Date: 2016-06-15
From: Boots Off hostel / Shook Branch Road

To: Vandeventer shelter (or Vanadventure!)
Miles today: 9.2
Weather: overcast clouds

I'm just saying upfront that this entry is for Pilgrim, because of how it started and how it ended. ****I can't believe that was only 9.2 miles. Didn't even break double digits. I was dying. The heat...the humidity...the relentless climb. Where do I start?I slept in, had breakfast at the hostel, packed up and headed out. The lake was beautiful...as I rounded it, I started seeing the shelter closure / bear warning signs. One had handwriting across it:DON'T CAMP HERE! FOOD TAKEN + TENT TORN UP. BEARS ARE SMART YO!I kept hearing rustling in the trees, but they were squirrels. You'd be surprised how loud squirrels can be. And when I rounded the lake at 10:30, I heard more rustling, looked up, and there it was....a bear about 100 feet away, parallel to me. They're not kidding about all these bear warnings around here!I got out my pepper spray and whistle, and began making some noise. Bear DNGF. But on the plus side, he didn't come towards me either. So on I went.Last summer I made it almost the entire trip before seeing a bear. This time? Second day!So that was my excitement for the morning. After that, the Day of Critters continued...saw a turtle, chipmunk. By the time I reached the shelter, I happily collapsed to read the log (my first of the trip!). This shelter has a weird obsession with Bob Peoples (owner of Kincora Hostel). The two main themes of the shelter graffiti and logbook: Bob Peoples is a badass and the water here sucks.Written on the blue blaze heading down to water source: Leave Your Pack Unless UR dying! Don't do it!and in the log book: I am filled with rage. DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT go down to the water source unless you have some serious masochistic tendencies. and written on the shelter wall: THAT SPRING'S A WHORE!So given all that and how tired I was, I decided to skip the water. Behind the shelter is a rocky cliff with stunning views. Extreme Tenting 2016! I set up on the cliff looking out. Major Tom arrived later. I appreciated that he called out, so as not to scare me in the tent. We compared our favorite Bob Peoples graffiti (which is all in the style of Chuck Norris jokes):Bob Peoples doesn't recognize the Periodic Table of Elements, he only recognizes the element of surprise.Mountain Goat (hiker I met at Boots Off) arrived, and he and Major Tom debated the finer points of shelter graffiti diction:"That spring's a whore...I think they need to change 'whore' to 'bitch'"'Whore' implies it has good qualities!"Misogynist language aside, I thought all of this anger over water was pretty funny (side note: I spent a portion of my hike the next day trying to think of gender-neutral noun curses to describe really long and steep water sources)Same night, 11:30 pmI fell asleep but Major Tom's snoring back in the shelter woke me up. Seriously? I had earplugs in and everything! And then rain. And lightning. All kinds of flashbacks to last year. And then something small was trying to push into the side of my tent. I peeked out through the netting and saw two large frogs jumping up the side of my tent. (Same thing that scared the beejeebus out of Pilgrim last year!)Anyway, the rain kept going, and once again, I re-learned my lesson about tenting on a slope. Tons of rain, all of it creating a slough that ran perpendicular under my tent. I could see the leaves and air bubbles going past. My stuff inside stayed dry, but I was worried about my body damming up the flow. One end of the tent was dry, so I moved around, discovered I could sleep sideways in the narrow end of the tent. Needless to say, it was a long day, a longer night, and I spent the next day packing up a thoroughly soaked tent.