Date: 2017-11-07
From: Dicks Creek Gap

To: Tray Mountain shelter
Miles today: 12.0
Weather: light rain

Our cunning plan to do a big day yesterday to avoid hiking in the rain today did not quite go the way we wanted.For a start, any lingering benefit of the doubt we'd given Sir Packsalot was quickly dispelled this morning by a series of incidents. We resupplied from his store and found it was the most expensive store on the entire trail, which is quite something given that it's (a) in the South, which is way cheaper than New England, and (b) on a highway with a supermarket 15 minutes drive away. When energy bars cost more than the AMC huts, where the price factors in them being carried in on foot, it's safe to say there's a pretty healthy profit margin.But that was up to us, since we had the option of hitching into town if we thought prices were unreasonable. What really rankled was how much shade he was throwing at Mountain Crossings store at Neels Gap, our next resupply, claiming they really gouged hikers. The clear intention was trying to convince us to resupply for the final 70-odd miles here but his prices and his demeanour turned us against that even more than the concern about the extra weight. (And, since I'm writing this after finishing the trail, I can say that Mountain Crossings is much cheaper than Sir Packsalot's rip-off store!)We'd also told him the previous evening that we were aiming to leave sometime around midday to avoid the forecast early storms. He said checkout was 10am and asked us to bring our departure forward, which we did by agreement to 11am.We were fully packed from about 10am but as we waited until the time we'd agreed to be driven back to the trail, he told us we weren't allowed to sit on the couches in the lounge. Seriously? The final straw was when he told us at 10.58am that it was time to go. Most of us were in the minibus within two minutes but a couple of others were still putting their shoes on and got on a couple of minutes later -- literally a further two minutes -- by which time he'd wandered off in a huff and came back at 11.15am, having done nothing other than presumably make a point about timeliness to us tardy hikers. So why not just herd us together at 10.55am?All this meant we had quite a bitter taste in our mouths from our Top of Georgia hostel experience. The true irony was that for most of the morning, it was overcast but dry and just as we started hiking out of Dicks Creek Gap -- a time when the forecast said the weather was supposed to be clearing -- the skies began to darken and thunder reverberated around the hills.There was a shelter just under four miles from Deep Gap and the rain was starting to get heavy just as I got to the turnoff. Sriracha had left his buff on the shelter signpost -- our tramily sign to say we'd taken the side trail -- so I headed in on the 0.3 mile side trail. Sweetblood also detoured to the hut soon after and we sheltered inside as the rain began to come down in a deluge unlike any we'd seen so far. It lasted at this pace for an hour, which is how it rains in the mountains in New Zealand but not like the five-minute downpours I'd encountered so far on the AT. There was a lot of lightning going on too, which made me doubly glad to be in shelter and off the top of the ridge.The hut was one of the nicest so far, with a large mezzanine sleeping area and impressive mortice and tenon construction. I began to settle in, taking out my sleeping mat and sleeping bag and started reading someone's discarded 40-page fragment of To Kill a Mockingbird.Towards the end of this deluge, Packaged Meat arrived and soon the reverberation of thunder was replaced by profanities directed at Sir Packsalot. Meat had asked to stay until early afternoon and agreed to sit outside on the bench to allow the hostel workers to clean the interior. At midday, Sir Packsalot announced he had to leave, which meant he was going over the top of the knoll before Deep Gap at the height of the thunderstorm. Although I thought he was not taking full responsibility -- Sir Packsalot might have kicked him out, but Meat had chosen to hike on in the storm rather than wait in the rain at a lower elevation -- but it was further confirmation that Top of Georgia had gained the notoriety of the worst hostel on the entire trail. About an hour later as the rain ebbed to a light drizzle, Sriracha and Sweetblood announced they were aiming to hike on to Tray Mountain shelter, about eight miles further on. I'd settled in at that point and kept reading my book but after two more hours, the remains of the rain had been replaced with glimpses of blue sky so I packed up and headed on too. Meat opted to hike further as well. The rest of the day was a bit of a blur, pushing on along an undulating ridge in an attempt to reach the shelter before being overtaken by darkness. Wait, didn't I already vow to retire night hiking from my repertoire? Twice? Including yesterday??In truth this challenge made the next section fun when it might otherwise have been more of the long green (and now wet) tunnel. I hauled ass and made it just as the last light faded, announcing my arrival in the form of a question: "It's not night hiking if you don't use a headlamp, right?"Unlike Deep Gap shelter, this one was absolutely full to overflowing, with maybe half a dozen tents pitched nearby. Meat arrived soon after and because he'd sent home his tent a couple of towns back as a weightsaving measure, we had to squeeze up to make room. Hopefully he'll have learnt a lesson from this incident. Kids, don't do this!Soon we'd eaten and were enjoying the usual Team KRT pre-sleep banter, with the final part of the evening being using Sweetblood's phone to play a Harry Potter audiobook for all of us. There's a single section hiker in the shelter with us and he's impressed by the obvious cameraderie of a cohesive tramily.Life is good.AT fact of the day: Can I count night hiking as my "last time" thing again, for the third time? There's only one more hostel left in the next 60 miles to Springer and we're not aiming to stop there, so I'm pretty sure that we've had our last hostel stay. I'd like to think this was the last time hiking in the rain but the forecast for the next few days is terrible...