Date: 2005-04-02
From: Stover Creek Shelter

To: Gooch Gap Shelter
Miles today: 12.2
Weather: light rain

It was a long, long day. I went to bed last night at 7 o'clock. We had talked and it didn't look like there was going to be anymore rain, so I left the fly up the tent; it's not supposed to drip in, even with the fly open on the Hubba. I went to bed at 7 with my headphones on and turned on an audio book really loud, basically went to sleep right away. I woke up later in the evening because I was feeling splashes on my face. It had rained like hell during the night but I never heard it because of the headphones . Unfortunately I pitched my tent in a depression and here was 2 inches of water in my tent! The reason I woke up was because the water had gotten so deep outside that the rain that was splashing in the puddle and into the tent. Long before any of it hit my face, it had soaked the sleeping bag. Water had seeped in through the tent floor as well. I spent the rest of the night trying to curl up in the sleeping bag to prevent it from touching the tent floor.   Unfortunatley, I have a down bag and once down gets wet it gets pretty cold and is pretty hard to dry out. We got up at about 6:00 am and it looked like it was going to be clear again. We decided that we were going to sit around and try to dry everything out, take our time getting out of there... I wasn't the only one that got wet. The temperature had dropped rapidly. It was probably about 55-60 degrees when we went to bed last night and by morning it was 35. Between that rapid temperature drop and the rain, the humidity had just sky-rocketed. The inside of everyones's tents had condensation on them from breathing and sweating and the rain knocked the condensation down on the person inside. Eddie, Rob and I decided to take our time getting out and didn't start hiking until 8:50 . It started sleeting a little bit at first and then harder and harder! Then the sleet turned to snow. Sometimes it was snowing so hard and fast that the world around us whited-out. The only exception was the 16 inch wide sloppy strip of mud that was the trail we were splashing through. We stopped at about 11:30 at Hawk Mountain Shelter to eat and I got hypothermic immediately; I was soaked and the second I stopped moving I was chilled. I got my down jacket out, slapped it on, and got into the back of the shelter to try and warm up. We hiked on to Gooch Gap Shelter, which is where we are tonight. The place is packed! Everybody is hiding from the snow and the wind and the rain. The weather forecast for tonight calls for temps around 20 degrees. I had a pretty rough time when I got here trying to get warm as well. As long as I was moving I was okay so I put everything on I had... still couldn't really get warm sitting still. I'm in my tent now, it's 7 o'clock. I'm in my sleeping bag which is still damp but I made up a hot water bottle with my platypus. I've got it in here with my jacket on top of me inside the sleeping bad and I'm fairly comfortable. A lot of new people here. As always, very interesting at the beginning of the trail. Some people you know for sure just aren't going to make it for the next day or two. True to form, there were several of those here. One was a couple we met today hiking with a dog. We passed them at a road crossing saying that they were going into town but it didn't look like they were going to be making it back on the trail. Their dog was incredibly miserable and curled up into a blanket, and they were looking just as stunned. Interesting variety of people... this is my 3rd year doing the approach trail to Neel's gap at the beginning of april and it is a spectacle. At Gooch Gap Shelter there are 12 people inside the shelter, more than it's supposed to hold. Around the shelter there are tents everywhere, at least 20. And people just keep hiking in. I didn't find out until this morning, a Boy Scout Troop hiked into Stover Creek Shelter last night. We had pitched tents, so we didnt hear them come in. When Eddie got up to cook he said there were 6 huge tents there that had been set up during the night, and Boy Scouts all over the place. They were not at all prepared, I was kind of in amazement at these troop leaders. They were 'good ole boys' and had taken their boys scouts out completely unequipped. Here it was 35 degrees in the morning and they did NOT have jackets and were asking thru-hikers to give them theirs. Then they started a campfire that smoked everyone out of the shelter and threw all of their plastic, tinfoil, all of their garbage in it. VERY uncool!! And yet they were planning on hiking on. I wonder what happened to them. I can't imagine them having hiked through the kind of weather we had today, which was essentially blizzard conditions all day long, 50 MPH winds at some places. Rob, Eddie and I were fully equipped and geared up for this and we still had a rough time.When we got into Gooch gap tonight my stomach was screwed up. I made some food that I ended up throwing away so I haven't even eaten tonight. We start from scratch tomorrow. Another day done on the Appalachian Trail. That's the way it was on April 2, 2005.