Date: 2015-03-27
From: Blue Mountain Shelter

To: Dick's Creek Gap
Miles today: 20.1
Weather: overcast clouds

Last night Samson and I decided to wait till Franklin to do a town stop. That should be just over three days of good mileage away. Samson likes to put in the same kind of effort per day that I do and also likes to be on the trail at first light, so it works really well for us to stick together for the time being.It started raining sometime during the night. My tent kept me nice and dry, but Samson has a tarp tent that doubles as a poncho. It is really not very well suited for this kind of weather. Samson was planning to sleep in the shelters and use the tarp only as a backup. However, we are smack dab in the leading edge of a huge northbound hiker bubble, and there are almost never any empty spots in the shelters.Samson's sleeping bag was getting wet and was ready to get going just as soon as we could. I got up to take a crap around 4:00 AM, walked about 200 yards in the rain to the privy and found that it didn't have a roof. Taking a shit in the rain with a headlamp in a rickety plywood privy with no roof is quite an adventure. I started breaking camp at 6:00. First I got out of my sleeping gear and into my day gear and put on a rain jacket (no easy task in my cramped tent), then I wrapped up my damp sleeping bag and pad and put it in my pack. After that I got out in the rain and took down the tent as fast as I could. My pack and it's contents were getting wet as I hustled to cram it all in and get the pack cover on. Other people were also out in the rain with headlamps breaking camp. It was way too cold and miserable to even think of making breakfast. Jason ended up being ready to roll when we were and joined us out. Even though I was wearing gloves, it took almost two miles of brisk walking till my fingers started functioning properly again. We walked through rain on and off for two hours till we decided to stop for breakfast at Indian Grave Gap. After hot oatmeal and coffee we were all in better spirits. Then when we got to Tray Mountain there was a former thru hiker, Brown Trout, getting ready to serve burgers to hikers. He told us to wait half an hour to each get a burger. Well, that was a no-brainer. We waited. The burgers were burnt a bit and he didn't have any ketchup, but I think it was one of the best burgers of my life.The three of us just settled in and clicked off the miles at a steady pace. We didn't meet nearly as many hikers today as we did the past few days, I suspect a lot of them got off the trail at Unicoi Gap to avoid the cold weather that is in the forecast for the next few days. By 2:00 PM, the sun started showing her face, so we stopped for lunch and unpacked our gear and pretty well dried everything out by the time we wanted to get going again. We arrived at Dick's Creek Gap soon after 5:00 and were met by a legendary former thru hiker, Crazy Horse, giving out Dr. Peppers. Such is life on the trail, the day can start off on a bad note then it can become an incredibly beautiful and enjoyable afternoon.Jason had to get off to re-supply at Dick's Creek. We exchanged phone numbers and he thought he might want to meet up with us again in Franklin to join us in a few days. Samson and I went another mile or so till we found a decent camp site. We set up camp, got water for the morning, and had dinner. Now I am snug in my tent listening to the wind in the trees as it is starting to snow a bit. The weather forecast is calling for the temps to be in the twenties tonight. There is website that we watch that has the weather forecasts for all the shelters on the AT. It is atweather.org.