This challenge involves hiking in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania in a 24 hour period. This stretch of the AT covers 43.3 miles and while the elevation is relatively flat it is still a lot of ground to cover in a day. I was going to push myself and try to cover the miles completely during daylight, so hiking on the summer solstice would provide me with the maximum amount of sunshine and my timing was lining up perfectly. Also, there is an old thru-hiker tradition to hike naked on the summer solstice, very appropriately called Hike Naked Day.
I tried to hype it up for a week or two in log books but only one friend, Flatfoot, was crazy enough to attempt this with me. We met up in Harper's Ferry and a trail angel he met at the ATC headquarters shuttled us backwards a few miles to the closest road crossing to the VA/WV border. We backtracked about a mile, set up camp, and went to bed early with a 345am alarm set.
We packed up in the morning and were on trail at 445am, slightly before sunrise but you could see just well enough to hike without a headlamp. We started off with a quick pace and panted-up for crossing the 340 bridge over the Shenandoah River and going through Harper's Ferry. It was beautiful to see the sun rising over the rivers and the golden light illuminating the historic town.
After crossing the train bridge and arriving back in my home state of Maryland it was time to resume the tradition of hiking in the buff. I still couldn't believe that 2.5 months ago I flew down to Georgia and then walked all the way back. The trail follows the C&O canal for a bit before crossing some roads and climbing out of the river valley. Some hikers we passed had a good laugh while some looked thoroughly unamused.
My outfit for the day, a hat-loincloth.
Hike Naked Day is more widely practiced on the PCT since it has a lot of sparsely hiked stretches where running into families would be rare. However, hiking near DC and Maryland is quite the opposite so we elected to wear loincloths to avoid any entanglements with rangers, angry parents, or police officers. We blasted 19 miles in less than seven hours before stopping for lunch at Dahlgren Backpack Campground where we talked to a couple who was trying to hitchhike West after attending the Firefly Music Festival. We then pressed on to the Washington Memorial where it was again a necessity to pant-up but the view from the top of the tower was beautiful. This was also the halfway point into the challenge.
Some more miles flew by including walking over Interstate 70 on the pedestrian bridge that I've driven under countless times and never thought I'd one day be walking across it en route to Maine. Annapolis Rocks was the next stop which wasn't crowded at all but at least a few other hikers were inspired to take similar photos from the overlook.
We left around 2:30 with the afternoon heat beating down and we tried to keep the pace as fast as possible. The weather decided to drop a heavy rain for a few minutes which cooled things down for a moment but then made everything even more humid right as the trail crosses through some open farm fields. There was a massive trail magic at Antietam Creek and the hosts kept trying to cook me a full meal for dinner but I was only interested in Gatorade and power bars, real food would slow me down. Flatfoot caught up and he was on the same boat so we scarfed down some calories and went back on the trail. It was starting to sink in that we weren't gonna make it before sunset but I kept trying to hike as fast as possible. We got to High Rock with no more than five minutes to spare to watch the setting sun. There were at least 60 people there to watch this event on the summer solstice and we joked about how they drove up here while we just spent ~15 hours walking here from Virginia.
We started the long and painful descent down a boulder field which was right about where my body started to give out; my broken toe was hurting, my right leg developed a nasty shin splint, and my hips were super chaffed from my pack. The hike slowed down quite a bit as the dark of night draped over the forest and we slowly rock hopped across the boulders. Eventually the trail leveled out and we arrived at Pen Mar park which is pretty creepy at night with boarded up concession stands and old-timey street lamps. We scurried around looking for water, found a drinking fountain, and then sat for a few minutes before going the final 0.3 miles to the Mason -Dixon line.
FOUR States in ONE day!!!
The total time was 17.5 hours and we figured we wound up hiking 44 miles including the side trails to the monument and various overlooks. We went back to Pen Mar and camped at a pavilion, had celebration beers we packed out from the trail magic, ate, and passed out real hard. I then took a halftime break consisting of five zero days to recover and head home to Baltimore to visit friends and family.
