Date: 2005-03-27
From: Standing Bear Farm Hostel

To: Campsite
Miles today: 14.6
Weather: overcast clouds

*** Your Title Here ***The Shelter That Wasn'tHappy to leave the Standing Bear weirdness, the climb up Snowbird was welcome.  At first.  Despite threatening sky, the rain held off all morning.  The wind, however, was howling and blowing like someone had stolen it's lollipop.  By the time we summited Snowbird the wind was blowing sideways and it took real force not to let it push us over.  The whole summit of Snowbird had been clear cut, leaving only the giant space ship-like FAA broadcast beacon.  We didn't linger, and instead took a break about 1/2 mile further past the summit out of the wind.We originally planned to camp right before Max Patch which would have made for a respectable 12.9 mile day,  I guess Gravity and I had a miscommunication regarding where we were going to camp for the night though, and around 3pm the sky was really looking threatening.  There is a new Roaring Fork Shelter about 2 mi past Max Patch labeled in the book as "under construction."  We'd heard that the shelter had been built already.  I didn't know if I could make a 15 mile day just yet.  Plus there were a few smokers that were going to be there. The cig smoke has been triggering my asthma and giving me a severe allergic reaction.  Not interested in subjecting the quality of my trail experience to that.  So, I really wanted to stay away from the shelter and that group. Gravity, however, not realizing all this was quite averse to a night in the rain tenting.  It took a bit of discussion to clarify and work all this out.  We'd decided to camp right before Max Patch as originally discussed. When we go there we discovered that there were no decent camp sites.  We decided to move on to the campsite on the other side of Max Patch.  So up, up, up into the mist and wind we went.  In good weather Max Patch is a beautiful huge, grassy bald worthy of a long "shoes off" break.  This day, however, was not one of those shoes off days.  We made our way in the pea soup fog over the mountain, managing astoundingly, not to get lost.  As we came down the other side we arrived at what we thought was the camp site.  Though level, it was a giant mud pit.  No thanks.  The shelter was only supposed to be .5 mi away at this point, and rain was imminent.  So, we decided to go on.  After about 15 minutes, the time it usually takes us to go .5 mi, we reached a lovely campsite.  Having realized that this in fact was the site noted in the book, we decided to push on to the shelter.  I mean, first another 1/2 mi, silly not to right?  About 1/2 hour later, we came upon several people standing around in the middle of the trail looking rather confused. We were confused too having expected a shelter there. We looked to the right.  There was a privy and a pile of logs.  No shelter.  After all that "discussion", pushing on at least 3 more miles than planned, no decent tent sites, rain beginning to fall, and then no shelter.  Isn't irony a ##*$#)(!!  We all set up in the middle of the trail.The storm that came was violent with a torrential downpour that lasted off and on the whole night.  We stayed dry.  We felt badly that others did not.  At least there wasn't any cigarette smoke.Danger