Date: 2010-04-01
From: Birch Spring Campsite

To: Spence Field Shelter
Miles today: 10.8
Weather: clear sky

It was a beautiful walk this morning- sunny and warm as we continued to ascend higher into the Smoky Mountains. At higher elvations, signs of spring have not reached yet- no vegetation growing, the trees are still leafless and you can see for miles. Looking out over bare tree covered hills is probably one of my favorite types of vista on the AT. I love watching the tendrils of plants push their way through the layers of dead leaves and slowly watch the forest come alive as you walk through it, but leaves also obscure views and we only have a few more weeks before the green tunnel swallows us til fall. The 30 miles or so from Shuckstack Mtn north to Clingman's Dome is predominately uphill. The elevation profile over two pages of the guidebook runs gradually higher and higher, the peaks and the valleys between the peaks getting higher and higher. The trail today started at 3700', up to 4500', down to 3800', up to 4800', down to 4000', and finally up to Spence Field at 4900'. Tomorrow we bounce up and down between 4400 to 5500 and the day after that 4800 to 6643 (summit of Clingman's- highest point on the trail.)         (there is a new guidebook that has has an squiggly elevation profile that runs vertically down the side of the page and corresponds with the points listed. This didn't exist in 2001 when I hiked before- kinda cool. Before the only elevation profiles were on the maps which I didn't carry. Now we have both.)        We had more irritation with the park's shelter system today. There was enough thru-hikers heading to the same shelter, we knew some of us would get to/have to tent. Whether its "get to" or "have to" depends on whether its raining or not. Since the weather forecast for the next week is absolutely fabulous- its who GETS to tent. No one wants to sleep shoulder to shoulder in a stuffy shelter with a bunch of snoring people and mice running around. So several other hikers got to the shelter ahead of us and went ahead and set up their tents.                 We had ran into one of the ridgerunners today and he told us he'd be at Spence Field tonight. I was a RR in NJ in 2002, so I have a lot of respect for what they do and tho I don't like the rules, I follow them. Also worth noting, though 4 spots each night are reserved for thruhikers, if the other 8 spots aren't occupied (or the people who have it reserved don't show), thruhikers are supposed to stay in the shelter. Basically no one is supposed to camp unless the shelter is full , period. This is to prevent the vegetation around shelters from getting trampled by tents.         So we get there and there are tents up but only a handful of people commited to stay in the shelter. So of course we had no choice to but stay in the shelter. I was just pissed bc I felt those hikers that set the tents up didn't give a flip. The shelter ended up being full and no one had to take their tents down. The whole point of making people stay in the shelter is to prevent the vegation getting matted down (and killed if matted down often enough) from a tent. It was really warm in the shelter, especially before the RR, Scott Thomas, cut down the tarp over the front. People put up tarps in the winter to stay a little warmer.