I knew were quite aggressive and unpredictable birds.

After few seconds I finally clocked in what was going on and started to bash my trekking poles together in front of me so she couldn't peck or scratch me with it's claws, I also started to shout loudly. She would come very close, retreat at the last moment and then come at me again, we were going back and forth like this for a good minute. Finally she stopped charging me but still remained in close proximity, I slowly backed off to trail and walked away. I didn't want to stress her and her chick any longer so I didn't take any pictures or dwell in the area to see what was going to happen. It was definitely the most interesting animal encounter I had so far on the Appalachian Trail.

Not long after I've arrived at the campsite, this one was quite fancy, it had few bunk beds, kitchen and a lounge area all sponsored and ran by PATC. The bunks were already taken though and I didn't have much use of the other facilities so I just went next door to the very unglamorous campsite.

Overall a very interesting day, it's always fun when the trail throws few curveballs at you to shake things up a bit, especially after hiking for thousand miles.