Date: 2012-04-19
From: Overmountain Shelter

To: Mountaineer Falls Shelter
Miles today: 18.1
Weather: overcast clouds

This morning Tortoise and Hare left at 5:00am to make sure they got a spot at the hiker hostel but Big Sky, Slim and I woke up 6:00am, we wanted to get an early start because we wanted to do 18 miles and plus we had to resupply in town so we needed as much time as we could get. We were on the trail at 7:15am and headed off into the fog. We had to climb up two mountains and each one had big balds but the fog was so thick we could not see more than 20 feet in front of us.  As we were hiking, these huge bolders would slowly appear out of the fog and it was really cool but wish we could have seen the views from the balds. The fog was also playing tricks on us, we thought we were on the top of the mountain a few times but at the top of each bench another climb would appear out of the fog.We finally got to the top of the second bald which is called Hump Mountain and we started down the long downhill to the road that we need to take into Roan Mountain Tn to resupply. Half way down, we finally crossed over from North Carolina into Tennessee... one last time and we are finally done with NC, two states down and only 12 to go! We were near the bottom and we ran into a day hiker so we stopped to talk for a while andlearned that he had thru hiked in 2002 and his trail name is Bucky. We asked him if he was headding into town after his hike and he said he was so we asked him if he could take the three of us into town to resupply and he said he could take us. We thanked him and decided to meet up at the parking lot. Once we got there and looked at the guide book to see how many days of food we needed to get to get us to Damascus Va. Bucky showed up right behind us and we all pilled into his GMC Jimmy and headed to the General Dollar Store. I picked up my last mail drop in Erwin Tn so this was my first time I needed to resupply on the trail so this was all new to me. Over the last few weeks I was watching what other people were buying so I had a general idea of what to get and I ended up getting exactly enough food that I needed...I hear that when buying food your hiker appettite kicks in and it is very easy to buy way too much food. Bucky then dropped us off at the hiker hostel and we all thanked him and took some pictures and he went on his way....thanks Bucky you made my first resupply very easy, hope they are all that easy. We found Tortoise and Hare and they had gotten a spot in the hostel but we decided to keep going to the next shelter so we are going to try and meet up in Damascus. We walked up the road back to the trail and once again started heading north. The trail went back up 800 feet and just my luck the trail followed a pipe line up the mountain and the sun was beating down on us with no where to hide from it. I ran out of water half way up and I had to really slow down so I did not over excert myself and I was not a happy hiker at the time. I finally meet up with Big Sky and Slim at the top and I saw in the guide book that there was a church three tenths of a mile up the trail that we could get water at so we pressed on. Once we got there we found an empty parking lot and that no one was inside but we found a faucet outside and we filled up our bottles there. I quickly chugged down one quart and filled it up again. The trail got a good bit easier after the climb so we made really good time for the next five miles and arrived at the Mountaineer Falls Shelter at around 5:15pm and we found that the shelter had two full levels and up in the rafters was a loft that could hold three people so the tree of us took the loft. After climbing up the two laders we found that we were not going to be alone up in the loft. Somehow someone had put a three or so foot tall bear that was carved out of a huge piece of log. We got a kick out of the fact that Big Sky is scared of bears and now she is sleeping with one tonight. Its now 8:30pm and there are still a few hikers showing up so the shelter is getting full and its now time for bed...good night all.