Date: 2009-03-28
From: Nantahalla River

To: Sassafras Gap Shelter
Miles today: 6.8
Weather: light rain

Cell noneOG notes The climbs seem longer and steeper than I remember. We're in a rhythm when we hike - we go slow while climbing and speed up on the level and downhill. We hiked the 6.8 miles in 4 hours and it was mostly uphill - that is really good for us. No matter how well we improve, we still feel like we should be doing more. In 2006 even when I was in top form and a mean hiking machine, I wanted to do more. We were pleasantly surprised today when we came up on this shelter. We thought we would reach here at 1 pm, and we reached here at noon. We immediatly set out our sleeping bags and were ready to get in them. It was raining at that time on and off with a prediction of thunder showers. In one of the dry spells we went down to the spring and filtered our water and then threw our bear bag line up in a tree. The plan was to not have to be out in the rain later in the evening. People kept coming in all afternoon and the last two came in at 7:30 pm. We now have a full house with four outside in tents.The rain stopped mid afternoon and the sun even came out a little later. We were able to get out and roam around for a while after the day improved. The temperature is dropping and the forecast is still calling for the thundershowers then dropping temperatures.We may have a nice but cold day tomorrow, I hope that is what we'll see. We'll be going into the GSMNP on Tuesday. The predictions are saying we may get rain then. It doesn't matter though, we'll take each challange as it comes.      C6 notesThe hike to the shelter today was not as hard as I thought it was going to be. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't easy. It just wasn't quite as hard as I feared. There was a lot of hard uphill climbs, but there were a lot of switchbacks as well, and some nice easy hiking areas. If you aren't familiar with switchbacks, they are paths that go side to side up (or down) the side of a mountain. So going up a mountain could take miles because of the switchbacks, rather than hundreds of feet straight up.Rusty told us that he fell down the side of the mountain while hiking yesterday. He seemed to be okay, but said he climbed back up to the trail only to find that if he had looked down, he could have easily climbed down to the trail because of a switchback. Moral of the story is to look both ways.We started hiking early today because there were severe thunderstorm warnings for this afternoon. We wanted to be at the shelter before the thunderstorm, so we left at 8:00am and got here at noon. When we got here, a couple of guys who were already here (they said they started hiking at 5am!!) said they had heard there were tornado warnings for oday. OG is listening to the radio, and now they've downgraded the prediction of possible thunderstorms. It's cold, however, so all of us here are already in our sleeping bags (at 1:45pm) to be warm.It's 5pm now, and the shelter (which can sleep 14) is almost full. The anticipated storm never happened. In fact the sun even cme out this afternoon. It's still cold, so nearly everyone is sitting or lying in their sleeping bags to keep warm. A lot of laughter and fun conversations. This is a two-level shelter. The top level is filled with young folks. I took a video of them. I asked them to say their real first name and then their trail name. The lower level is quieter - us older folks, two guys asleep already, and two quieter younger folks. Interesting day.OG listened to his radio to try and catch the weather earlier. At that time they were still predicting a thunderstorm, but tonight instead of today now.Old Goat & Check Six