Claudia's Daily Affirmations: Day 3: to Pinefield Hut

We left Blackrock Hut in the morning and headed uphill. This was a long day ahead, 13 miles to get to Pinefield Hut. The day was brisk in the morning but the uphills had us shedding layers quickly. Our first summit of the day was to Loft Mountain. The largest campground in Shenandoah National Park was closed, as well as the camp store unfortunately, but we found a lovely lunch spot overlooking the valley. We'd gotten into the habit of taking off our shoes at lunch to air out our feet and make lunch that much more to look forward to. As we snacked on peanut butter crackers, bagels with honey and pb, and dried fruit, we could see a weather system off in the distance. I booted up my phone and received a spotty signal but was able to ascertain that a weather system with high winds and rain was on it's way. I made a quick phone call to mom who confirmed this and quickly ended the call as Heather and I realized the storm was moving very quickly and was maybe only 5 minutes away. We scurried to put our boots back on, rain gear on, clean up from lunch and cover our packs. Just as we left the mossy lunch spot and walked a few feet down the trail, gusts of wind came through and rain sideways. A minute or two later and we'd have been wet and probably cold. This weather came in short bursts as we rounded Loft Mountain campground and toward the end, we went up the hill and confirmed the camp store was closed, then onward from there. After an hour or so, we were able to take off rain gear and hike as normal. There were supposedly gusts of 50mph in that storm and we were sometimes on cliffs end...luckily the wind was blowing us into the mountain.
Post storm video: http://youtu.be/AX5PP35YBB0

As we continued on, we headed down down down toward a spring area and ran into two ladies who were PATC (Potomac Area Trail Conservancy) volunteers who were blazing the trail. I was really excited to see the people who maintained the AT, here they were. They were two of several more we came across on the trail.

When it seemed that it would be forever till we reach Pinefield and our feet were screaming, we found the handy dandy trail marker noting we were .1 away, down another hill where we located Pinefield hut. It was a cute little area, all to ourselves, with a babbling brook. The privy and designated sites were up the hill. We found a nice patch and set up camp, cooked dinner and read the hut's journal. Looks like all those northbound thru hikers had met up at the hut the night before and had a fire, they were miles and miles ahead of us at this point, some of them doing more than 20, or even pushing close to 30/day. Heather and I were content and proud of our 13 miles with 40lb packs :)