Tuesday 5-11

Caught the 8 am shuttle to the AT and bumped into Utah, who took a zero day. It is cold, raining and there are thunderstorms / lightning, which is a very bad thing when you are hiking with two metal poles on a ridge above the clouds. It was such a shitty day, I srriously thought to just stay in the shuttle to go back to gatlinburg. Was just going to have Ponda pick me up from there this weekend, she is coming to visit w me in hot springs. I must have had an internal dialogue long enough for the shuttle to leave, without me. I don't think I could have looked at myself in the mirror if I went back. As difficult as it was we pressed forward.

Death at icewater shelter
When we got to the shelter, I read the shelter logs and read abou the death, folks that were there that night were kind of shook up. The trail rumor / ridge runners, told me that the guy was taking sleeping pills and boozing. Must have od'ed. He was not a through hiker.

Since the shelter is only 3 miles from the road it gets the partying element and I learned from the people that it wAs so packed that 4 ppl slept on the floor (thank god I was in town).

Utah and I pressed on, it rained the entire day, maybe the most miserable day yet, since you are in the clouds the visibility was zero.

We got to pecks shelter around 2pm to find four horsemen, horses are allowed on some parts of the AT and smokies. They rent them somewhere in the park. I can see coming back here and doing this on horseback. They didn't talk a lot and looked really cool, they looked like cowboys from the western movies. Long trench coats, hats, spurs, the pants, the chewing tobacco.

Since we were the first ones at the shelter, I started to gAther wood and starting a fire for the weary hikers that would be coming shortly. Btw there is almost no wood by the shelters, WTF, we are in the woods and it's tough to find shit to burn.

The shelters are now full, every night it's a full house, it's like a hiker morgue, 12 hikers , 6 on top, 6 on the bottom in mummy bags.

I bumped into Jeremy from Philly again, he must have overheard me talking up cliff bars and how good they were, as he left one in my shoe before he took off. I will probably never see you again, but thank you, it wAs the perfect breakfast.