Dates ........ Thursday, April 25, 2002
Miles ........ 7.2 miles
From ........ Low Gap Shelter GA
To ............. Blue Mountain Shelter
Weather ... Very foggy 52 degF AM, gradually clearing, sunny, breezy and cool PM.

Thursday, April 25, 2002

Blue Mountain GA 4025'

Whoa - Where'd the trail go? Where am I? My compass will tell me what direction I'm heading in, but there is not enough visibility to get landmark orientations and know where I am. I have to hope there are plenty of blazes and the trail is well defined. If it gets rocky, I may be in trouble with all this fog. Its cool and damp, though not raining, it may as well be. It must be 200% humidity!

Whoa - Where'd the trail go? Where am I? My compass will tell me what direction I'm heading in, but there is not enough visibility to get landmark orientations and know where I am. I have to hope there are plenty of blazes and the trail is well defined. If it gets rocky, I may be in trouble with all this fog. Its cool and damp, though not raining, it may as well be. It must be 200% humidity!

The climb up to Blue Mountain is the highlight of the day. I get there mid-afternoon, all alone for the time being. I take advantage of the afternoon sunshine and breeze to air out my sleeping bag and dry off my raingear. I park myself on a big log and read the trail register, extracting some interesting entries for my website. Actually, I'm kind of bored at this point but the next shelter is 8 miles away and I have to drop into Unicoi Gap and then climb back up over 1400 feet, so I stay put. Whenever possible, I like to tackle my challenging climbs in the morning when I am fresh.

I walk back to the trailside spring and get water for the evening. As I return, two guys sporting fairly large packs come in and set up tents. They introduce themselves as Powder Man and Mattress Man, two of the Three Blind Mice hiking team that through hiked the AT back in 1995. I chat with them for a while: they are most interesting characters. After supper, they invite me over to their tent site and tell me to bring a drinking cup. When I complied, they pulled out two bottles of wine, one red, one white. They treated me to some very nice wine. I especially loved the Fonte Al Sole red wine. What a rare treat - wine on the trail. These guys know how to pack the important creature comforts. As we talked, a couple of other hikers set up their tent nearby and then Dan joined us. They shared their last three ounces of red wine with him. A couple of other hikers with a dog came into the shelter and started a campfire. Their dog terrorized mattress man because he walked near its "toy"' as he came over to say goodnight. As evening fell, it got very cool. I trapped 8 mice before I turned in shortly after dark. Dan and the others struggled with setting up their bear bag (even though I offered them the use of mine) then sat around and enjoyed the fire. Dan was up late again.

Two very interesting characters at Blue Mountain shelter: Powder Man (L) and Mattress Man