Date: 2003-03-24
To: Springer Mt.
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

(March 20)I am sharing the shelter tonight with fifteen other hikers. The lack of room in the shelter means I can¢t hammock in it, but, for the first time in months, have to sleep on its rough surface. Most of the people here started in Springer in the first days of March. Since then hundreds of hikers have started their thruhike, and the number only grows, so chances are I will encounter packed shelters all the way to Springer. Still, it could have been worse. It is now spring break at colleges so normally the shelters would have been filled up not only by aching thruhikers, but also by drunken college students, who, so I heard, come to the Smokies to party. But the bad weather has deterred all but the most stubborn spring breakers from coming here. The weather was indeed lousy the last few days. I haven¢t seen the sun for three days, since I entered the Smokies, and have been hiking in continuous fog, seeing none of the views the park is famous for and which draw more than 9 million visitors here every year. Add to that an occasional rain shower, an almost continuous drizzle, and strong wind gusts. And if that dreadful weather condition is not enough there¢s the fact that many sections of the trail are so eroded that the rain water drains into it, making you feel as if you¢re hiking inside a stream and covering your shoes and pants with thick mud.So you can probably understand why almost every one of the dozens of hikers I¢ve met in the last days, seems completely and utterly depressed. They arrive at a shelter, sit down, and just gaze miserably at the fog outside, while their damp clothes and shoes steam in the humid air like a boiling kettle.And I¢m not much better. My solar-charged mental batteries seem to have completely run out, and with the weather forecast saying I probably won¢t see the sun for at least two more days, I am quite demoralized even with the knowledge that I should reach Springer in less than two weeks. Yet, I know the weather could have been much worse. When I passed Clingmans Dome today (at 6600 feet it is the highest place on the A.T.) the winds were relatively moderate. And the strong rain and lightning storms that hit yesterday caught me in a protected shelter. And even the fog isn¢t that thick, with visibility more than 50 yards at places. And most important of all, it is surprisingly and uncommonly warm for the season, even at this elevation, so hypothermia is no longer a danger.(Morning of March 22)I¢ll start from the end. I am now in the Fontana Hilton, writing this while looking at the sunrise above the beautiful Fontana Lake just outside of the Smokies. Yesterday night I slept at the Fontana Hilton, had a good meal, a great warm shower, and all for free.It is all thanks to the improved weather-- to my great surprise and delight, the sun was shining outside the shelter yesterday morning. The sun quickly disappeared when I climbed up a cloud covered mountain, and the trail was wet and foggy again in the manner that become so depressingly familiar to me in the last few days. "Business as usual" I thought "but at least I¢ve had a chance to see the sun for half an hour today". Originally that morning I was considering hiking all the way to Fontana Dam, more than 20 miles away, taking advantage of the good weather. But this demoralizing fog I now encountered made me decide to change my plans, and hike to Fontana in two days.Luckily, my plans were about to change again, for when I finally climbed down the mountain and got out of the fog, I could see a rare good view of the terrain ahead of me. I noticed that none of the mountains I was about to cross that day was high enough to reach the cloud layer, and therefor I knew that I was done with fog for that day. So, undemoralized, I decided I would try to hike as far and as fast as possible, with the slight hope of reaching Fontana Dam before sunset. I had a strong motivation to do so.The Fontana Dam shelter, which is probably the most famous shelter on the trail, is nicknamed the Fontana Hilton, and for a good reason. It¢s not only its clean, roomy design, not only the amazing views of Fontana Lake and the Smokies it has, but mainly its because of the nearby Fontana Dam visitor center that has the most precise commodity on the trail - free hot showers. There are less than a handful of free hot showers on the trail, and none of them even compares to these powerful showers which are opened year round and are warmed up by the electricity created by the nearby Fontana Dam which is the highest in the eastern United States. This dam was the focus of my concern in the last few days. From northbounders I¢ve learned that due to the security situation they were about to close the dam to hikers, and had already marked a blueblazed 1.5 mile bypass around it. Missing this impressive dam and having to do 1.5 extra miles was something I was hoping I could avoid, but my biggest concern was that in such a case they¢d close the visitor center and, alas, those legendary showers too. The last report I heard yesterday was that although they have blocked and barricaded the dam for car travel, hikers were still allowed to cross it - for now...but no one knew for sure how long that will go on. So I decided to push on and try to cross the dam before darkness. I hiked as fast as I could, motivated by only one repetitive thought I repeated to myself like a mantra - "hot shower, hot shower, hot shower". With such a strong motivation I was able to hike faster than I ever did, and the miles seemed just to fly by. By 3:30 in the afternoon when l was less then 4 miles from the dam, which would have given me ample time to take a much needed shower and reach the Hilton before sunset, I suddenly saw a firetower, which potentially would have promised great views. I wasn¢t too optimistic. The two firetowers I¢ve passed by in the last 1000 miles were both locked and barricaded with rolls of heavy barbed wire. With today¢s mentality of everyone suing everyone for everything, no one dares to leave the few surviving firetowers - that weren¢t replaced by communication towers - open for the suing public. I had no reason to think that this tower would be different, but as I had the time I decided to give it a chance, and hiked up the short unmarked side trail to it. To my great surprise it was unblocked and unlocked. "Sure," I thought with typical cynicism while enjoying the great views of Fontana Lake from its top, "they must have taken all the barricades, all the barbed wire and all the 'halt, do not go on' signs to the dam to help guard it against terrorist threats". But when, an hour later, I finally reached Fontana Dam, I found that those immense concrete barricades I¢d imagined turned out to be two orange cones and a stop sign, and they were blocking only one side of the dam. I can almost imagine Muhammad (a stereotypical name for an Arab terrorist) thinking: "I was thinking of blowing up my explosives-laden truck on the dam but now that I saw these two small orange cones blocking my way, I will never think about just driving past them, but rather I will go back home, buy an S.U.V. and become a taxpaying patriotic American".For me, as a native of terror-stricken Israel, it seems ludicrous that although the U.S. is the most powerful country in the world, the only thing that stands between a possible terrorist attack and the flooding of the Tennessee valley are two orange cones (and a stop sign!). If you decided to block the dam, do it properly, with heavy concrete slabs, or don¢t bother doing it at all.Oh, and the showers in Fontana Dam were even better than I imagined, and I even washed my mud-covered clothes and shoes. But as I have to go on now, I will write about that and the trail magic left in the shelter some other time.Roni