Hiker TV — Adventures With Samson-The-Bear

On 3/27 i did 20.1 miles from Blue Mountain Shelter to just beyond dicks creek gap. On 3/28 I did 15.8, sleeping a long a stream in the valley to protect myself from the wind. On 3/29 I did 20.1 miles to Rock Gap Shelter.

On 3/26 Due to the amount of people at the start of the trail, I spent my first night in my tent or should I say my tarp. It was horrible. The temperature dropped to 35 and it started to rain and then the wind picked up. I managed not to get soaked but wet enough to swear off this tarp. Tarp tents are great, but since most of the campsites on the AT are on a Ridgeline there isn't a lot of protection from the wind and this particular tarp is smaller than I am used to, this combiation puts myself in a less than ideal situation. I texted The Old Man at 11pm that night to start doing some research on tents for me. When I told my current hiking partner, Proudfoot, I was texting home to get a tent in the middle of the storm he died laughing. Who goes on the AT without a solid form of shelter.... this guy.

I learned a new term for a bonfire, they call it a hikers TV.

I have been running into a bunch of trail angels on the trail so far. A trail angel is usually a church group or former through hiker that sets up at a road crossing, or other areas along the trail and provides food and drink to the hikers. Today we started out in some really nasty weather, at one of the gaps I smelled hamburgers, Proudfoot told me I must be super hungry until we ran into Brown Trout, who through hiked it in 2002, he was grilling up burgers on the side of the mountain in a storm. We destroyed the burger, listened to some Grateful Dead on the stereo he lugged up there and kept moving; it was by far the best burger I have ever eaten. The church groups tend to provide coffee and oatmeal, and the former through hikers tend to provide beer and snicker bars, both groups are highly appreciated.

If you look at the trail log at the top of the posts you can see Proudfoot and I are are putting in some decent miles, especially for the beginning of the trip. We are both pushing to get to Franklin, NC where the promise of a shower, laundry (never thought I would be excited about laundry), beer, and maybe even a tent excite us. The trail has been great to us so far, a couple of rainy days, a little snow and the past two nights have been in the teens, but the hikes have been amazing once we get warmed up in the morning. Even with the great hikes, I believe my body is telling me I need a break; during the snow shower around 2 am on the 26th I swear I saw one of my hiking poles get blown down the mountain. I was so sure I saw it, I jumped out of my sleeping bag, in my base layer, and started to craw on the snowy ground trying to catch it. I ended up waking up Proudfoot with all the commotion, when I explained to him my pole blew away his only response was "really a pole blew away" at which time I kind of snapped to and realized that even though it was extremely windy, it would take hurricane force winds to blow a pole away. I crawled back in my tarp and found my headlamp and low and be hold my pole was next to my sleeping bag. It must be the lack of oxygen at 4,000 feet that caused my hallucination.

On 3/29 we had a great hike going to Albert mountain. The approach was steep enough we had to put the hiking poles away and scramble up the mountain using both feet and hands. When we got to the top there was a fire tower. Not sure if the forest department meant to leave it unlocked or not, but since it was open we climbed up to eat lunch inside. Once up there we had an awesome 360 degree view of the landscape. I took some panoramic pictures that will be better printed than posted. Oddly enough we spotted a fire three ridge lines from the tower, but figured it was so large that it had to have already been seen.