Harper’s Ferry Day! There was not much water on the route to town and the forecast was calling for thunderstorms, so I booked it 9 miles into town without taking much of a break. I stopped briefly to talk to Trouble and Deliberate and shared some of my water with them. I stopped again briefly when I caught up to Frog and Toad, but otherwise pushed on to town. Crossing the bridge over the Shenandoah River was epic, as I blared John Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Roads” over the roar of passing traffic. After the bridge, I continued on a short way until I got to the side trail for the iconic Appalachian Trail Conservancy headquarters.
The volunteer took my picture for the photo book, and I impressed the staff with my recitation of the 7 leave no trace principles to get my thru hiker tag. I also got to see Frog and Toad one last time as they finished their section hike. I continued on into town and had an amazing gyro and Greek salad for lunch before crossing the Potomac into Maryland.
I hiked the few flat miles the AT shares with the C&O Canal Towpath, and took the road to Cross Trails Hostel for the night. There were no other hikers there, and I wished I had tried to stay in Harper’s Ferry to hang out with the section hikers instead. Oh well.
It started raining sometime in the night. Knowing I was going to be picked up in the afternoon to spend the weekend in Baltimore, I didn’t bother wearing my rain jacket. I hiked back to the trail and up the switchbacks to Weverton Cliffs, which unfortunately had no view today with the fog and clouds. The rest of the trail was an easy ridge walk through the woods. It felt good to be back in Maryland and out of the tree graveyard of the last 30 miles of Virginia.
I made it to Gathland State Park where I was going to be picked up in a few hours. After using the bathroom and getting some water, I settled into a pavilion to escape the rain and change into some dryer layers. Just as I was getting cold, my ride arrived and took me off the mountain back into civilization. I got my laundry done right away (for everyone’s sake), and we all went to bed early after a few drinks.
I had a good zero day in Baltimore. I followed my friends shuttling their kids around in the morning and got my resupply at the grocery store. We met up with some other friends at a brewery after lunch. Then my buddy and I stayed up drinking and laughing late into the night. It was really nice to visit my friends and former home town.
We all had a slow morning, but we got on the road around noon. We had a nice lunch in Frederick, Maryland, at a place where the kids could run around. Then we finished the drive to Gathland State Park to start hiking north. My friends joined me for a few miles, and I showed them a shelter. After parting ways, I hustled to the Dahlgren Backpacker Campground to camp for the night, arriving a little before sunset. After I settled into my hammock and everyone else at camp went to bed, a fox started screaming off in the distance, which is not a pleasant sound to try to fall asleep with in the background.
It was a beautiful day on trail today with pleasant sunny weather. I hit the Washington Monument early in the day. Aside from being a nice view, this is also the furthest north I’d previously hiked on the AT, so everything north of here will be all new to me. The next milestone for the day was crossing over I-70 on a bridge I’d driven under many times over the years. I met Trouble and Deliberate for the last time just on the other side of the bridge. It was great to see them again, but hard to have a conversation with all the traffic noise.
I had a nice lunch with a beautiful view at Annapolis Rocks. After getting water at a nearby spring, I started walking up the campground trail and I think I saw a bear? I’m not positive, but it looked like a big black bear head up the hill from me before it moved off. When I got to where I thought I saw it, I couldn’t see any sign that it had been there, I couldn’t see it up the hill, and I never heard it. So I gaslit myself that I didn’t see it, but other hikers I’ve told the story to think it probably was a bear. I hope I see another one so that I can say for certain I saw one.
The rest of the day remained easy and beautiful. I was a little worried about camping at a shelter near a road, but when I got there, there were only a few other long distance hikers. I had a nice evening with the other hikers and felt good after my longest day on trail yet (13.9 miles).
I did not have a solid plan for the day leaving the shelter, but I was thinking of staying at the first campsite in Pennsylvania. I was very slow in the morning, likely a byproduct of the higher mileage the day before. The first stream I crossed in the day was beautiful with big rock walls on the cliffs and hemlocks by the stream, but I forgot to take a picture. I stopped for an early lunch just 4 miles into the day.
The rain before lunch was not bad, but when I got to the shelter for lunch it really started to pour. I stayed there for about 2 hours trying to wait out the rain, during which time a few other hikers walked in to get out of the rain. I tried to see if I could stay at one of the hotels in PenMar to get out of the rain, but they were all full. Resigned to sleep outside, I marched on to PenMar.
When I got there, I was feeling cold and really wanted to get out of the elements. I called the hotel in Waynesboro, PA, to see if they had any rooms open, and they did. I hiked the next three miles to the road very quickly, only stopping for a quick photo of the Mason-Dixon Line. When I got to the road, I half-heartedly tried to hitchhike into town, but gave up almost immediately and walked into town. I misjudged how far of a walk it was, and trudged another almost 3 miles on the side of a busy road to the hotel. My feet were killing me when I got there, but I made it.
After checking in, I quickly laid out my gear to dry and took one of the best showers of my life. I walked over to one of the restaurants for a hot meal and then went back to the hotel to pass out. I had the best night’s sleep since before trail.
Food has been a challenge so far during the hike. I have not had an appetite, and some of the foods I relied on during past hikes have not been appealing to me. I am eating every meal and likely getting enough calories for now, but I’m just not enjoying most meals and snacks. Talking to other hikers, it sounds like this is fairly common and something that will work itself out within a few weeks. For now, I’m just experimenting to see what foods go down well and ditching foods that aren’t.
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HUNDRED, W.Va, — Every day, Austin Hayes drives with his mom through the mountains of West Virginia’s northern corridor heading east to school. A once proud Hundred High School Hornet, Hayes is now an incoming junior at North Marion High School in Farmington.
After the consolidation of his high school in Wetzel County, Hayes decided to attend school in another county. His commute is about 20 minutes, but that’s only a fifth of the time some of his former classmates travel to their new school, Valley High.
“There’s a lot of kids that have to sit on the bus, that was the main complaint,” he said. “The bus times.”
In November 2024, the Wetzel County Board of Education voted to consolidate four of the county’s high schools into two. Students at Paden City High School would go to Magnolia High School and those at Hundred High School would go to Valley High School. By 2029, all students would go to one school.
Students in Wetzel County are hardly alone. Across West Virginia, public schools are rapidly closing. Political leaders are cutting taxes and funneling hundreds of millions of taxpayer money into a school voucher program, while wringing their hands about local school financial struggles.
Meanwhile students, parents and community members in Wetzel County want change. They’d like elected officials and bureaucrats to listen more to the people, fix the school funding formula and try to protect other communities from losing their schools.
Before the Wetzel County school board voted to consolidate, board members held public meetings at multiple schools in the county to hear the community’s concerns.
Hayes, then a student at Hundred High School, joined the teachers, staff and other community members who came out. He participated in football, basketball and track.
“A lot of Hundred students that go to Valley now, sit on the bus for at least an hour every day, just going one way, and it’s just unfeasible for a lot of Hundred students to have the same opportunities for after-school sports and stuff,” he said.
A mother of three, Abby Tennant’s youngest child attended Paden City High School before it shut down. “I loved Paden City,” Tennant said. “Everybody knew my daughter, they knew what was going on with her. She needed help. It was freely given.”
Tennant went to multiple board meetings, asking questions and raising concerns about what this would mean for the students. After the consolidation decision, she opted to put her daughter in school in another county.
Wetzel County school board member Jimmy Glasscock was the only member to vote against both consolidations. He said he was disappointed that the board didn’t listen to the voters in the county.
“We’ve lost our students, we’ve lost our communities, we’ve lost our teachers, we’ve lost our service personnel, we just continue losing, and we will continue losing,” he said.
Following the county school board’s vote to consolidate, the West Virginia Board of Education met and voted to approve the consolidation.
“I went to the state board meeting and spoke out against it as well, and honestly, that disappointed me just as much,” Hayes said. He said that neither the county nor the state school boards had adequately addressed concerns the community shared.
Since attending North Marion, Hayes doesn’t participate in as many extracurriculars or sports.
In this year’s legislative session, Sen. Jay Taylor, R-Taylor, sponsored a bill that would have required a county vote before closing schools. Although Taylor is a member of the Senate Education Committee, he said he doesn’t know why the bill didn’t come up for a vote.
“I wanted to protect rural schools,” Taylor said. He believes more money should be going to the students and that part of that change is fixing the funding formula.
Schools around West Virginia are hemorrhaging enrollment. State school board President Paul Hardesty warned in January that financial hardship and closures they were seeing in Hancock County were only the beginning. This month, he said up to 20 schools could close in the coming year.
Since 2019, 70 public schools have closed and over 30,000 students have left the West Virginia public school system. In the last year, Wetzel County Public Schools have lost over 150 students, dipping below 2,000 students in the county.
At the beginning of this year’s legislative session, House legislators heard from consultants they had hired to study the state’s public education system. The consultants told them they needed to rework the state’s school funding formula and cap the Hope Scholarship. Lawmakers made no changes to either.
Wetzel County is the biggest producer of oil and gas in the state, but the drilling boom hasn’t brought the prosperity that advocates predicted, as the school funding formula bases pay for teachers on enrollment. And the county’s enrollment doesn’t support the number of teachers on the payroll.
Del. Bill Bell, a fifth-grade teacher in Wetzel County, said, “The formula itself is outdated and convoluted.”
Bell campaigned during the Republican primary on strengthening public schools and ensuring that teachers and service personnel were compensated competitively. He lost.
Sen. Charles Clements, R-Wetzel, served as the vice chair of the Senate Education Committee. He sponsored a bill this year that would have updated the school aid formula mandating funding for 1,200 students per county even if enrollment falls below that. The education committee never put the bill on the agenda.
“We have a constitutional obligation to provide an education to the students in West Virginia,” Clements said. He is not running for reelection.
Clements’ bill was among several proposed changes to the formula. Other proposals included one by Del. Joe Ellington, R-Mercer, that would have created a block grant for all counties and a supplemental account for special needs students. Ellington introduced the legislation in February, and the clock ran out on the session while lawmakers were still talking about it. He did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Jessup Higgins, a 2026 graduate of Magnolia High School, is hoping to go to community college for electrical work. He was originally a student at Paden City before it closed.
“It was definitely a nerve-wracking transfer to Magnolia, because I didn’t know anybody there, and I had no idea what it was going to be like, because it’s probably three times the [size] school that I went to,” Higgins said.
He attended the Wetzel County Technical Education Center during his high school career. He said that aside from his family, he doesn’t plan to stay in Wetzel to explore other opportunities.
“[I’d] like to leave my hometown and go, you know, see what the world has to offer,” Higgins said. “And also, there isn’t a whole lot of money around here.”
Lisa Stillion, a retired nurse who taught in both Wetzel and Ohio counties believes the state needs to invest in broadband, infrastructure and technical education programs to keep its students.
“Our state just keeps losing people, and there’s nothing you can do to replace them, because the industry is just not here,” she said.
In November 2025, the Wetzel County school board purchased land in Porters Falls to build a new campus that will include a new career and technical center. Part of pulling their resources together is making sure they have qualified teachers including those for technical education.
“I think these kids need to be better prepared for what’s going to be their career and their way of supporting themselves as they graduate,” Stillion said. “Not every kid’s going to college, and that mindset needs to be looked at.”
Born and raised in Paden City, Rodney McWilliams is a 1984 graduate of Paden City High School. He is a distinguished alumni award winner. McWilliams believes part of keeping people in the communities is making sure their schools stay open and investing in their students.
He said there aren’t many business or work opportunities in Paden City that would make people stay in the community otherwise. McWilliams is the president of the Paden City Foundation, a philanthropic organization that gives scholarships to Paden City High School alumni and supports various civic projects around the city.
He opposed the decision to consolidate the schools because he said the school was the main hub of the town.
“My interest is basically sentimental for myself and for people that hold the school near and dear, historical reasons,” he said. “And, also, to keep the town on the map.”
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS) — West Virginians who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits can once again use them to purchase soda after a federal judge blocked the state’s restriction, though the ruling could still face an appeal.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture exceeded its authority and failed to follow required public notice procedures before approving waivers allowing five states, including West Virginia, to restrict certain SNAP purchases. The ruling vacates those waivers, effectively restoring previous purchasing rules unless a higher court intervenes.
Gov. Patrick Morrisey said the state is consulting with the U.S. Department of Justice and the other states involved in the lawsuit before deciding whether to appeal the decision.
“We do think it’s lawful,” Morrisey said. “We think that the way that SNAP was designed, it’s trying to focus on nutrition, and I think our decisions are consistent with that. We want nutritious foods for people.”
Morrisey said discussions are ongoing about the state’s legal strategy.
“We’re conferring with the other states. We’re conferring with the Department of Justice on that, and we’re going to be developing our litigation plan,” he said.
The lawsuit was filed by the National Center for Law and Economic Justice on behalf of plaintiffs challenging the USDA’s approval of the restrictions.
Katherine Deabler-Meadows, an attorney with NCLEJ, said the ruling provides immediate relief for SNAP recipients and retailers.
“For our clients it means a lot that they’re going to be able to buy the food products that they need to buy to manage their lives and their health conditions,” she said.
Deabler-Meadows said the restrictions created confusion for grocery stores and made it more difficult for recipients to use their benefits.
“Legally, this is very clear,” she said. “The district court vacated the five waivers. USDA’s approval of those restrictions has been vacated. Legally, people should be able to just walk in and use their SNAP benefits the exact same way they could before the restrictions went into effect.”
Supporters of the restrictions argued they would encourage healthier food choices. However, Deabler-Meadows said the limits placed an unnecessary burden on families relying on SNAP benefits.
“It might seem like a small thing to not be able to drink a soda,” she said. “If your day is that long and you have that many things to juggle, sometimes that is something that you need in order to meet all of those responsibilities.”
Although the restriction has been struck down, it may take time for retailers across West Virginia to update their systems. The federal government may also appeal the ruling, but unless a court issues a stay, attorneys say the restrictions are no longer legally in effect.
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