Date: 2022-04-18
From: Laurel Creek Shelter 

To: Laurel Creek Shelter 
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

The rain started early, early morning and was sometimes heavy and then would taper off a bit, and then start up hard again. You can see your breath, it¢s so cold.Lightening, Four Pack, and KG got up and left probably about 7:30. Cool Whip stayed around a bit and then packed his tent up and left too. GGnome and Runaway decided to zero here too with us. The rain was supposed to stop around 4pm and we thought about hiking the 6 miles to the next shelter. It would include a climb up to 3600 feet and over. Then Pipes came in, with ICE on his pack!, and said the hiking was bad. He stayed at Warspur shelter last night and had to hike up Kelly Knob to get here. He said there was ice on the trees and it made the branches hang low so he was getting hit in the head with ice-laden branches. Before he left he checked the weather for us (only folks with AT&T have been able to get service) and said that it would stop sleeting/raining until 2:00 and then rain would start again at 4:30. Another reason to stay.GGnome just came back from the privy and said that just walking there and back made him glad they weren¢t hiking. It¢s muddy and wet and cold. About 10:30am it began sleeting. I took a picture of the picnic table with ice chips on it. Then it began to snow. A solo female hiker named Katie came in covered in ice and soaked through. She talked about hiking to the next shelter but ended up staying because she was so cold and wet. She had tented last night and her tent was soaked too. She had stayed at Warspur with Pipes last night.Papa Bear came in mid-afternoon. He was also cold and wet and talked about the branches of ice hitting him. He asked if anyone had lost a red alpaca hat. He found it in a shelter and figured he might run into the owner. GGnome yelled ¢No way! I lost my hat 100 miles ago. I didn¢t think I¢d see it again!¢ He was so happy!At 4:30 it began to rain, right on cue, but then stopped about 10 minutes later. Oh well. So our wimpy butts will be spending the day hunkered in our sleeping bags and resting. Zero miles today. We shared some great stories. GGnome told us of a hiker on the trail now called Mischief. He is a double amputee. He had been doing a thru hike a few years before and when going to get water, fell and was knocked unconscious. His feet were in the water and he had to have them both amputated. He is back thru hiking now with prosthetics. Later, along the trail, one of his titanium prosthetics broke. He stopped at Boots Off Hostel and the hiker sleeping next to him, Coasty, said that in his job he works on titanium and was able to temporarily fix it for him to get to a place off-trail. Like they say ¢The trail will provide.¢Speaking of that, Coffeebean broke open the toe of his boot. I brought along Shoe Goop for just that reason. He tried to squeeze out some goop and the opening was sealed shut. He said he needed a sharp point to break the seal but we didn¢t have anything. Yesterday we were hiking along and I looked down and there was a diaper safety pin laying on the trail. Now he has a way to open the shoe goop. ¢The trail will provide.¢