Date: 2009-05-03
From: Birch Spring Gap

To: Mollies Ridge Shelter
Miles today: 5.4
Weather: moderate rain

Baptism by Rain, Day 3It rained real hard most of the night, but since I was down off the ridge about 100 feet, there was little wind ... upside: no rain coming in through the mesh on the sides of my tent; downside: no ventilation, so things were starting to get damp inside anyway.Knowing I could not easily spend a third night in a tent, I finally decided to make a break for it about 9:30 during a lull, and was out and hiking by 10:30, just as the rain started up again.As I hiked along, making my way up 1,000 feet, I met a ridge runner headed in the other direction. He is 67 and hikes this section back and forth, tenting and staying in shelters, all season long, making sure everything is in order. Since he was coming from the other direction, he was full of news of things going on ahead of me ... it is an interesting, and fairly effective, communication system that we have out here in this long, narrow community.Let's talk about trail conditions in a forest after a few days of rain ... First, there is basically no level trail to be found on a ridge except in the transition zones from down hill to up hill one encounters at gaps. That being the case, the trail is inclined and serves as a channel for water coming off the mountain, creating a gully that is worn away by erosion, hikers, etc. This gully soon becomes filled with dead leaves, pine needles, grass, twigs, mud and too much water , all mixed together in a slippery stew of sludge a bit deeper than one's shoes, covering the inevitable roots and rocks that are part of the trail anyway ... all in all a perfect concoction for tripping, slipping and sliding if one is not very careful. As a result, it is almost impossible to move forward safely at a rate of more than about one mile/hour, especially when going downhill when momentum is working against you if you do slip. One option is to hike on the edges (think of the banks of streams) of these gullies, but they can become saturated with water and collapse into the gullies if one is not careful. Anyway, that's what it has been like the past few days and today, after many slips and slides, I had a good fall, breaking yet another hiking pole, scratching my leg a bit, and doing something to my elbow that hurt for several hours (it's OK now).After some hours of this, I arrived at the shelter and found it filled with hikers in various stages of dampness and misery. After several hikers moved on towards the next shelter, those of us that remained for the night were me, a fellow from Chicago, and four middle-aged section hikers who happened to be Jehovahs Witnesses, Chuck-a-Chino, Tin Man, Haiku and Socks. It was my first real experience with Jehovahs Witnesses and I found them to be wonderful people.These four guys had been camped under tarps on a ridge the night before and the strong winds had blown water horizontally under their tarps all night. As a result, the three with synthetic sleeping bags had damp but still somewhat serviceable bags, but, Socks, the guy with a down sleeping bag, was out of luck since down collapses when wet. We all pitched in to get him through the night. I loaned him my sleeping bag liner, someone came up with a plastic tarp he could wrap around himself, and he covered his hands and feet with extra socks, and his head with several layes of _clean_ underwear, making him look quite middle-eastern as a result. PhotosMud splatter on the mesh of the tent caused by heavy rain on the bare groundMollies Ridge ShelterArriving wet at Mollies Ridge ShelterThere were lots of wet folks hanging out here