Date: 2015-04-25
From: Spring Mountain Shelter

To: Jerry Mountain Cabin
Miles today: 15.4

Up early I had my morning cup of coffee. I had bought some cream of wheat to try something different and had some bacon flavored and added real bacon to it along with my olive oil. It worked and was different enough that between the variety of flavors of the oatmeal, grits and the cream of wheat to provided a good variety for breakfast meals. It was a drizzly day but it cleared up and was better later on during the day as I hiked towards the Jerry Cabin Shelter. I saw more signs on trees that were being engulfed by the trees which is a very strange sight. The bark seems to flow over the metal and seeks to engulf the foreign object like a pearl turns sand to pearls. I heard a rustle in the brush along side the trail and saw a chipmunk staring at me so I took a picture and it was nice enough to pose. When the picture was taken it quickly disapeared into its hole. I briefly saw a coyote as I came around a corner where the trail was about 18" wide with a 100' drop off to the left. It was by the next turn on the trail, and it stopped and looked at me before disappearing around the next bend in the trail. This made me very nervous and I pulled out my small can of personal mace and put my music on my speakers instead of headphones. I imagined a pack of hungry coyotes waiting in the woods up ahead, laying in wait to ambush me! It was awhile before I realized that it had only been one coyote and it had been as startled by me as I had been of it. Soon before the shelter I saw 300 in a sign made of sticks in the trail made by hikers showing the 300 mile marker! In the big scheme of things 300 out of 2,200 miles isn't much, but you have to concentrate on, and celebrate the little things as they eventually will lead to the bigger things. I bypassed the firetower as I heard that it was closed. I took the side trail to the Whiterock Cliffs and met Coed eating lunch there and we talked as I took a quick snack break. Then was the challenging, but beautiful Firescald mountain with its rugged climbs and ridge walk. The views from the ridgewalk are some of the best on the trail. Later on I noticed that the trail had been moved off of the old roadbed that we had followed in '13 and through brand new trail along the way. It wasn't even blazed yet, there were only sticks and ribbons marking the path. Arriving at the shelter I saw Old Eagle Scout and two of his fellow hikers getting ready to hit the trail. I picked a spot in the shelter and got my sleeping system set up. I then went for water and cleaned up. Coed had arrived during my absence and we put together a good amount of fire wood for a fire and also put some under the platform as trail-magic for later hikers. We soon had a good fire going in the fireplace and other hikers arrived and set up in the shelter including Ghost. We heard it was going to get cold and then start raining at around 5:00 in the morning so we got ready for cold weather and banked the fire in the fireplace for the night. Coed and I talked about Firescald and it's views which were pretty impressive and about our experiences on the trail so far before turning in for the night.