Date: 2009-03-26
From: Wayah Shelter

To: Wesser Bald Shelter
Miles today: 10.6
Weather: light intensity drizzle

Cell Good uphill from shelterOG notes: We hiked all day in the rain. The intensity varied, but the day was miserable none the less. We are looking at rain the next 4 or 5 days, wahoo. Hopefully we'll have good weather when we hit the Smokies. Incidentally I'll be calling the Great Smokey Mountain National Park as GSMNP when I type.We did not have any views today as everything was fogged in. C6 asked me what it was like in 2006 when I hiked this section. I remember it as colder and a lot clearer (the view from Wesser Bald Tower). You can see the mountains in the GSMNP and part of Fontana Lake. As I said, we didn't see a thing today.The shelter we stayed at last night was about .25 mile from the stealth site I stayed at in 2006. We hit the trail this morning and almost immediatly went by the site. If that shelter was there last time we probably would have stayed there.We had an interesting thing happen this morning. I asked C6 to get my pack that was hanging on the back wall of the shelter. When she picked it up she saw a mouse come out. I grabbed it from her and a whole family of mice came out. There were 2 big mice and 4 little ones, maybe more. There was also shredded toilet paper for beddng, what a mess. I was fortunate that they didn't chew into anything, they just made themselves a home. A fellow hiker named Braid named my pack Motel 6 for the six mice.We were the first ones to get here to the shelter, so we set up our sleeping bags in the corner. We now have a full house and someone will have to set up their tent. The people we meet are all nice and we enjoy talking until bed time, somewhere around 7 or 8 pm. We end up in our sleeping bags 11 or 12 hours a day right now. I'm sitting up in my bag typing this journal. I have my down jacket on to keep my upper body warm and the sleeping bag is taking care of the legs. This will not always be the case once the days warm up. We'll be hiking longer and staying up later.C6 notesWhat a night! It poured real hard for most of the night. (It drowned out the snoring, though!) At 3:10am we heard a tree fall. It sounded like a large tree, and I am thankful it didn't fall on the shelter. None of us could see what looked like a freshly fallen tree at all this morning, however.About an hour or so later, I felt a mouse step on my face. I jumped and brushed it away. I worried about it getting into my sleeping bag, so I closed myself up in my bag, and then got too hot. This morning we had a lot of talking about the mice, because others felt them, too. One of the "joys" of sleeping in the shelter. I'm writing this before OG writes his entry, so I'll let him tell the rest of the mouse story. It's funny!! (He has typed in his entry now...the funny story is the one about his "Motel 6" backpack.)Hiking today wasn't too bad except for how wet everything is. It's dangerous hiking in so much mud because it's easy to slip. When we got to the shelter this afternoon, we discovered things inside our packs wet because we were in pouring rain for most of the morning. Luckily, the most important things (down sleeping bags especially) are either in waterproof stuff sacks, or in zip lock bags. We have our wet stuff hanging right now because no one else has arrived at the shelter just yet. We'll condense our stuff to a smaller area as soon as others arrive.Old Goat & Check Six