Rock Scrambling

Today is Thursday, April 18, and it’s about 9 p.m. — approaching “hiker midnight.” It's already dark out, and I'm in my tent. Tonight, I’m at the Jerry Cabin Shelter at mile 302. I'm not sure where the name of this shelter came from, by the way. No one knows who Jerry is, and the shelter is definitely not a cabin. But anyway, just before I got to the shelter, I crossed over the 300-mile mark, which was a nice milestone. I started out this morning at the Spring Mountain Shelter.

Apparently, I forgot to record a log of my hike on the 17th. Oops. There wasn’t a lot to report, actually. I passed through an area that had recently been burned. Not sure what happened there. [Wife note: It was a planned burn that had taken place a few days earlier.]

I tried to get an early start this morning, because I was planning on hiking just shy of 16 miles. I thought it was going to be a lot easier, but today beat me up a little bit. And just a side note to my dad, here: Don't worry, Dad. Whenever I say something like that, it's not cause for worry. It's going to happen once in a while. But anyway, I definitely had a tough hiking day today.

I left the campsite at around 7:45, and the first few miles were fairly uneventful, but then the middle section of the hike had a huge elevation gain. It was like six and a half miles of up, which was not very welcome. But it was fairly warm today, and the weather was nice, so it definitely wasn't all bad. A lot of hikers stopped to get water at the Little Laurel shelter, which was about eight and a half miles into the day. We all wanted take a little break ahead of the next big climb, too.

Coffee and Bodacious were there. They’re a nice couple from Oregon. And Chappie and Banana, another nice couple. They’re from Orlando. Boone was there, too, and this guy named Russ, from Ontario, showed up. So it was a pretty large crowd just hanging out at the shelter, just getting some calories in and some water. And then a surprise guest showed up!

This huge rat snake just kind of slithered into camp while we were all sitting there, but no one else seemed to be particularly alarmed by it. So I decided to play it cool, too. But I guess that means that there are probably some rats or mice hanging around the Little Laurel shelter. Outside of the Smokies, the shelters aren’t really very desirable places to stay. They're typically pretty old, and they definitely look like they could be home to quite a few creepy crawlies.

I have to admit I was very thirsty today. My fellow hikers all left from Little Laural at different times, but I stayed behind a little longer, just so I could drink more water. I tend to sweat a lot, and I ended up drinking four and a half liters of water today while I was hiking.

 When I was reading the maps before today’s hike, it all looked pretty benign. But after leaving the Little Laurel shelter, there's a pretty steep two-mile-or-so stretch. I thought there’d be kind of a ridge after that and then downhill to the shelter. But instead, I came to an area called Firescald Knob, which was a very narrow ridge with a lot of rocks, which meant a lot of very challenging rock scrambles.

Fortunately, because of the nice weather today, we at least got a nice view as kind of a payoff for our efforts. But generally, after you've done 13 miles — and especially when at least six and a half of them were pretty steep up — rock scrambling isn't exactly what you want to be doing. But the trail dictated it, so I had to do it. By the time I finished getting across that ridge, my feet were killing me. And I still had two more miles to go.

I pulled into camp at around 6 p.m., so it was a long day. But I got my tent set up, refilled my water bottles, did all my campsite chores, and then sat down and ate as much protein as I could fit into my body. I had a couple of packets of tuna. I had some beef jerky. I ate some tortillas. And then I had a brownie that Glinski’s wife Cynthia had baked for me, which was very nice. Thank you, Cynthia! Afterward, I got into bed and talked to S. for a while, and now I'm about to go to sleep.

I've got 15 miles planned for tomorrow, but we'll see how many I actually end up doing, because today was pretty rough on the feet. Maybe a nice restful sleep will take care of all that. We'll see!