Date: 2012-08-02
From: Trapper John Shelter

To: Hexacuba Shelter
Miles today: 12.0
Weather: scattered clouds

This morning we decided to sleep in some and did not get going till 9:20am. Hill Hiker left about half an hour before us and we planned on meeting back up on top of Smarts Mountain for lunch. Today we are only doing 12 miles but we have to climb up Smarts Mountain which has two 1000 plus climbs to get up it then back down the other side another 1000 plus feet.From the shelter the trail went downhill 500 feet or so down to a road into a field. Half way through the field there was a sign at a side trail that said Ice Cream Man. We had heard of him from a few sobo's¢¦he gives hikers free ice cream and water. We were not going to pass this up and we went down the side trail to his house. When we got there we knocked on the door and he came out with two ice cream bars. We sat on his porch and talked for a while and he said that we missed Hill Hiker by five minutes, thanks for the ice cream.We continued on for another two miles then got to another road that was at the base of Smarts Mountain. We took a snack break there and filled up our water bottles before we started up the first climb. The trail went up very steeply; there were very few switch backs and all the rocks were sweating from the high humidity and heat today so they were all slippery. Near the top of the first climb it got very rocky and there were a lot of long slippery rock slabs that we had to go up. We got to the top and took a break on a rocky spot; we could see the next climb and the fire tower on top of the mountain.We continued on up the trail which went down a little and then leveled out before it started up the second climb. Once we got to the bottom of the second climb, we saw that is was even steeper than the last one and the trail went straight up it. We slowly made our way up the slippery rock slabs and got to a point where there were rebar steps in the rocks almost like a ladder that we had to climb. We went up and up and up and we were both getting very tired from the climb and the heat. We finally got to the top and made it to the fire tower. We finally caught up with Hill Hiker; he said that he was only there for five minutes or so.We stayed there for a while, I climbed the tower then we went to the shelter to look for water. While we were at the shelter Just John caught up to us, he stayed at the shelter before ours last night. We could not find the water so we decided to head down the other side of Smarts Mountain to a stream 3.8 miles away. The trail was not nearly as steep as the other side and we got to the stream in no time. We filled our water bottles and took a break there because we had one more 600 foot climb to get to the shelter in 1.4 miles. We continued on another mile to the next stream and decided to carry water to the shelter from there because the water source at that shelter is unreliable. I filled up both our dirty water bags and started up the last little bit of the climb. We got to the shelter which turned out to be .3 miles uphill so my arms were tired from carrying two gallons of water. The shelter was on the side of the mountain with no good tent sites so we all spread out in the hexagon shaped shelter. We filtered the water, ate supper then called it a night...night all.