Appalachian Trail (day 54) - Dans Pulpit to Danielsville / mile 1266

It doesn't matter how small the rain is, if it falls on you all day it will make you wet.

It wasn't raining when I woke up though, everything was nice and dry when I was packing up. I knew the forecast was predicting rain all day, but the forecast was wrong in the past. You never knew precisely what's the weather going to be in the Appalachian mountains, well to a degree. It did start to drizzle two hours later and it carried on for the entire day but at this point I was already commited to the white blaze.

Other than the weather it was a surprisingly fun day, I went over the Knifes Edge a tricky rock scrambling section fairly early in the morning, I've folded my trekking poles here and used hands to manoeuvre around the rocky ridge, the scramble lasted about 15 minutes. The path from here was either extremely rocky or a perfectly smooth and easy forest road walk.

I've met just two other hikers today: Half Stick and Not Yet, everyone else decided to take a day off. Not Yet was a flip flopper from Pennsylvania, he started in Harper's Ferry and was planning to walk south once he reached Katahdin. Half Stick came from California and was a northbounder like myself, his girlfriend followed him on the trail, providing shuttles and helping with resupply, tonight she was picking him up from the road and they were spending night at a hostel.

Second highlight of the day was the climb out from Palmerton, another rock scramble but this time nearly vertically uphill, I had to fold the trekking poles and use my hands again, there was many foot and hand holds in the rock but the climb was exposed and rain made it that much harder. I enjoyed this section for how different and challenging it was.

I carried on hiking for another hour until I've reached the campsite, it was still quite early but there was no point carrying on in this weather, I was drenched and tired. I've set up the tent, threw everything inside and zipped myself in for the night.