Date: 2018-04-26
From: Tri-Corner Shelter 

To: Cosby Knob Shelter 
Miles today: 7.7

What day is it? Oh, it¢s Rainday (again) and tomorrow is the day after Rainday (again). This has to stop, I mean it always has in the past! I¢ve been in the rain for four straight days and it¢s been raining for six. Even brushing my teeth makes me cold because I have to do it outside, in the rain and then finish packing and get ready to go or get in bed. The last thing I want you, the reader to think is that I¢m complaining. I¢m not, so I apologize if it¢s coming across that way. I want to paint you a picture of what all of us hikers put up with everyday in one way or another. So please bear with me...Our goal is to get to 2,190 miles north, to Mt. Katahdin in the Baxter State Park in Maine before it closes in mid-October due to potential winter weather. Many of these hikers are fast and should get there in plenty of time but many are fighting injuries of some sort that naturally slow one down. WE ALL face the trail, the elements and must protect ourselves AND the environment against ourselves and the environment. One of the most annoying and time consuming tasks for me is to find a tree that 20 others haven¢t already claimed, throw a rope over a branch 15¢ up and each night hang all food stuffs and ¢smellables¢ from that branch to protect both us and wildlife from an encounter. Several times already I¢ve forgotten about a protein bar in the pocket of my backpack and had to go outside, lower my bag, put the bar inside and raise it back up. Some will tell you not to bother, bear are afraid of people and won¢t bother us; they¢ve even slept with their food bags in their tents. FYI, if a bear gets to ones food supply, the bear may associate people with food and come around people more often, increasing the likeliness of an actual encounter. This bear will usually be captured and put down rather than relocating it, since no matter where it¢s living, it will still associate people with food. Save the wildlife, hang your food.There are water sources located along the trail and at most every shelter site so far. Hopefully there will be plenty of precipitation to keep the sources supplied throughout the summer. Water needs to be collected and filtered daily for cooking and tooting on the daily hike. This is all easy enough so far, but it¢s often spring water or snow melt and it¢s cold, even colder on already cold hands.Then there¢s privy life. Privies (or is it privi?) are a step down from the fiberglass port-a-potty that we¢ve all used and embrace. Pardon the graphic nature of this paragraph, but picture a toilet seat on a wooden platform 5-8¢ over a pit of fenced in waste. The toilet seat is wet and cold and the user is protected by a sloped roof and a 3¢ tall wall most of the way around the toilet; sometimes there¢s a door. The wind comes from every direction...and I mean EVERY direction. (Often the craftsmanship of these structures remind me of the skills possessed by the 5-7 year olds at Home Depot on a Saturday morning). Privy¢s are located 50-75 yards away from the shelter either up or down a sometimes muddy trail. You might make your way to the privy in the middle of the night with a headlamp on your forehead, a plastic bag of toilet paper in hand and every once in a while clapping your hands to scare off an animal that may be out on his midnight rounds. Once done, hurry back to the shelter, maybe get out of rain clothes and wet hiking shoes, sanitize your freezing hands with alcohol get back into your dry sleep clothes and try to get warm again in your sleeping bag. Could it get worse? Imagine you¢re in Tennessee where the shelters have no privies. Now repeat all steps from the previously described going to and from the privy, but now you¢ll need to carry a small shovel of some sort, affectionately called a ¢deuce scoop¢ (figure it out), dig a 6¢ hole, do your business and burry it. In this case there is no protection at all from the elements or other hikers with similar needs and you¢re in a field designated as ¢toilet area¢ where thousands of previous hikers for decades have used their ¢duece scoops¢. Here¢s a thought...the dog days of summer when those privies begin to simmer.So I believe I was talking about rain. It¢s supposed to rain through the night and quit at my current location by 1:00 tomorrow afternoon. The good news is that it¢s supposed to stop by 10:00 tomorrow morning at lower elevations and my destination of Davenport Shelter. So tomorrow could be my last rainy day for a week or so and by the weekend, I¢ll be out of the Smoky¢s.