Date: 2003-03-18
To: Springer Mt.
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

(Friday night - 14th of March) I am doing now something I haven't done for months - I'm camping outside the shelter in my hammock. When I reached this shelter after a nice 3-mile hike out of Hot Springs, I found the shelter was all but full and tents were pitched around it. I was actually able to hang my hammock in this small crowded shelter, but then I realized that the only way everyone else could enter or exit the shelter was by crawling on all fours on the ground beneath my hammock. These guys seemed willing to go through this torment, probably out of respect to the last southbounder. Then it occurred to me that pitching my hammock between these hikers and the nearest tree might turn out to be a strategic mistake when nature suddenly calls them out in the middle of the night. So I decided to push the boundary, go to the limit, and courageously went out of shelter and pitched my hammock in a place exposed to rain. The main problem with camping out is that long ago I ditched the original tarp that came with the hammock, and instead I've been carrying a silnylon waterproof poncho/tarp/backpack cover. At least it was waterproof 9 long months ago, when I bought it. Since then it was rained on, hailed on, snowed on and had numerous intimate encounters with branches. So now it's mostly waterproof, and I am mostly dry. I am actually much drier then I should be, as the strong winds and the endless rain showers, combined with the strange way I pitched my tarp on top of the hammock should have made it into a swimming pool. And yet, with the exception of an occasional drop falling on me, I am actually dry. And my previous decision to hammock outside the shelter is proving itself - even with the wind and the rain, because although I'm probably 20 yards from the shelter, I can still clearly hear the strong snoring of someone inside it. Those poor guys who are sleeping by this human chainsaw in the shelter must by now be suffering from punctured eardrums. As they say - life is full of surprises. The fact that I'm starting to quote Forrest Gump is a clear sign its time to go to sleep. (Sun Mar 16) Today was an interesting day. I crossed today Max Patch - a meadow covered mountain, which I've heard has great views of the Smokies. The sky was cloudy in the morning but the clouds were high enough - 4500 feet, so the visibility seemed to be reasonable. How do I know that the height of the clouds was 4500? I know that because when I reached Max Patch mountain I noticed that its summit - at 4500 feet, was covered with clouds, while the slopes, which were just a few dozen feet lower, were cloudless. Hiking into fog can be cool, when you do it for the first time... the problem with fog is that all you can say about it is that it's gray and humid. So if you've seen one fog, you've seen them all. And I've seen way more than one fog in the last months. There is a reason that Gene Kelly isn't famous for the song "I'm singing in the fog", or that one of the most popular Christmas carols isn't "let it fog, let it fog, let it fog". Fog is one of the most depressing weather phenomena mother nature was able to invent. So you can understand how disappointed I was when I realized that I won't see those great views I was promised. But luckily, only a few miles later, I climbed another meadow-covered mountain. This mountain was less impressive and lower - just low enough that it was below the cloud ceiling. I got a partial view of impressive mountains ahead of me. But only when I hiked on a couple more miles, while dropping more than 2000 feet did I realize how impressive they were. For just beyond the naked forest trees, I saw what looked like an impenetrable wall of mountains. The tips of this humongous mass of rock were shrouded by cloud, and I suddenly could understand what made the ancient Greeks believe the gods lived on the top of the Olympus. Yes, at last I reached the boundary of the great Smoky Mountains -. Roni