Date: 2013-04-13
From: Hikerhostel

To: Hawk Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 10.0
Weather: scattered clouds

Today we ate breakfast at the Hiker Hostel where we spent the night. We ate a big breakfast and began putting our packs together to get ready for our epic adventure. Our friend Ben Condry who had given us a ride to the hostel was supposed to hike part or all of Georgia with us decided to pass and take a car tour of the east coast on up to the great lakes, a part of the country that he had always wanted to check out. We loaded up into a 15 passenger van with the likes of Wicca Witch, James Kirk (Turtle) and Kelly O'Brian who later I dubbed the trail name of "Mouse whisperer". We had a beautiful and exhilerating ride to the trail with breathtaking views and steep dropoffs on the side of the road. We arrived near the trailhead and unloaded with approximately 8 or 9 other hikers. We started up the trail to the summit and my first impression of the mountain was dazzling. Everywhere were rocks that had beautiful quartz and micca that shone brilliantly in the cool but sunny day. Even the sand sparkled and blazed with beauty. On the way up we passed Wicca Witch who was sick from having drank to much the night before. WW is an experienced A.T. hiker who is on his 3rd consecutive thru-hike and he loves his bonfires. He told us that this was his last thru-hike and that he was going to become a ridgerunner along a local section of trail in PA. We have taken many pictures which can be found by friending us on David Alan Lane on facebook or our videos which can be found on youtube under Crazydave 0866 . Please subscribe & leave feedback. It is hard to upload pictures and videos to this site with my android so I will post pics and vids at those locations and update my journals when I can. We stopped at the Stover Creek Shelter for lunch and we encountered our first mouldering privy which was an interresting form of outhouse. We were tempted to stop at a campsite alongside the trail when I looked on Maprika and saw that the shelter was very close so we pressed on and made it to the shelter with some daylight to spare. We found Wicca Witch, Turtle (James Kirk)and Kelly O'Brian along with a number of other hikers at the shelter and who were camping in tents. I went to the stream and filtered some water and tried to cook some food in our jetboil system but the stove didn't work. I later found that you have to keep the propane/butane canisters warm for them to work so we ate snack food and visited before bed. Kelly O'Brian informed us that he hated and didn't want to be around mice and was worried about sleeping in the shelter. I joked with him that the shelter mice were friendly and just wanted to snuggle. I said that he could wake up and find several snuggled up around his neck to keep him warm. Well... he woke up and found a mouse sleeping under his neck and he jumped up and started pounding the floor of the loft of the shelter before laying back down again. Later a mouse crawled into his sleeping bag and he felt several walk over him. That was enough for him so he grabbed his sleeping bag and fell asleep on top of the picnick table. We did manage to get some sleep amongst the pounding and his alarmed statements.