Date: 2013-04-11
From: Derrick's Knob Shelter

To: Double Spring Gap Shelter
Miles today: 7.2
Weather: overcast clouds

I slept fantastically. I had planned to stay put today. I wanted to give my ankle a rest. But as people started moving and packing, I reconsidered. I hobbled out to the peeing/pooing field, and the ankle felt okay. Hmmm... I moved about the campsite a bit more and decided to go for it. There were two shelter sites within striking distance. The weather forecast said that bad weather was heading our away and should hitting in the early to mid afternoon. Thunder, lightning, rain, hail. I wanted no part of any of those, but I also felt the need to keep moving through the Park. I had hoped to make it to a shelter and hope that I wouldn't get booted out since I wasn't sure if my tent/tarp could hold up to really bad weather.I put on my rain gear and pack cover. The wind had really picked up and the temperature had dropped. The terrain was really pretty. I passed through thick, dark hemlocks. The path followed what seemed little more than a knife's edge with wide sweeping vistas to the east and west. I was near the first shelter and I came across a ridge-runner, a super nice guy with a friendly smile. He encouraged me on to the following shelter, so I pushed on.When I got there, there was already several hikers holed up. It was still before noon, but they ridge-runner had spooked them (with the hairy weather-forecast) into staying put. I met Clown Car (a celebrity of sorts- he's the young US GI in the giant photo billboard at Check Point Charlie in Berlin. Except now he's older and has a lot more curly red hair.), Chris And Robert (the three of them are part of the Warrior Hike). Really nice guys. The company of everyone present was great. We had a great intelligent conversation that didn't involve gear or the hike. It was a breath of fresh air. The storm never seemed to come. I stripped down to shorts and a T-shirt and slathered myself in 70 SPF sunscreen. I put on my sunglasses and cap and laid out in the grass and watched the clouds blow by.At hiker midnight (around 7:30 pm) everyone crawled in their sleeping bags, some grubbling about the wasted day. At 9 p.m. the wind had picked up even more and was really howling. We heard some voices outside, and suddenly four hikers burst through the wind block, into the shelter. It was four section hikers with reservations. That meant three of us were booted. Even though I had been there since 11:30 a.m., I was one of the last to arrive. I got up and stared packing my stuff to move outside. Another hiker, Banyan, a real class act sort of guy had been one of first to arrive, but he offered to tent anyway. He said that he had a two-person tent, and I could sleep in it with him since mine offered so little protection. With minutes before all hell broke loose, we crawled in his tent. When the storm hit, it hit! The walls shook as rain and wind blasted the sides. There was thunder and lightning. We were both producing a decent amount of gas from all the camp food. I imagined that if the inital lightning strike didn't kill us, then the subsequent methane explosion would probably do the trick. When the rain finally ceased at 5:30 a.m., we'd had over an inch. The inside of the tent was miraculously dry, but the shelter floor was soaked.