Date: 2012-05-27
From: Russell Field Shelter

To: Day 12
Miles today: 16.4

Climbing day # 2. Nothing but climbing and avoiding horse shit today. Not really, I just had to start the day off with a 3,000' climb up Thunderhead Mountain that I was completely unprepared for. My town-pack is still a good 5-6 lbs heavier than I need it to be. I mean I saw the elevation profile in my guidebook but, now that I'm out here doing the leg-work, I wish I had planned to shed a bit more weight back in Fontana. There sure are a hell of a lot of weekend-warriors and horses out here too. Once I climbed back down to the ridge from the summit of Thunderhead the rest of the day was fairly tame. The AT just follows the tallest ridgeline in the Smokies for a while and rollercoasters up and down fairly mildly, kind of like in Georgia but at easily twice the elevation. I can see why this was a logical ridgeline to place the North Carolina/Tennessee state line on now.    After 16 sweaty miles, I was at the Double Spring Gap Shelter and calling it a day early again. Living up to it's namesake, this shelter has 2 springs, one on the NC side and one on the TN side. The spring on the NC side is much better because, like at most of the shelter in the Smokies, the 'bathroom area' is located on the other side of the ridge. So this 'bathroom area' is just that: a designated area to dig a cat-hole and do your business. They say that this is to preserve the "natural back-country feel" of hiking in the Smokies. Keep in mind that this is one of the busiest national parks in the country, so what this amounts to is a bunch of ignorant uninformed tourists hiking in here and shitting all over the place. Every single shelter has one of these disaster-zones that are just strewn with toilet paper, tampons, and un-buried human shit. Even if you're respectful enough to dig a cat-hole, you practically have to dig up other peoples'shit because these areas are entirely too small for the amount of traffic that the shelters get. So, on the rest of the Appalachian Trail, the maintainers have the wherewithal to construct high-capacity privies. And most of them are composting privies that never have to be re-located like classic hole-in-the-ground style ones. And many trail organizations are playing around with these experimental 'moldering' privies that use a dry slow-composting technique that can be done at low temps and requires a lot less maintenance than composting privies. But not here in the Smokies. They simply found all of the good mountain springs and were sure to place the 'bathroom areas' on the other side of the ridge. So that when it rains the excrement just gets washed downhill and (hopefully) doesn't contaminate the mountain's water table. Sigh, between the hiker shit and the horse shit, I'll definitely be treating all of my water with bleach before I drink it here. I had gotten too used to those ice-cold crystal-clear mountain springs back in GA.    This is the last shelter before Clingman's Dome so me and the boys decided to make a day of it. The highest point on the AT is exactly 4 miles from here and is sure to be packed with tourists tomorrow seeing as how it's the middle of Memorial Day Weekend and you can drive to within a 1/2 mile of the summit. So we decided to chill here and get to bed early, then wake up at 4:30 in the AM and night-hike up to the dome. There, we can sit in the observation tower and watch the sunrise and smoke weed and, for a fleeting moment, have Clingman's Dome all to ourselves. Wilderness, Mom, and Sis caught up to us today because they slept back at Mollies Ridge just 3 miles south of us last night. They all think that we're crazy and that there is no way we'll even be able to get up that early let alone night-hike up to the tallest point on the AT safely. I already ate dinner and I'm finishing up this journal and going right to bed. It's 8:00 and dusk hasn't even completely yielded to night yet. I've gotta prove these girls wrong....