Date: 2003-03-13
From: campsite about 2 miles north of siler bald shelter

To: cold spring shelter
Miles today: 10.6
Weather: overcast clouds

day 12camped out with the fellas. woke up to a light drizzle that got a tad bit heavier as we were packing up. headed out and man was i feeling my pack. even though i managed to give and get rid of some food, i still felt the burden.the day was pretty uneventful. we got to a small road a mile or so short of cold spring shelter. there we decided to have lunch and i cooked lunch for my self and brendan. i wanted to get rid of some more food and brendan was only packing snacks. that's how he got his trailname "sugar daddy." dean had something else on his menu so he didn't partake.i cooked us up a big pot of pasta and olive oil. way too much olive oil. after we had eaten the pasta, there was a 1/2 cup of olive oil at the bottom of my pot and brendan decided to gulp it down. disgusting! he reasoned he needed the calories. dean and i reasoned that that was pretty nasty. we packed up and i left yet some more pasta and a couple of other foods on a rock by the road. there was a car there so i figured either they or some hikers would pick it up. it turned out to be some hikers.we got to the shelter shortly after and took a break. that break turned into dean and myself deciding that we were gonna stay. brendan wanted to push on, but stayed with us anyways. we got settled in and i cooked us all some dinner. this time we had some mac and cheese and dean also added some of his cuisine to the buffet.shortly after a couple of other hikers showed up. one of their names was "repeat." repeat had hiked the trail last year. we started shooting it with them and they told us about how they'd just found some peanut butter and jelly, as well as some pasta. they had left the pasta, but had eaten the peanut butter and jelly on their way up to the shelter. we started laughing and i explained how that had been me who had left the food. they were grateful and so was i.not too much longer passed and "lumberjack" showed up. i had met lumberjack back at blue mountain shelter and we'd just seen him yesterday at siler bald shelter. lumberjack got his trailname by starting the trail with not 1, but 2 hatchets. for what reason, who knows. maybe he'd seen a photo of earl shaeffer with his hatchet. lumberjack was a good guy though, and he soon told us about how he'd found a couple bags of pasta down by the road. we started cracking up again, this time with repeat and his buddy included. i again explained that that food was my doing.we all shot it for a bit. repeat and his buddy decided to move on, but lumberjack stayed. i hung up our food bags and this time tied my poncho around them. they had gotten wet with this morning's drizzle and it looked like it might rain tonight as well. that taken care of, i went back to the shelter, read for a bit, and crashed.oh, i almost forgot. today, at the spring in front of this shelter i had my first helping of untreated water, and it was all brendan's doing. he apparently hadn't filtered on a few occasions already, but this was the first time that i had noticed it. he gave me his reasons, including how the trail didn't go above the spring, so nobody actually walked above where the spring was located and also how polls indicated that just as many people who treated there water got giardia than those who didn't. these are for the most part common knowledge on the trail, but just seeing brendan dipping his cup into the spring and drinking right away kind of hit it home for me. i still treated steadily after that until my aquamira ran out somewhere in early virginia, but even then there were a few occasions in between that i didn't.