Trail or Stream?

I awoke at the Tricorner Knob shelter this morning to very gusty winds, and yet again, rain was imminent. The forecast was pretty grim, so based on a few inputs from friends and some things I was able to look up online, I determined that probably the worst of it was going to be before noon. By the worst of it, I mean thunderstorms — you know, being out on a mountain ridge when there’s thunder is not really the smartest idea. Some people opted to leave early to try to get ahead of it. I tented next to a guy from Bavaria, whose name sounds something like “Bluh.” I guess it’s actually “Blue,” but I'm not really sure. I’ve asked him more than once, and every time, he just says, “Bluh.” So there you go.

Anyway, I saw him in the morning and said that the weather was supposed to be pretty nasty today. In his thick German accident, he responded, “Zere ees no bad whezer, only bad equipment.” So, I hope he survived the bad weather with good equipment.

I managed to get everything into my backpack, and I went up to the shelter, where a bunch of people were just sort of waiting it out. It was quite cold, and some thunder rolled in, and a big downpour came through. Eventually, there seemed to be a bit of a break in the weather, so I took the opportunity to go break my tent down, because taking down your tent while it's raining is a guarantee that you'll get the inside of your tent wet.

So, I went back to my tent, took it down, and then realized that I had left my stuff sack inside the tent. I’d taken great pains to protect the inside of my tent as I was taking it down, only to have to open it all the way back up again to get my stuff stack out. And by then, it had started raining on me again. So it became a lost cause, and the whole thing got wet. Bully for me.

At around 10:45, the weather seemed to shift favorably, and I decided to make a break for it. Over the previous two days, it had rained a lot. And I had started playing a kind of game in my head as I was walking: “Is this the trail? Or is this a stream?” Unfortunately, the answer was always both.

Although I tried to keep my feet dry while I was hiking out, it became a futile exercise. So I just got my feet wet. And before long, the rains moved in in earnest, and it was windy and no fun, but otherwise, it was a relatively easy eight miles, and I pulled into the Cosby Knob shelter at about 2 o'clock.

[Wife note: I’m obsessed with this picture! Rainbow sky!😍]

I was the first person there, but I knew of at least five hikers that were coming up behind me, and eventually, we had a totally full shelter, which tends to become logistically challenging. This was my first night staying in a shelter, but I picked a good spot, and by 7 o'clock, everyone had eaten dinner and settled in for the night. It was sort of interesting just to lie there and listen to the goings on.

There was a group of Canadian kids there — I guess they're all about 18, and they're in their gap year between high school and college. They are all going on some sort of leadership training exercise, and they were discussing their plans. I could hear bits and pieces of some other conversations, as well, and someone declared that they were going to smoke some weed. It was an interesting night.

Overnight, it rained a lot, several more times, so it was good that I’d decided to stay in the shelter. I managed to keep some clothes dry, and I’d had a dry place to sleep. All in all, not so bad.