Date: 2017-11-19
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Miles today: 0.0

Maybe it¢s just part of aging, but I find the biggest variable in whether a day¢s hike is a pleasure or drudgery is neither the elevation gain nor the rootiness, muddiness or rockiness of the trail but whether I had a good night¢s sleep. Good views and great weather are nice, but sound sleep is priceless. I have hiked with people (yes, Bill, I mean you) who can fall asleep instantly anywhere and sleep through Richter-scale snoring, freight-train whistles, and severe thunderstorms. How I envy them!  There are over 250 shelters along the Appalachian Trail made for people like Bill. The average distance between them is eight or nine miles, but they can be spaced as closely as 1.8 miles or as far apart as 18.2 miles (with an intervening campsite and town). In practice there is seldom a shelter when you want one, meaning that you will either hike further than you would like or stop earlier. Most of the shelters are crude wooden structures with an overhanging roof, three walls, and a floor raised off the ground. Some are more elaborate and can be much larger, multi-level mansions, featuring solar showers, swinging porch furniture, and separate cooking pavilions. One in Maryland even has potted geraniums and solar lights lining shelter-area trails.  A typical shelter will sleep six-to-ten hikers lying side-by-side like canned sardines. Most shelters offer a convenient water source (treatment required), a fire ring, a privy (outhouse), tent sites, and increasingly, some sort of food storage system designed to deter bears. None offer room service, maid service, or mini-bar. It is strictly first-come, first-serve with no special preference given to thru-hikers. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy is developing a voluntary registration system that will help hikers learn which shelters are apt to be crowded, hopefully encouraging hikers to stay at the lesser-used shelters and campsites. Shelters and surrounding tent sites play an important role in the management of the Appalachian Trail by concentrating overnight use, allowing most of the land surrounding the trail to remain relatively untrampled. As a solo hiker, I seek shelters out for human companionship and for the convenience of a reliable water source and a privy. But at the shelter, I prefer to tent because I find I sleep a lot better. Shelters are often crowded, noisy and fetid, but can seem like five-star accommodations in the rain. There used to be a saying that there was always room for one more in the shelter when it rained, but with the number of hikers today, that is simply not the case. Every hiker should carry some sort of shelter, whether a tent, a hammock, a tarp, or, like Grandma Gatewood, a plastic shower curtain. I also recommend earplugs.Hikers are only visitors to the shelters. The real residents are white-footed mice.  They will explore your pack at night, searching for food crumbs or the forgotten granola bar, and will occasionally run across your face. Other animals that frequent shelters include red squirrels and porcupines in New England, and skunks, spiders, and eastern phoebes who like to nest on the beam above the shelter opening. Snakes are occasional visitors and very welcome, since they eat mice. One shelter in Vermont had a resident woodlands jumping mouse, a really cool creature I had never seen before.A friend joined me in 1996 on a hike going north from Damascus, Virginia. Glenda wanted a trail name and received it on her first morning. I had gone behind the shelter to use the privy and was hardly seated when I heard a blood-curdling scream. I ran back around front pulling up my shorts and saw Glenda jumping up and down, shaking her upside down pack, and screeching glass-shattering notes. Overnight, a mouse had gotten into Glenda¢s pack, shredded her toilet paper and built a nest. A half dozen little pinkies were now wriggling on the shelter floor. Momma Mouse bravely rescued each one, carrying them to the safety of an abandoned boot. Glenda was thus christened Midwife. An unanswered question is why anyone would abandon one boot. Can you imagine an absent-minded hiker forgetting to put one boot on and after several miles of hiking thinking, ¢Dang, I forgot my boot, but it¢s too far to go back¢?Unless you are totally insensitive to others, you will quickly master shelter etiquette. The rules are pretty simple:Don¢t manspread, both literally if you are a man wearing a kilt, and figuratively in spreading your gear all over the shelter. You¢re entitled to a strip about 30¢ wide and, if you can find one, a peg or nail from which to hang your pack. Hang your damp hiking clothes from your pack and don¢t monopolize any clothes line. Don¢t set up your tent in the shelter.Don¢t wake up others. If you come into the shelter area after ¢hiker midnight,¢ meaning after the sun is nearly set, be as quiet as you can. Try not to shine your headlamp on others, and use red lights if that is an option for you. The same rule applies to early risers.Be polite. If you want to smoke, ask if it would bother anyone. If there are kids in the shelter, don¢t smoke or swear. Use earbuds to listen to music, and go outside to make phone calls. Not everyone will appreciate your having sex in the shelter. Minimize food in the shelter.  You may be comfortable using your food bag as a pillow, but it may upset others. Use any provided bear pole, cable, or bear box, hang your food or use a bear canister. Try not to cook in the shelter, although this is very hard to avoid in the rain.Don¢t pee near the shelter. Shelters smell bad enough without the added scent of urine. Resist the urge to mark your presence with either urine or graffiti. Carry out your trash, even uneaten food, and keep the fire ring clean. It¢s not for burning trash.In addition to the campsites adjacent to shelters, there are other designated campsites and frequently less official ones, sometimes called stealth campsites. Camping is permitted anywhere along the trail, except where it isn¢t. Camping is restricted to designated or signed sites in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. It can be challenging to find a reasonably level place to set a tent, one reason why more and more hikers carry hammocks.In the good old days, happily long past, hikers carried canvas tents that not only were very heavy but would leak in the rain if you touched the fabric. Today¢s tents are much lighter and more water resistant. Weight and price follow an inverse relationship. Consider the following one-person tents:Eureka Midori Solo Tent $98, 4 lbs, coated polyester taffeta, free-standingLightheart Solo, $260, 1.8 lbs, silicone-coated nylon, uses hiking poles for supportTarptent Notch, $285, 1.7 lbs, silicone-coated nylon, uses hiking poles for supportZpacks Solplex Tent, $555, 1.1 lbs), Dyneema (Cuben Fiber), uses hiking poles for supportI use the Zpacks Solplex tent. The weight listed above includes the 7¢x13¢ stuff sack and eight titanium stakes. I am quite happy with it, a good thing considering its cost.  A major advantage of Cuben Fiber, aside from its light weight, is that it doesn¢t stretch and gains relatively little weight when wet. Silicone-coated nylon (sylnylon) stretches especially when it is wet, and absorbs far more water. Having to leave your tent in the rain to tighten guylines is never fun.Hammock sleep systems, sometimes known as bear pinatas, include a hammock, tree-straps, over- and sometimes under-quilts, and a rainfly. They are marvelously comfortable and require only two trees 8-12 feet apart, regardless of the underlying terrain. I had a Speers Hammock, no longer made. I stayed dry even in horrible storms. While side sleeping is possible in a hammock, I found that I invariably ended up on my back. When I sleep on my back, I snore and would wake myself up. Sleeping above the ground is much cooler, literally, and I found two quilts and a sleeping bag necessary to stay warm. The combined weight of the hammock system was much greater than my tent, and I didn¢t sleep as well. That being said, those who like them, like them a lot and regard us ground dwellers with disdain. I carry an full-length inflatable sleeping pad (Therm-A-Rest Neoair Xlite) that weighs 12 ounces. To save weight, some hikers will carry a 3/4-length pad. Others will insist on a self-inflating pad, objecting to the time it takes to blow up a sleeping pad. Other than sitting around sharing old stories and new farts, what are they afraid of missing? I carry a down sleeping bag in a waterproof roll-top bag. I¢ve always carried down, even on canoe trips, and have never had an issue with it getting wet. Wet down is not only heavy but is also a poor insulator.  Others will insist upon synthetic insulation. Synthetic fill holds warmth better than down when wet and will dry quicker. Either way, a wet sleeping bag is miserable and best avoided. Synthetic fill is less expensive, but a down sleeping bag, properly cared for, will last decades. Synthetic sleeping bags are bulkier and heavier for the same temperature rating. Lately, down quilts have become popular, but since I already have 20-degree and a 35-degree down mummy bags, I see no reason to change. I must economize somewhere! I plan to start with the 35-degree bag in late April, knowing that there may be a few cooler nights when I might choose to wear my down puffy jacket in the sleeping bag. I¢ll switch to my warmer bag for New Hampshire and Maine. I¢ll start the southern half of my hike with the 35-degree bag and probably switch to the 20-degree bag in early October. My clothing roll-top stuff sack is lined with fleece on one side and becomes my pillow at night. Stuffed with the down jacket, it is quite comfortable. I usually wear silk-weight long-underwear as pajamas, both for the extra warmth and to keep the sleeping bag a little fresher.  After all this talk about shelters, tents and sleeping bags, I need to add that my favorite place to sleep on the Appalachian Trail is off the trail, in either a hotel, bed & breakfast, or hostel. About every five to seven days, I go into a nearby town primarily to buy groceries. Food on the trail weighs between 1-1/2 and 2 pounds per day, which mounts up quickly. I¢ve seen thru-hikers start in Georgia with massive packs carrying 30 days or more of food, including five-pound jars of peanut butter and 42-ounce oatmeal canisters. There¢s no need to ever carry more than seven or eight days of food on the Appalachian Trail, even in the remotest part of Maine. The trail goes through towns such as Hot Springs, North Carolina; Damascus, Virginia; and Hanover, New Hampshire; and it is relatively easy to hitch-hike into towns close to the trail. Sometimes I quickly buy groceries, eat a restaurant or fast-food meal, and hike on, but for the most part since I have to be in town anyway, I¢ll spend the night. Town visits are leisurely affairs. Other than buying groceries, doing laundry, showering, and charging electronics, the only required chore is eating, and such a chore is pleasure indeed.