Date: 2013-06-23
From: Laurel Creek Shelter

To: Sarver Hollow Shelter
Miles today: 6.4
Weather: light rain

Last night we planned to do a night hike by leaving late in the day and hiking into the wee hours of the dark morning. Only this morning is supposed to be less dark than usual. It's a Super Moon. Which means the moon is larger and brighter than usual because, well I don't know why, actually. We'll just have to Google it. So we woke up whenever and sat around talking about stuff and made some supper for lunch, and then we would have lunch for supper so we didn't have to cook at night on the trail. We watered up and got on the trail at about 3:00 PM, with plenty of time to take it easy with long breaks before plunging into the darkness.The entire planned hike would be about 13 miles and I was ready for it. Cannibal Curious and Sunshine were leaving the trail for a couple of weeks and Ducky is planning to leave as well. The dynamics of a trail group is always changing. One block of time you'll be hiking with one person and the next you're hiking with a crowd. In this instance we added me and lost three the next day. I hiked with Cannibal Curious and Sunshine until we got to the road. We all said giodbye and I took off first. I hiked for three hours befire finally meeting up with Thistle, and then Mountain Man and Nomad were not far behind. We hiked up a huge mountain that was only a hill in the guidebook. That happens all the time in AWOL's Appalachian Guidebook. Guess I need to speak with old AWOL. You may remember I met him in Damascus. He wrote his book about his AT through hike, then authored a guidebook to compete with the Appalachian Trail Conservancy guidebook. The hiking went well despite the surprise mountain. We had passed the last place to get water and Sarver Shelter had the only water source until the next shelter 6 miles away. We checked our water supplies. Thistle stopped at the last creek and filled up, but none of the rest of us did, so we needed to stop at the shelter anyway for water. It was really hot, and combined with all the energy used and sweating on the way up the mountain, we drank a lot of water. We took a break at the trail entrance to the Sarver Hollow Shelter. The trail sign indicated that the shelter was .4 miles down a trail which went right down the side of the mountain, very steep. We talked about whether it was worth hiking down and having to come back up the hill to get water. Then we heard a crackle in the greying sky. We looked at our phones to see if we could see the weather forecast. We'd heard it was supposed to rain during the weekend, but it has been sunny and warm. I got enough signal to pickup a readout of the local weather and saw 100% chance of rain from 10:00PM to 1:00AM. The forecast was bleak. Then we heard a long gurgle of thunder, louder than the one before. As the rain started coming down we ran for the shelter. We figured we could at least wait it out.As we unfolded our sleeping pads we prepared for tornado force winds and buckets of rain. As it turned out we only had one bucket of water as I used my nylon folding bucket to fetch water from the creek. Sarver Hollow has some history. Apparently a hiker happened upon the Sarver residence and killed Henry and Mary Sarver, then stayed at the cabin for another 8 days or so and when their daughter came home killed her too. The place is now said to be haunted. So the plan changed once we got our beds out. No one wanted to climb that hill to get back on the trail. Tomorrow's lofty goal is to get up at 6:00 AM and out by 7:00, and make it to the shelter past Niday Shelter, where we would have been had we completed our night hike. It would be a 16.1 mile hike to Pickle Branch Shelter.   There's nothing more miserable than hiking in the rain at night, but not hiking when the thunderstorms don't materialize is pretty disheartening too. Maybe tomorrow will be more productive.Until tomorrowKnutt