I assure you, trail magic gets even more elaborate.

Last week, we had been warned that a cold front was rapidly approaching (which turned out to be our coldest trail day to date).  To someone who hasn’t spent much time sleeping outside, it may be hard to grasp the degree of how bitter this information is.  To help gain some perspective, it’s sort of like being told, “you’re probably going to get kidney stones tonight.”  Needless to say, our moods were soured.

And then right on cue, approximately three miles prior to arriving at our intended shelter for the night, we encounter this:

Grits (pictured to the right), a former thru-hiker himself, took an entire week’s vacation to cook burgers, hot dogs, and supply fruit, pop, and beer for all thru-hikers that came across his food circus.  Not only did he stuff our large group full of warm food and beverage (+47 points on a cold day, as demonstrated by Whoops highly contracted posture), but he also shed a good deal of valuable trail information regarding the upcoming towns and terrain.  Nourishment for the mind, body, and soul.  Mostly just the body though.

(Side note: Grits is a great guy and big fan of Big Agnes tents.  If I were an employee of Big Agnes – I would definitely supply him with more quality Big Agnes gear so he can continue his angel like behavior for frigid hikers.)

Of course, not all trail magic is as glamorous as Grits’ food circus.  Sometimes, this good deed is as simple as a garbage bag propped on a rock along the trail, filled with trail essentials (e.g. Ramen, oatmeal, dried fruit, etc.).  Although in comparison to a hot meal and High Life, dried goods may seem second rate.  Don’t let the relative comparison fool you; a hiker still very much appreciates these seemingly simple acts. For someone who has under budgeted four days worth of food, 900 extra calories from the mystery garbage bag may very well be the difference between hiking hungry and hiking perfectly satiated.

After the long and hot ascent to the summit of Max Patch, I come across a group of people enjoying a picnic.  From a distance, nothing of this scene seems out of the ordinary.  As I draw closer, however, I realize many of these faces are of familiar thru-hikers, including Whoop.  One of the only two people amongst the group that I don’t recognize, interrupts their conversation, looks up at me and says, “hey thru-hiker…would you like some pizza, beer, or champagne?”.  Almost instictively, I respond with, “you just said all of my favorite words.”  My only other option was to cry.

Kathy and Robert were celebrating their 40th anniversary the only way proud parents of a thru-hiker knows how- in case you didn’t guess, trail magic.

Taste Science: Pizza + Beer + Hiking > Pizza + Beer + Not Hiking

I save the best for last.

Scenario:

It’s 6:30 pm.  The sun is already getting close to tucking away behind the mountains.  We had just completed mile #19 in order to get away from another hiker who has consistently and independantly scared the bajesus out of numerous fellow thru-hikers with his erratic and fugitive-like behavior (demanding pictures of him be deleted, keeping his contents locked inside of his backpack, eye color: black, etc.).   I kid you not when I say this guy is by far and away the most widely talked about individual on the trail this year.  Apparently giving off serial killer vibes is good publicity.

Just as we drop our packs in a state of complete exhaustion (but mostly relief to have escaped) and start to mentally prepare for our short 4 mile jaunt into Franklin, NC the following morning, there, in the distance, heading toward the very same shelter is none other than Captain Crazy himself.  I had hiked an extra six miles already to avoid becoming the sequel to Deliverance.

At this point, we realized there were two options:

1) Force a few extra calories into our system, ignore the our body’s signals of over-exhaustion, and go the extra four miles into Franklin.

or

2) Fall victim to RapeMurder

….

So, as we’re hiking back to Franklin, Badger, Whoop, and Road Dog (who has formed the third head of our hiking trio of late), unpleasantly discover that the majority of these four miles are uphill.  For those who have never tried hiking uphill with 30 lbs on your back, after already expending all of the day’s energy, you can experience this pain for yourself by having someone push a fully stacked library bookshelf on your defenseless body.  And the bookshelf shall remain there for two hours.  And then you must birth octoplets.  Five of these octoplets must go onto be offensive linemen in the NFL.

Two hours of hyper-misery later, we arrived to our destination, the highway – but we’re still 12 miles outside of Franklin.   It was now time to find a hitch into town.  Again, there were a few problems:

1)  There were three of us.  Three people + three packs is simply too much matter for most vehicles.

2)  It’s dark.  Not only has the traffic flow dropped drastically, but cars usually can’t see you until it’s too late to pull over.

3)  We’re too tired to get up from the lone patch off grass which sits about 30 yards off the road.

There we are, easily the three most pathetic guys on earth at that exact moment, hopelessly waiving our thumbs at the rare occurence of a car racing by.  None of us get cell service, and quite frankly there’s not enough bloodflow left in our brains to brainstorm options.

Then arrives Jeff. 

Out of nowhere a hatchback sedan bypasses all the parking spaces in the lot, and pulled his car directly in front of us the small patch of grass we had sprawled out across.  A gentleman in his late 20s/early 30s steps out of his small car.

“Hey guys.”

(Whoop, Road Dog, and Badger share a general sense of confusion.)

Jeff chuckles to himself, “You guys sure look tired.  How far did you hike today?”

“23 miles.”

“Whooaaa.  That’s crazy!  You guys are insane.  That’s way too far!”

We offer a mixed bag of chuckles and shrugs.  Too tired for anything more.

Hold on one second.”  (Jeff goes to his car to get something.  He starts passing us business cards.)  “Here, take these.  My name is Jeff.  I live in Waynseboro, VA, which as you probably know, is right on the trail.  My wife says that I’m ‘allowed to’ take in one group of hikers each year.  You’re the first group I’ve come across and seem like a good group, so definitely let me know when you’re in town.”

This is awesome.  Awesome in the way of future events though.  Our current situation was still broken so we couldn’t yet fully appreciate how awesome this was.  And then right on cue….

“I’m guessing you guys are looking to get into Franklin, right?  I just came from that direction.  Boy, I wish I didn’t have all that junk in the back of my car.”   

There was a lot of stuff (from a guy’s perspective, definitely not “junk” though): a kayak, a fully packed backpack, cables, and misc. boxes.

With that said, we wished so too.

At this point, it was apparent that Jeff was seriously perturbed by the dilemma that lay infront of him- as was clearly demonstrated by the intense head scratching.

“You know what, let’s see if we can’t make this work.”

I don’t know how, but Jeff made it work.  He took what was already a very small car with a very large amount of “junk”, tied some things to the roof, waved a magic wand, did a tribal Indian dance, and voila– we piled our bags and extra-smelly bodies into the perfect Tetris shape needed to fit our total mass into the car.  There wasn’t a square inch of available space left in the car.  It smelt as if port-o-poty was hosting a burnt hair convention.  I’m guessing he has since torched the car.

It was at this point, it occurred to me…

“Wait, didn’t you say you just came from this direction?  Where were you headed?”

“The other way, but that’s fine.  Don’t worry about it.  I was just going to go camp somewhere closer to Asheville. I have a flight to catch tomorrow morning.”

“Are you sure?”

Enthusiastically, “Yeah! I love helping hikers.  Not a problem.”

Not only did Jeff take us to our motel in Franklin (a half hour out of his way, after getting lost a couple of times due to not knowing his way around the area), he waited for us to check into our room so he could join us for dinner.

As any decent human beings who have just received the world’s largest series of favors would, we insisted upon buying Jeff’s meal.  When the waiter arrived to our table, Jeff immediately announced our meals were going on separate checks.

“You guys need to save that money for beer.”  He was right.  He’s so wise.

At 6:30pm we were living with the very real fear of MurderRape.  By 9:30pm we were eating burgers the size of our head, slathered in pimento cheese, and BBQ sauce, drinking cheap pitchers of extra cold beer, and having passionate conversations about frisbee golf and sociopaths with our new friend, Jeff.

We all got a tad drunk, Jeff included.  To err on the side of not getting a DUI, Jeff sheepishly asked if he could crash on the floor of our motel.  We were negative 94 in the favor department so not only did we oblige, but we forced him to have his own bed (also we were tired enough that we could have easily slept on a mattress made of chainsaws, sandpaper, and Draino).

Jeff’s flight was extra early the following morning, much earlier than three exhausted bodies were going to wake up.  By the time the first person finally arose, there was no trace of Jeff to be found.  We wondered if perhaps Jeff was some sort of exhaustion induced delusion, a hiker’s mirage.  Then, when I walk into the bathroom, this is what I see: