Date: 2007-04-08
From: Greasy Creek Gap

To: Stan Murray Shelter
Miles today: 12.4
Weather: clear sky

My thermometer read 15 degrees inside the bunkhouse this morning so it was great to be able to wake up and just run across 20 yards of snow into the warmth of the house althoughmy wake up call was less than cordial. It came in the form of the neighbor across the street screaming something unintelligable and then firing up his riding lawn mower, then proceeding to drive it up and down his snow covered driveway for about ten minutes. This was at 5 AM. Confused, I went back to sleep only to have an identical experience at 6 AM. And again at 7. This time I got up and went inside where Connie, the proprietor explained that her neighbor is a bit disturbed and evidently hates hikers quite a bit, enough so that he will go outside and fire up his mower at 5 in the morning when it is 15 degrees out just to disturb the hikders staying at the hostel. He continued to follow his ritual on the hour till 9 in the morning. Rather humorous honestly. Grasshopper and I loitered at the hostel till almost noon by which time the temperature had almost reached freezing and we decided it was finally time to hike. After being flicked off by the friendly neighbor on our way out we crossed Roan Mt, which is the last mt. over 6000 ft till New Hampshire. The day was relatively pleasant except for the constant threat of having snow dumped on your head and down your back as we crossed through dense growths of snow laden evergreens. At the slightest touch these trees would disgorge huge amounts of snow upon the unfortunate person who brushed against them.    After Roan, we crossed another bald which, without the protection of trees or brush, had snow blown into drifts which became almost impassable at times. While crossing one of these drifts we were forced to crawl on all fours as you could kind of stay on top of a layer of ice crust near the top where as is you tried to walk you would sink up to your hips. While performing this manouver by camera fell out of its case on my hip belt which i did not discover till about a mile later. This was unfortunate to say the least as it was rapidly growing dark. Dropping my pack I ran back down the hill searching for my camera until I reached the spot where I had last taken a picture. Heartbroken and fearing the worst, I set off back to where I had left Grasshopper preparing myself to camp on the bald in the wind and cold so I could continue my search in the morning as every picture I had taken since Springer was on that memory card. Fortunately as I went back, taking shortcuts to avoid the worst of the drifts, I rejoined the trail and thank God found the camera. By the time I got back to Grasshopper, who had been doing push-ups to stay warm, and my pack there was only about 20 minutes of daylight left and over 5 miles to the next shelter. Rushing in the dark I managed to miss a turn of the trai and ended up hiking 6/10 of mile farther up the mountain before turning around as we had not seen a blaze for a long time. After going back and finding the turn it was absolutely dark and we were hiking by the light of headlamps. The trail was absolutely covered in drifts and snow so we were forced to try to navigate the trail by searching the woods for trees with blazes, which is not that easy when half the trees have snow on them. Fortunately we eventually came across a tree with a blue blaze, which we correctly assumed was the blue blazed trail to the shelter's water source. We followed the blazes backwards and found the sancutary of our three walled home for the night around 10pm. It's now 11 as I write and it is 18 degrees.