Date: 2003-04-19
From: Groundhog Creek Shelter

To: Walnut Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 13.1
Weather: clear sky

A total of 13.1 miles from Groundhog Creek Shelter to Walnut Mountain Shelter. My altimeter shows 73,660 total feet of elevation changes. During this hike we ran into two young girls. Brittany and Jody and a guy named Bill, whose trail name was Wintergreen. He had been hiking the AT section by section for years. He had gotten to this section already and then Brittany¢s father who was a little older than everyone else. We kind of hiked on and off and passed each other throughout the day. In the beginning I was hiking about 5 minutes ahead of Eddy and I came across, in the middle of the trail, a Red Eagle cooler. Now, I¢ve heard before about people leaving coolers out on the trail, as trail angels, unattended. But this was my first encounter with a cooler on the trail. I wasn¢t really sure if it was trail magic or if some hiker had just left his cooler in the woods. I didn¢t want to come back and be poking in someone¢s cooler and get shot because I was messing with whatever was in there. So, I yelled out a couple of times¢¦¢Hello, Hello is anybody out there?¢ and there was no response. So I opened up the cooler and I looked at it. In it was a cooler full of beer and soda and I closed the lid and yelled out ¢Hello, Hello¢ again and there was still nobody. So I finally just said ¢Oh well¢ and pulled out a beer and started drinking it. Right about this time a guy starts hiking up the road, up the trail from the north. He yelled out "¢oh, help yourself¢ and I said ¢Good, I already did¢. So anyway, it really was a trail angel. His name was Rambo Fresh Blood. Talk about interesting trail names¢¦but there you go. He had come up with more sodas and stuff and said to come on down to his truck which was parked down by road about 14 mile down. So we got down there and he had bagels and all kinds of little snacks like Little Debbie¢s. We all sat around there. Eddy, myself, Jody, Bill, Brittany, Brittany's dad and some other hiker that had started coming through there. Oh that was Eli. We all sat there and started eating the stuff. We ended up finally at Walnut Mountain shelter that evening. Bill and Brittany and Jody and Jody¢s dad also ended up there with us. They tented about 100 yards from us. Eddy and I had the shelter to ourselves. Eddy built a fire in front of the shelter which unfortunately was very smoky and the smoke just poured into the shelter. So we had to deal with the smoke all night long. Brittany also decided that they were going to built a fire at their tents. So, they had a fire going on up there too and at one point we were invited to come up. We sat around and talked to them for quite awhile. The following day would be April 20th, Easter and Brittany's father was asking questions..being all philosophical and talking philosophy and religion. It was very pleasant. That evening it got very windy and the roof on the shelter was tin and it started flapping and it flapped and flapped and flapped all night long until Eddy just got angry. He walked out onto the top of the shelter and ripped off the piece that was flapping. Which was an incredible amount of noise.