Date: 2011-05-08
From: 1.6 miles after Rice Field Shelter

To: War Spur Shelter
Miles today: 23.6
Weather: light rain

(In which I announce the winners of the Portrait Awards for the first 30% of the trail)I stay dry and warm in my tent, and in the morning the rain has mostly stopped, though everything is still wet and misty. I think about the people still in town and how much stronger the town vortex must be when it's raining.A morning of walking through the mist with wet feet turns into a sunny afternoon, and I reflect on how lucky I've been with rain overall this year. I've heard stories of more than 20 days of rain in April and I can well imagine how much less fun it would be to hike for week on end with wet feet and gear.I trip on a root and catch my rhododendron walking stick with my foot in the same manner that broke my poles, but the stick holds. While the carbon fiber poles where incredibly strong vertically, they were quite fragile horizontally, but the wood seem to be harder to snap horizontally, and as tough as it needs to be vertically.I am quite pleased with my walking stick until I inspect German Shepard's. Deciding that the trekking poles at Neel's Gap were too expensive, he found a smooth, straight piece of what he thinks is hickory wood. It's larger and thicker than my walking stick, but when I lift it I am shocked to find that it weighs no more than mine. I ask him what sort of wood to look for, but keep my hopes low when I hear that he has been looking for a second piece without success for the past 500 miles.* * *As I walk, I think about the best and worst of the trail so far, and decide that I should give out awards. I imagine creating miniature award statues, but for now the awards are accolades only, I'm afraid. So, without further ado, here are the Portrait Awards for the trail thus far:Favorite trail town:Hot Springs, TN. Good hostel, good food, smack on the trail. One of the places I'd like to go back and spend more time at one day.Favorite hostel:Bob People's Kincora Hostel. If I could spend a zero day (or week) anywhere that I've been to, I can't think of a better place to spend it than at Kincora.Favorite shelter:Partnership Shelter. A shelter with a hot shower, a privy with toilet paper and pizza delivery? As one of the register entries put it, "better than your house".Favorite trail food that I hadn't expected:Pringles. I had never heard of bringing potato chips on the trail when I started, but when I saw Troll with a can of Lay's Stax, I knew that he was on to something. Now I can't imagine life on the trail without chips, and usually buy two cans when I resupply -- one for the trail and one to eat in town. Hikers need to replenish the salt we lose from sweat, so it's no wonder that they taste amazing; the hardest thing is not eating the whole can in one sitting.Trail food I thought I'd eat more of:PopTarts. Off the trail I ate PopTarts for breakfast most days, and they're a staple trail food, but for some reason they were always the last remaining items in my food bag, everything else being more appealing, so I stopped buying them. Maybe I'll have to stop hiking to fully appreciate them again.Least favorite trail chore:Bear bag hanging. I keep expecting this to get easier, but it never does.Gear that I'm carrying more of than when I started:Sunscreen and toilet paper.Favorite state for shelter amenities:Georgia. A privy and bear cables at every shelter, or at least every shelter I saw. Georgia, you rock.Least favorite states for shelter amenities:North Carolina / Tennessee. Few bear cables, fewer privies. Getting to a nicely built, elegant shelter only to find it doesn't have a privy is like moving into the perfect apartment and realizing that it doesn't have a bathroom.Favorite privy:This is a tough one, with strong competition coming from the open air privies with great views and the privy with the entire text of Dr. Suess's The Lorax written on the wall, but I'm going to have to give it jointly to the *two* privies at Wise Shelter in the Grayson Highlands, because after the dearth of privies in the Smokies, finding a shelter with not one but two of them was pretty awesome.Favorite spot on the trail:The Shuckstack fire tower (even if it is a hundred yards or so off the trail). Amazing views from an excitingly precarious structure. One of the pieces of graffiti inside called it the best shelter so far on the trail; I'd love to try it out some night (preferably when it's not too windy). Honorable mention goes to the Albert Mountain fire tower.Congratulations to all of the winners. The prestige is surely more valuable than any cash prize. There's still a lot more of the trail, so there will no doubt be more winners to come.