Miles: 719.8 | An early 5am start changes everything. Fueled by pancakes, hard-boiled eggs, and a questionable cranberry Red Bull, we hike into sunrise, eat breakfast by a stream, and spot our very first bear—a cub—sending us into equal parts nerves and laughter. The day unfolds beautifully with easy miles, familiar faces, and a long, joyful pause atop McAfee Knob surrounded by our wider trail community. Plans to cowboy camp on Tinker Cliffs get chased off by fast-moving storm clouds, but the retreat feels right. We make it safely to the shelter as rain pours in, caffeinated, content, and exhausted—ending one of those rare, nearly perfect trail days that feels full from start to finish.
This day was FREAKING AMAZING:
The night before this, Miles had talked to a guy who gets up at 5am every day and does ~26 miles every day. Literally A MARATHON every single day OVER MOUNTAINS. You know us, we've had our fair share of big mile days, but we don't do marathons EVERY DAY.
This guy was an inspiration to Miles. We had been talking all week about how we wanted to get up earlier. It's satisfying, energizing, and less hot. Plus you get more daylight, more time to chill out during the day, and you have the time to go further without it getting dark on you. We decided to try getting up at 5am this day to kick start our new (hopefully) 'schedule'.
Not that there are schedules out here, but your body gets in a routine. You'll notice that you'll pretty much wake up at exactly the same time every day, no matter what time you went to bed or when you actually get out of bed in the morning, and that time is determined in your first week mostly based on when you forced yourself to get up.
I drank a cranberry Redbull (awful for you but I had learned I liked them on one of my long drives to Boston last summer, they're great for emergency 'I'm totally dead' kind of days) that I had bought at the gas station the night before. I had made extra pancakes and hard boiled eggs yesterday when I had made breakfast to pack out with us for this morning. We saved the food for later and headed out. We packed up outside because our trash bag pack liners are pretty loud and we didn't want to wake the whole bunk room.
We walked out as the sun rose. It was a beautiful feeling. To be awake before most anyone else and see the sun come up. We walked two miles in to the first water source and sat by the stream to eat our breakfast. As we were eating I saw a big black blob coming down the hill over Miles' shoulder.
It got closer and I realized that it was a little bear cub! "Miles," I said, "Hey there whoa bear!" We jokingly said this a lot because Miles' friend, Skywalker, likes to tell the story of when he was harassed by a bear in the Smokies and his dad yelled at it, "Hey there whoa bear!" It just stuck. Miles turned around quickly and saw as the bear turned its butt to us and ran up the hill. We nervously laughed and then really laughed. Holy shit it was our first bear of the trail! Little did we know, we'd see many more.
After breakfast we walked a few more miles through fields and stopped on a nice rock for a short break. We were really taking our time. Captain Ahab and Tiger Lily passed us and we realized it was 7:30am.
We got up and started moving we hiked to the McAffee Knob trailhead parking and saw Half Moon and Savage there with Sparty. We walked with them up to McAffee. Halfway up we realized, this trail seems really easy... is this the fire road that runs alongside the AT and not the actual AT? We consulted Guthook.
It seemed like we were on the trail but it was hard to tell. After another mile we realized we had accidentally been walking on the fire road and not the real AT... It was hot, it was still two miles, we let it slide for now... We're both talking about going back and doing that two miles again and going up to McAffee Knob.
We made it up there around 11am and saw Rick James there. Miles and I took our typical, iconic, McAffee photos and got one taken of both of us by some tourists. We relaxed on the knob and ate a snack. Soon, Savage, Half Moon, Captain Ahab, Tiger Lily, Grandma Shorty, and Plod Along caught up to us. We all took a group photo on the knob. It wasn't quite a tramily, more of a community or a bubble. It was a great community. It was so nice to be able to hike anywhere and see someone you know.
Miles and I packed up after lunch and started off toward Tinker Cliffs. We wanted to cowboy camp up there because the guidebook said there was no regular camping and we had heard the sunset was incredible but an impending storm had started making its way across the valley. When we got up to the cliffs the gray clouds were moving quickly in.
We made a quick dinner up there and planned on eating it, hoping for the sunset. But the storm came in faster we saw the rain coming down in the valley. We started to feel the spray of the rain as it moved toward the cliffs.
We didn't want to ruin the new vegetation on the cliffs and we couldn't cowboy camp in the rain without a tarp so we quickly packed up and headed down the hill toward the next shelter. Miles carried our meal in the Mountain House bag all the way down to the shelter. On the way down we saw Which Way and Next Step!
We arrived at the shelter just as the rain picked up. We prepared our dinners and Miles set up the tent and got water.
We sat and chatted with Snow Angel and Which Way and Next Step during dinner. I was highly caffeinated and they thought it was hilarious. We went to bed pretty early. We awoke in the middle of the night to some weekend campers setting up in the rain. They quieted down after a while, apparently they went up to the cliffs. A couple hours later they were back and whooping and hollering, terribly annoying. They calmed down around 2am. I finally fell asleep.