Date: 2016-04-13
From: Grassy Meadow (after Moreland Gap Shelter)

To: Watauga Lake Shelter
Miles today: 14.7
Weather: clear sky

The only important part of this day, which continued well into tomorrow, ended up being the bears. Up until this point, hanging bear bags had kind of been a joke and just became a good habit of mine that I decided to keep up with. Plenty of people had already given up this task since it could be a little bit of a hassle finding an appropriate tree and getting a rope hung. At the Watauga Lake Shelter there was a bear pole so everyone complied with hanging their food and garbage at the top of this; especially since it was well-known that this shelter had been closed for the previous 3 years due to bear issues. At this point, it is worth noting that the hike around the lake was absolute disgusting and a disgrace to the the Appalachian Trail. Most of the trail is lakeside, under an embankment from a major road where people seemingly throw anything and everything from their car onto the road and into the woods. On top of that, the designated campsites were no more than landfills at this point either. Typically, I pick up garbage that I see on the trail, but this was a lost cause. With hundreds of food wrappers and beverage containers at each campsite, it would take a weekend with dozens of volunteers to begin turning it around.A little discouraged with the surrounding area, I was actually impressed by the cleanliness of the shelter and the presence of a bear pole. Didn't help. Dusk rolled in and by then we had a crowd of about 10 people. The shelter was full and 4 of us had tents pitched. Hanging out by the fire, people are doing a variety of night time chores, and some of the late-comers are finishing up their dinner. A father and son that are hiking together call their wife/mom and take turns talking to her. After the son was finished recapping the day, he passed the phone over to his dad and went to hang his food bag and spend a few more minutes socializing by the fire. Just a few moments later, we hear the dad in the yelling in the distance so a few of us that were still awake (yes, many people are actually asleep by 8pm every night) ran down to where he was to see what was going on. We saw a shredded tent and quickly put 2 and 2 together. A bear. What we thought was unintelligible yelling was actually "Holy s***! There's a bear in Alex's tent!", which is exactly what every mother wants to hear before her husband hangs up the phone. Luckily, Alex wasn't in the tent, but it wasn't an ideal situation losing $500 of various important gear in the middle of the woods. After helping him pack up and carry his stuff to the shelter, I decided to double and triple check my tent for any hidden food wrappers or any scented items. Sometimes I forget to put the toothpaste and toothbrush in my bear bag, but thankfully tonight I had remembered. As I am doing this, I hear the father yell in desperation once more, this time with anger instead of fear. The bear had snuck around the shelter after ravaging through the first tent, and started exploring the next furthest tent from the fire/shelter area. Another ripped tent, sleeping bag and sleeping pad, with copious amounts of bear slobber on everything else. Long story short, I'm pretty confident this father/son combo lost about $1100 worth of gear in a few short minutes. It is also important to note that neither of them had food or garbage inside their tent. It's a scary thought that these bears might just associate all tents with food now.Anyways, at this point, I was more concerned about losing my gear next, since I was now the most removed person from the shelter, so I broke down my tent and planned on cowboy camping right next to the fire. As I'm laying my stuff out around the fire, I remembered about my pal Teatime. He had gone into his tent about an hour before all the commotion saying he was going to listen to an audiobook and go to bed after a tiring day. I went over to his tent, shook it and said "Yo Teatime, you awake?" After getting a little bit of a groggy response, I explained what had happened and the previously unaware camper had his tent packed away in a matter of minutes and joined the rest of us around the fire. With limited amount of room directly around the fire, of course I ended up being the furthest one away. AKA bear bait. We decided to take turns keeping the fire stoked and keeping an eye out just in case the bear got adventurous again. By 1 a.m. my adrenaline had started to fade and my eyes finally began to droop. Not long after, a loud rattling noise, a scream and a lot of rustling in the trees occurs. I hear "Bear on the pole!" as I'm sitting up to see what is going on. I saw a bear on its hind legs, with its front legs stretched out long and high shaking the bear pole with all of its might. It only took a few pushes for one bag to fly off the pole and the bear to run off with it. This chaos was followed by noises that were (in any other situation) laughably similar to Chewbacca's in Star Wars and clear fighting amongst multiple bears for the food.Needless to say, I think I slept for a grand total of 15 minutes and was out of camp at the crack of dawn.Rough night.P.s - Bears are smart.