Late Night Visitors

Day 13- 7.8 miles today Hawk Mountain Shelter to Gooch Mountain Shelter  1700 Feet Up 2100 Feet down, Total 90 AT miles

The Mice Can Teach

After the war stopped, I EVENTUALLY had a good night’s sleep in the Hawk Mountain Shelter. Well at first I kept waking up to the normal rustling of the mice in the shelter but these guys and gals kept running across my head. After waking a couple of times to this, I decided I should turn my body around so my head is on the open side and feet against the wall.  This solved the problem of these late night visitors (I think I felt them scurry by my feet a few times) and I slept soundly the rest of the night.

It seems backwards but having my head on the open end of the shelter, has now has become a rule when shelter dwelling. I even avoid the side walls. This is easily done on this hike with few or no one out here. I also open my zippers and allow the mice to have full access to my pack. This keeps them from chewing into my pack for an odd wrapper or food item I accidently left behind.

To Stove or Not to Stove

By morning it had turned really cold with temperatures approaching the 20’s. Getting ready to cold soak some oatmeal and make my morning cold protein/coffee shake, I looked with sad envy at the stoves heating water of my fellow campmates, when the trail magic pixie dust fell on me once again.

“Can we heat some water for you?”

Let me see…cold oatmeal and cold coffee on this really cold morning? So of course I enjoyed steaming warm oatmeal and washed it down with a warm bag of coffee (I did not have a cup so I had to enjoy it out of my Mylar food bag).

I had decided to ditch our cook stuff in our first thru hike attempt and dropped about 2 pounds off my back deciding to go to the darkside (my trail name BTW) and cold soak. In summer we found we were too tired to cook in the evenings and just wanted to lay horizontal. In the mornings we were too busy packing up, doing morning normal duties (like the privy) and getting back heading north to Katahdin.

This second LASH trip made me think more about a stove for at least the winter parts of the 2025 thru attempt. To stove or not to stove that is the question

 The Trees Play a Trick

The hike started with a very strong cold wind blowing the leaves around on the forest floor. I find that the leaves in the forest are quite mobile for weeks in the fall after they drop from the trees. In fact I often times found myself taking a wrong turn following a water drainage that had captured the wind and brushed all the leaves onto the trail and deceivingly created a clear path ahead. With almost no one out here, evidence of the trail disappears quite easily.

It was only when I looked ahead and saw the trail disappear that I returned to the correct AT white blazes. Once the leaves start to decay they stay and are not mobile but for now the forest was allowed to play hide and seek of the AT with me and laugh at me each time I wandered off the blazes. I laughed along with the forest each time she got me.

The hiking today was up on ridgelines and then back down to the gaps, with no really difficult elevation gains or losses. Rinse and repeat. I was still in awe of being out in the woods, walking, enjoying tunes, podcasts, audiobooks, and when no earbuds were in, enjoying the sounds of the forest. The beautiful North Georgia Mountains kept me company on both sides of the trail.

The forests were surprisingly full of many really old hardwood trees of substantial size. Each time I would come up to one of these majestic trees I would ponder about the changes they have witnessed below them. 

If you Don’t Like The Weather

Very few people were out hiking today. I ran into Gator a flip flopper who was on his second to last day on the trail. He said he had to skip about 300 miles of the AT due to Hurricane Helene.

Just past the Gooch Mountain Campground I was surprised by a large group of teens that hiked by. A group of about 15 mostly boys came hiking South and were laughing and cutting up. About 10 minutes later a second group came by and asked me “how much further”. They looked forlorn. You are almost there I replied and added, hiking gets fun later in life.

I was surprised to see 25 plus people hike by after a day of hiking alone in the woods. Fortunately they were going to the large Gooch Mountain Campground rather than the shelter. The camping amenities on the section of the AT are so large obviously due to the large bubble that attacks the AT in the Spring.

I got to the shelter around 2:30 which was really too early to quit but the next shelter was about 8  more miles and I did not want to sleep in my bivy sack on the forest floor. I thought I had a lightweight 2 person tent but found out it was missing poles. My only option was my hammock which was too heavy with quilts or our 3 person tent that was also about 1.7 pounds heavier than the bivy.

The weather was supposed to turn wet. Cold and wet. More reason to have a roof over my head. I hung out with a guy who told me he was a misanthrope. He had to explain that one to me. We still had a great time hanging out and swapping stories until hiker midnight at 6 pm.

 More Late Night Visitors

The misanthrope campmate had a tent and preferred to be away from people but he decided he might try a night in the loft of the shelter. I had the whole first floor to myself and the mice. I warned my new loftmate about the mice.

I immediately fell asleep but was awoken with the loftmate cussing up a storm. A small tramily of 2 SOBOs and a flip flopper who started south from Pawling (we started North from Pawling in our first attempt) approached the shelter. One of the 3 from the tramily was apparently going to sleep in the shelter set up in the lobby area and lit a cigarette.

The loftmate started really cussing up a storm so loudly that a guy from the Tramily heard the ruckus and approached my loftmate explaining they had hiked thousands of miles and had the right to camp here. My loftmate then threw down his stuff and stomped off into the woods to set up his tent in approaching storm.

I went back to sleep and slept soundly as the pouring cold rain sang me a lullaby to the tune of pitter pattering off the roof.