When I first heard people moving in the shelter, it was still dark out. Knowing that we had a long day ahead, the group of section hikers who were in the shelter the previous night had planned to start hiking early in the morning, getting up around 5 and getting on the trail at 5:30. I stayed in my sleeping bag, drifting in and out of sleep until 6, then got up and made breakfast, packed up, and got on the trail.
People in the shelter were shocked, initially, when they saw how much water I was carrying. I had no sense of how much water I would need while I’m hiking, other than “a lot” so I was incredibly overpacked on water. Today, I tried hiking with less water – around two liters, since there was going to be a water source near Cosby Knob shelter, and I could fill up mid-day there.
The beginning of the day, I was making pretty good time – the elevation wasn’t too tough, a bit of up and down, but mostly downhill and never really steep. It was also cooler, so it felt easier to pick up my pace, keeping in mind that I needed to hike 14.6 miles today.
The path was rocky, I stepped on one rock at the wrong angle and fell down, scraping my knee. It seemed to be happening in slow motion – my right knee hit the rocks, then my left side went down, and my pack was too heavy for me to get back up. In some kind of controlled way, I fell over on my left side. I stretched my legs out over the trail, and sat there for 20 minutes, feeling sorry for myself and texting my mom a picture of my scraped knee.
I got up and kept hiking, at a slightly slower pace. I stopped at the water source by Cosby Knob, and saw the note from the hiker who had their tent slashed by the bear. I filled up my water bottles and had some RX bars for lunch, and then kept hiking.
I knew there was a side trail for this fire lookout – I didn’t really know what it was, I didn’t have an interest in going there, I was focused on just getting to Davenport Gap. There was a fork in the trail and suddenly, randomly, the trail looked like we were in the desert or something. I kept hiking.
I came up to a spot where the trail just kind of ended – which was confusing, because the AT ends in Maine. There was a sign that was entirely worn away. Putting things together, I realized that I wasn’t on the AT at all – I had hiked an extra mile on this side trail.
I kept hiking, frustrated that I added an extra mile to an already long day, tired and sweaty. Somewhere along the way, I set down my sleeping mat on the side of the trail and just slept for twenty minutes. I kept hiking, thinking that the shelter was around a mile away for at least an hour and a half. It was down hill, though, so it wasn’t horrible.
I finally got to the shelter, after most of the hikers were already there – the group I met at the shelter yesterday, plus their friend who had hiked ahead of them. Their friend who hiked ahead of them was evangelizing about being ultralight. In the backpacking world, anyone who hikes with a backpack where the base weight (your pack, your gear – food and water are not usually counted) is less than 10 lbs is considered ultralight. She had a backpack that didn’t have a frame at all – it was a bit smaller than the backpack I carry with me to school every day. She was only eating a package of oatmeal and a mountain house dinner every day, which gave me the conviction that ultralight backpacking is not for me. I can put up with some discomfort, for sure, but I will not be ravenously hungry throughout my hike.
There were also two women who were hiking for the weekend. They were both 60, which amazed me – I hope I’m doing this kind of thing when I’m 60.
The Davenport Gap shelter is the last shelter in the Smoky Mountains to have a chain link fence. Various shelters in the Smoky Mountains once had chain link fences, and throughout the past decade, the National Parks Service and Smoky Mountains Hiking Club have been renovating the shelters and removing the fences. In a shelter with chain link fence, there are no bear cables – everyone just stores their packs, including all of their food, inside the shelter. Historically, hikers were sometimes irresponsible in this situation – leaving food and trash around the shelter, or even feeding the bears through the fence. When I found out about the idea of people feeding bears through the fence, I was deeply confused about how people could do that – as though they are not going to have to leave the shelter at some point in time, and be in proximity to a bear who knows that humans have food and are willing to feed it.
Given the fact that there is a bear not too far away, who has slashed someone’s tent in search of food, leaving all of this food within eight feet of where I’m sleeping feels unsafe. Yes, the fence is there. And there is a latch system on the fence, but I’m also relying on about 15 people, some of whom I just met today, to make sure that this fence is securely latched all night. Still, there was no other option, so I hung my pack and my food bag up alongside everyone else.