Date: 2003-07-16
From: Little Rock Pond Shelter

To: Governor Clement Shelter
Miles today: 19.0
Weather: moderate rain

19 miles from Little Rock Pond Shelter to Governor Clement Shelter. Sometime in the course of last night I put my headphones on and turned my radio on full blast. Really because one of guys in the shelter¢¦one of the four of us¢¦the guy who hadn¢t hiked before¢¦was snoring in a very unusual way and very loudly. He kind of sounded like someone had stabbed him in the stomach and he was dying. I just stuck on my radio to try and drown that out. I slept on through like that until about 3:00 in the morning when I got up to pee. I put the radio away and climbed back into the sleeping bag. About 4:15 in the morning there was a real big rain. Real heavy. It woke me up. It was loud. I went back to sleep and woke up again about 5:00. It was still raining heavily. I just ended up staying in my sleeping bag. Kind of avoiding the fact that we were probably going to have to walk in the rain. Everyone else stayed too. Nobody moved in that shelter until about 8:00 in the morning. Finally we all started moving around. The guy that was in there that had hiked the AT 2 years before¢¦his Trail name was Blazing Heart. I was to see him several times in the next couple of days. We all kind of dragged getting out of there.   Spiderman was the first one out at 8:30. Me at 8:45. It was a little bit of walk down some rocks from the shelter down to the Trail. I immediately fell on the wet rocks. The rest of the morning I walked very slowly and very carefully trying not to fall again because of the very rocky walk. Everything was very wet. It kept raining off and on. Once again very good climbs up and down. The Trail took you through some very cool forest. An alpine environment. Really tall pine trees as you walked through the forest. Everything was covered in pine needles. Really lush ferns. There were a lot of white birches in some places. Just trees that were very different. Very different from the South. Spiderman and I had talked about stopping for lunch later this afternoon at a place called the Whistle Stop. You come out on a road and make a right and a half mile down the road there¢s the Whistle Stop Restaurant. We did get up there about a quarter to 1. I got on the road and started walking. Of course I ended up walking the whole way. When I got to the restaurant Spiderman was there. Some guy had picked him up right at the Trail head and they had driven right by me. He¢d gotten there a minute and a half or two minutes before I did to the restaurant. The service was a little on the slow side but that was understandable because there was one lady that appeared to be doing everything on the inside and the outside of the restaurant. She was very busy so it took awhile for us to get our food. We finally did. I ordered shepherds pie and french fries smothered in brown gravy. Spiderman ordered all kinds of stuff. Chicken fingers, cheese sticks and all kinds of stuff. A whole variety of stuff. Really enough for two people. We finished that off and went right over to the ice cream bar they had outside. We immediately ordered two large chocolate milkshakes which we drank as well. We went past a group of 1 adult and 5 young boys. Teenage boys. They were pulling into the Whistle Stop as well. We chatted with them a bit. It turned out to be the older man was the father of one of the boys and the four guys were friends. They were doing a week out on the Trail. They asked if there was an outfitter. I knew from my book that there was an outfitter a 12 mile down the road above the general store. He said they wanted to get bug sacks. The kids wanted them. He offered to give me a ride down to the general store as well because I needed to get some Naproxen Sodium or Aleve or something because my knees have been getting really bad for the last couple of days or so. They are severely swollen with fluid and I¢m having a hard time bending them. I¢m having a hard time sleeping because they¢ve been hurting when I lay down. The deal is the boys car had a dead battery and we had to push it to start it. We got it pushed and started. The father, the boy and myself went down the 12 mile to the general store and found out that the outfitter had moved. I went to the store and still got my Aleve. I got 3 packs of Parliaments and I got one big Fosters. I figured I would lug it up to the next shelter for Spiderman and I to split. I was tempted to get a whole 6 pack but the map showed a pretty severe climb. I didn¢t want to be lugging stuff that heavy over that steep of a climb all afternoon. So we drove back to the Whistle Stop. Spiderman was just packing up and starting down the road. The father told the boy to go ahead and just drive the two of us over to the Trail head of the AT and then come back and get the rest of them which was really good. We started walking and it was a nasty uphill. It just seemed to go on for hours with no flat spots. Just constantly uphill. Constantly uphill. It started drizzling again which sucked.   At some point¢¦.5:00 or so¢¦I came up to this little brook and Spiderman was sitting there already with this older couple who had thru hiked the AT last year and were now just doing the Vermont section of the Long Trail. They pointed out that someone had left a bunch of soda¢s in the creek. So, we sat there and had some soda¢s. Some nice Trail magic at the end of the day. Also, while we were driving up to the Trail head I had noticed that I had seen Blazing Heart and his novice buddy walking down to the Whistle Stop. What I hadn¢t seen and what Spiderman told me was that Sticks was with them. We got to the shelter and I was really pissed off. Because what happened was¢¦by the time we got to the shelter there was the gentleman who had just driven us. He was already at the shelter with all the boys backpacks spread out across the shelter. They were occupying almost the whole shelter. What the guy had done was¢¦he had the boys drive him up to the shelter with all the boys backpacks directly from the Whistle Stop restaurant and drop the backpacks off. Then he was going back and picking up all the kids and bringing them back to the shelter. So, the twelve miles we walked to get up there and all the sweat that we sweated to make sure we got to a shelter was all in vain because this guy had driven there and taken over the shelter. I was more than a little ticked off. I didn¢t say anything to him but Spiderman and I went off about 100 yards. He set up his tent and I sat there and bitched about it. About a half hour or forty five minutes after we had gotten there Blazing Heart and his friend showed up. They also set up tents. We all just went to the shelter and started cooking. Us thru hikers were all just pretty pissed off about the whole situation. I mean, here were all these guys that had just driven¢¦.they were staying in the shelter that the thru hikers depend on to sleep in.   I decided to be a real pain anyway and sleep in the shelter and make sure I snored really loudly and just to be a general nuisance. I picked a spot. The only spot that was left was on the very top in a space so small you couldn¢t stand up without hitting your head on the ceiling. I was between two of the other boys. I did notice in the morning that the boys on both sides of me had moved as far away as possible. So, I¢m sure I created a little bit of havoc last night. In the shelter were also two older gentlemen in their 60¢s who were doing the Long Trail. Real nice guys. One of them had a candle he lit and left it on all night until it ran out. It started to rain again just as it was getting dark. Basically everyone crowded¢¦like 14 of us¢¦crowded under the roof trying to cook before we went to bed. Then we went to bed.