Last night we arrived late at our shelter and found it full. There wasn't a lot of stealth around so we decided to head to the next shelter and hope for more space. We got there very late but there was only one other hiker. It's generally impolite to arrive after 8pm and move into a shelter of sleeping hikers, but in the Smokies you have no choice: you're prohibited from tenting unless the shelter is full. So we guiltily (and as quietly as we could) set up our gear, ate, and went to bed.
In the middle of the night, I suddenly heard loud banging on the floor of the shelter. It turns out that Hashbear objected to snoring, and his solution was to wake the entire shelter whenever snoring kept him awake. Since both Blueberry Crisp and I snore, that meant a lot of banging and not much sleep.
When I woke at 5:30, I decided to just get up and get moving. This also meant that I wouldn't have to deal with Hashbear, towards whom I held a fair amount of animosity. I was on trail by 6:30, and the others were still asleep. I figured we all knew where we were headed so we'd meet there. I was quite excited that I'd be able to hike the whole day and probably avoid night-hiking. I shouldn't have gotten excited. At Fontana Dam, I stopped for lunch planning to leave after an hour. After 45 minutes, Flatlander and Blueberry Crisp came by. 2 hours later, we hit the trail again... our little trail family has too much fun (and I may have been running out of steam for the day).
It was a very smoky day... you could really feel that we were getting close to fires. I'm also carrying another rock (but for a much better reason this time - see the images).
The shelter we're at is tiny and in terrible shape. Since I have a slow leak in my mattress already, I wasn't keen to risk it so I tented tonight (we're out of the Smoky Mountains National Park now).
Start: Russell Field Shelter
End: Cable Gap Shelter
Distance: 21.2 miles
Total: 2,029.9 miles
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