The madness of trail days

Days of the Path, Days of the Path, Days of the Path. Everyone always talks about Trail Days, so what are they? It’s a huge festival held in Damascus, VA where current and past (and probably up and coming) thru-hikers get together and have a gigantic drug and alcohol fueled party.

All kinds of outdoor vendors appear to hand out free stuff or at least some at a discount. There is a big parade where all the hikers march through the streets and the townspeople spray them with water guns. There is also an itinerary of speakers who give talks about the trail and its preservation.

The parade of hikers marching through the center of Damascus.

We’ve met a lot of people who have absolutely destroyed their bodies to get to town on time. For a brief period, we thought we would enter the party ourselves. I’m glad we gave up on that dream, because we had no idea what we would stumble upon.

We arrived in Damascus on Saturday at noon. Everyone was already severely hungover from the night before. It was our friend Dancer’s last day of travel, and she and her husband were kind enough to drive us from Boots Off into the city.

Our farewell photo with Dancer. Sad to see her go!

It was a very pleasant one hour drive with them. We were sad to see Dancer go, he was pretty tough. After saying goodbye, we headed out to find Chipper, Big Dripper, and Salamander, who had shown up the night before.

Going from a very nice, quiet trail into a packed crowd was a shock to the nervous system. Navigating through a sea of ​​hikers and tourists felt like personal hell. Somehow we mustered the strength to walk over to the vendor area where a bunch of raffles were going on.

The crowd of draws. (I guess Chipper noticed the camera.)

We had seen some of our friends in the crowd. At least we weren’t alone in our disappointment when our numbers weren’t called. Jessie and I followed one sad crowd after another, without taking home any big prizes. In the end we got hungry and decided to escape the madness to find some food.

The line was long and we spent $30 on two burgers (which were actually pretty good). Our friend Cowboy found us sitting near the playground and we caught up for a while. That’s the other benefit of Trail Days. You can meet all the people you will never reach along the way.

Once we finished eating, we headed to the other side of town to participate in the hiker parade. If we thought crowds were bad before, the parade of hikers was the most crowded around me since the Music Midtown mobs in 2018. It all seemed pretty chaotic, but somehow we all found our way marching through the center of town.

After that, the crew was pretty exhausted. We all crawled back to the tent city for a while to relax until night came and “the forest” began to grow. We heard a lot of stories from the night before that, frankly, made us fear «the woods,» but we wanted to witness what happens when you throw a group of weird hikers into a condensed area.

Chipper with his claw machine prizes.

Before it got too dark, we made sure to take care of our next resupply using the hiker shuttle provided by the city. I’m not sure exactly how he got so good at claw machine games, but Chipper practically cleaned out the machine at the front of the store. Unfortunately, he was leaving the trail after Trail Days, so the prospect of carrying five stuffed octopuses no longer affected him.

After Food City, we went to The Yellow Deli for dinner. If you’re not familiar, The Yellow Deli is a sort of cult to the peace and love movement that started in the ’70s. Their main goal is to live in community and serve others, and I think the best way to manifest that is by doing a deli.

There are a lot of weird stigmas around supporting a cult, which is pretty understandable, but let me tell you, these guys make one hell of a sandwich. After reading all the literature, we finally decided that the compound life was not for us, but all the members were incredibly friendly and sociable. It was really interesting talking to people and learning about the lifestyle. I can’t say I’ve never talked to people like that before. Quite a novel experience.

We all lay down on the grass of Tent City, preparing to enter «the forest.» In the distance a rhythmic knock was heard. A full drum circle had formed behind the tree line, and the thud was reminiscent of the Jumanji soundtrack.

Our first impression of “The Woods”. It was quite a change.

I guess it was time to see what was going on there. Now is probably a good time to mention that Jessie and I are trying to do a sober hike. There really wasn’t going to be much in the woods for us except seeing a lot of drunk and high people doing what drunk and high people do.

One of the bonfires in “The Woods”.

Honestly, the lighting in the forest was quite impressive. When we walked in, there was a small party to our right. We were handed glow sticks as we walked toward the sound of the drum circle. There were bonfires everywhere. From time to time, a less than sober person would emerge from the crowd, stand in front of the fire and try to cheer the people up.

There was a fire dancer in a circle, another neighboring rave 15 feet away, and an acoustic guitar next to it. Pretty much any party experience you could want was there. We were getting close enough to the drum circle that we were practically deafened at this point.

Some hikers banging on barrels. I had the flash on for this one. I have no idea who they are.

When we finally approached the circle, the revelation came that it was a mass of drunk people hitting 55-gallon plastic barrels with any stick they could find. Some people seemed interested in finding a decent beat to hit, while others seemed hell-bent on pushing the overall sound into entropy. By this I mean that we are simply beating the drums as fast as we can.

Russell, solar energy and Chipper. Each one enjoying the forest in their own way.

By this time I think Jessie and I had gotten the idea, so we started heading back to our tents. It was quite fun running into very drunk versions of people we had met on the way back. The drums had become louder and did not stop until 2 in the morning. After that, the tent city was filled with the sounds of screaming drunks trying to find their tents. It was easily the worst night’s sleep we had ever had.

I had to laugh the next morning when we saw a girl come out of her tent looking quite dazed. When we asked him if he was okay, his only response was, «I rejected Molly for the first time in my life. That’s character growth.» and he left.

So yeah, Trail Days was weird. It certainly wasn’t anything like what I expected. I was actually hoping for a more outfitter and gear focused event that would serve more needs on the trails. I certainly didn’t expect that level of recreational drug use.

Chipper, Jessie and Russell posing with the ATC squirrel. Chipper was scared.

But today was the last day of festivities and it was time to say goodbye to our good friend Chipper. We knew that at some point he would have to leave the process to pursue law school, and he decided that trial days would be right for him.

We spent the last two hours wandering around the city and trying to see how a city with a population of 1,000 people handles a mass of 20,000 people. The answer is a lot of really long lines for coffee and food. Honestly, it was impressive how well the local businesses handled everything.

While we waited for our trip back to Boots Off, we thought we’d visit the vendors one more time to see what raffles were left. We stopped by the Gossamer Gear store with Chipper. I’m not sure how, but we managed to get Chipper a free backpack even on his last day of the trip.

Chipper with his free backpack. He is a lucky man. And the Gossamer tent was amazing.

We didn’t even win a raffle. After a nice conversation with the guy who ran the store (and a healthy level of rude talk directed at me and Jessie’s Durston backpacks), he decided that Chipper could use a backpack upgrade and handed him a $300 backpack. It was kind of a wild note to end on.

One of my favorite Chipper images. He would keep all his medicine in a bottle. Watching him find an allergy pill was a trip.

It was sad to say goodbye to Chipper. We had been hiking with him on and off since the North Carolina border, and had essentially spent the last 2 weeks straight camping and hiking with him non-stop. He is such an integral part of the group that we will miss him dearly. We wish you the best and hope to see you again soon!

Our trip back to Boots Off was organized by Salamander through a friend of hers who had hiked the trail the year before. We hopped in the car with Quill, who very kindly dropped us off on his way back to Asheville. It was nice to chat about their experiences along the way and get some advice from someone who had completed it all.

That’s it for Trail Days! Now that we’ve seen Damascus, we just have to walk back there!