Our host at The Discerning Hiker dropped us off at the Pidgeon River Bridge, right where he picked us up, and I started hiking. I had pretty good cell phone service, which we didn’t have at the hostel, so I took advantage of that to make some phone calls while I was hiking.
While I was still in the Smokies, Purple Lotus had showed me her map app of the AT – FarOut, and showed me how you can view your current location, elevation, the water sources along the trail, and how far it is to different shelters. I downloaded the app while I was in town, and habitually started checking the mileage, and how many miles I needed to hike to get to the shelter.
This stretch of the trail was where I first noticed the difference between National Park Service trail maintenance and Hiking Club trail maintenance. In Great Smokey Mountains National Park, the National Park Service is responsible for trail maintenance – the trails are clear, and you can sometimes see evidence that trail maintenance has been done – logs that have fallen across the trail being cut, for instance. Since the hiking clubs don’t have the same access to resources, things aren’t maintained as well. While I was hiking here, there was a tree, probably about 30 inches in diameter, that fell across the trail – low enough that it was impossible to duck under it, but still far to high to step over. I threw my right leg over it and awkwardly maneuvered myself, straddling the log, until I could get my left leg onto the other side.
Maybe a mile after that awkward log-climbing experience, I saw something that looked like a black boulder on the trail. Hiking alone, I was more afraid of running into wildlife, so I hit my trekking poles together a few times and made some noise, and a bear scurried away from the trail. Terrified, I kept making noise for a while, then hiked on through where the bear had stood.
I took my time, taking pictures of snails, caterpillars, and interesting fungi along the trail. It was a fairly easy day of hiking – 7.7 miles, so it felt like I could take my time.
Critter caught up to me along the way – she had stayed back by the Pidgeon River Bridge earlier to make phone calls, and once she caught up to me, we hiked together for the rest of the day. We came to a peak where there were excellent views.
And a building with some ominous warnings – the signs said that had to do with air traffic control, but I’ve watched enough Stranger Things to know that this is probably a portal to the upside-down.
We hiked further, and .8 away from the shelter, it started pouring. It was warm and sunny, still, so I kept hiking, ignoring the raincoat in my bag. It felt nice to hike in the rain. We reached Groundhog Creek shelter, where I further learned about the contrast between the AT as maintained by the NPS and the AT as maintained by hiking clubs. In the Smokies, the shelters have two levels for people to sleep on, sleep twelve people comfortably, and they have fireplaces.
Groundhog Creek Shelter looks like this.
When we hiked in, there were five people inside, taking up the majority of the shelter. Four of them were middle aged brothers on their yearly backpacking trip – they had been section hiking the whole AT over decades, and one of them was a college kid who was hiking southbound. I sat on a log and watched the rain while I cooked dinner for myself and talked to everyone about their hikes. When I was done cooking dinner, I asked them if they could make space for me to stay in the shelter, and they moved their sleeping pads and sleeping bags to make space for me to fit in at the edge, where I set up my sleeping bag and sleeping mat.
The bear cables here were a little iffy – they sagged low and the cables were all loose, feeling like a determined bear could probably get to them easily. To try and compensate for this, I wrapped the cable as far around the tree as I could, hooking it into the other side to get my food bag hung up higher.
A few hours later, after dark and when everyone was settling into sleep, another hiker, a guy in his early twenties, came to the shelter. He asked if he could stay in the shelter, since it was raining.
Nobody said a word.
After a long pause, I said “Sure, we can make space” and moved my sleeping bag over further to the wall, knowing that everyone else in the shelter probably hated me for it.