Seven Days on the Appalachian Trail, Day 4: rain, moonlight, and sharing pants

[To see the original journal entries recorded during this leg of our adventure, click here! But this post has all the photos.]

A sign, made of particle board and black marker, is nailed to the trunk of a tree that fills the frame. It says:

I hope you know you are awesome. 428.6 [the mileage] — “Trail magic” is when good Samaritans do things like set up lemonade stands on the edge of the trail, or give away candy and soda, or have an entire barbeque just for hikers who are tired and really need a little pick-me-up. We bumped into a couple people handing out candy bars along our route, but this was my favorite trail magic by far.

“Someone left an entire bag of beef jerky in the Hiker Box!” Hobz said, topping off his cold oatmeal breakfast with a handful of said jerky. “And a bunch of Snickers!”

“Huh,” I said. “Wonder who that could have been?”

Despite the abandoned food, today started out with the terrible news that my pack actually weighs 35 pounds. The hostel had a scale, and the boys couldn’t resist. Dustin’s pack weighs 34 pounds. Hobz’s weighs 24. Somehow, I had really believed my pack should have been lighter, despite having done the math. Perhaps I imagined that beef jerky was much more calorie-dense than advertised?

(The real question, of course, is how much did it weigh yesterday??)

No matter! Somehow, my limbs woke up more structurally sound today than they had been yesterday, and that seemed like a good omen.

As if rewarding my good attitude, we got to start the day with a relatively level three-mile hike around the edge of the Watauga Reservoir, bringing us up to its dam. Three miles seemed right for a break, and our water bottles wanted topping-up, so we ditched the packs and had a snack.

An asphalt road stretches across a dam from the bottom of the frame toward the back. The water of the reservoir is to the right, the drop-off to the left. Hobz and Laura, very small, can be seen toward the middle of the road walking away from the camera. — Watauga Dam. (Photo credit: Hobz)

Hobz stands on the edge of the dam road with the drop-off and valley behind him. The sky is overcast. Hobz is consulting his phone. — I told you Hobz is a trail pirate! In this case, he’s reviewing the treasure (trail) map for leads on where to find the next booty (water).

Hobz and Laura stand on the dam road with the reservoir in the background. They are both looking pensively off to the right. — I think our grim and bemused expressions (respectively) have to do with the fact that we can see where we started hiking, three miles ago, and it appears to be about half a mile away.

Hobz checked our trail map for the day and discovered that sources of water were about to become unreliable. With no guaranteed spots to refill for the remaining 10 miles of our hike, we decided it was reservoir water or bust.

Guarding my available energy resources, I decided to let the boys do the water-schlepping work without my “help.”

A photo of the reservoir, showing the bank to the left with a metal pier stretching out in the middle distance. The water is gray, and the hills behind it covered in dark green trees. — If you look reeeeally close at the edge of the water under that pier, you can see a couple humans creeping up on the water’s edge. Those are my humans. ❤

A selfie of Laura, holding a bag of Dot's pretzels and looking a little tattered and tired. — I took a moment of reflection, as the boys did the extra work and I just let them, to think about why some people can run up the sides of mountains with no training, and some people have hummingbird hearts. Fitness does not come easily to me, but I am doing my best, and I AM awesome.

Hobz and Dustin, standing on the edge of the reservoir. Hobz holds a water filtering back at waist height while Dustin using a water-collecting bag to fill it. Both look at the camera because apparently Laura said something to get their attention. — Turns out our water filter is missing a part. We have a backup bottle (many backup plans!), but it would have been slow going. Thank goodness for Hobz’s Sawyer Squeeze.

By the time we finished reloading, each of us carried about four liters of water, which would be enough to hike us another 10 miles, but might make for slim pickings at the dinner table if no water was available at our campsite.

Onward!

A vertical photo of the forest, with a sign posted on a wooden pole in the middle. It reads:

BIG LAUREL BRANCH WILDERNESS
CHEROKEE National Forest

Six large plastic bottles are clustered around the bottom of the sign. — About a mile farther along, we came across this water cache. It’s not litter – some kind soul, knowing how scarce water has gotten around here, had put out several gallons of water for any hikers who found themselves hard-up. Every bottle was empty.

Laura in the lead, followed by Hobz, walk away from the camera down a forest trail.

We stopped for lunch when my watch called 7 miles (again) and this time the trail map agreed at least mostly. We pulled off at an “overlook” (nice rocks to sit on, but the view was mostly trees) and pulled out our picnic. Dustin and Hobz eat tuna on tortillas for lunch. I’ve got crackers, cheese, peanut butter, olives, jerky, fruit leather, and candy of every sort. It will get a little old by the last day, but here on Day 2, it was still a delicious feast.

Laura, at left, sits on a rock on a sloping hillside peering into a plastic bag she appears to have removed from the backpack sitting on the ground beside her. Hobz, at right, stands a bit higher on the slope with his backpack beside him, holding a bottle and speaking to Laura.

The trail runs from the bottom of the photo toward the back, framed on top and both sides by the branches of laurel bushes. — The AT is sometimes known as the “green tunnel,” and sometimes it’s more literal than others. This tunnel was provided courtesy of the rhododendron bushes.

At about 3:00, with about 8.5 “miles” (per my unreliable watch) behind us, we could no longer pretend the “tick tick tick” of leaves around us was just wind. Rain was definitely in the making.

Standing under bright green-leafed branches, Hobz and Dustin pull their rain gear out of their backpacks. Dustin is peering speculatively toward the left. — We paused under a pleasantly dense maple to make arrangements. Dustin and I have ponchos. Hobz has a PONCHO.

Hobz stands facing the camera in center frame on the trail, surrounded by green undergrowth and green leaves above. He is wearing a green cape, an umbrella hat, and carrying a big stick. — Also the world’s best hat.
No longer a trail pirate, I now present to you Hobz the Water Witch.

As expected, once we made the effort to get out our gear, the rain quickly petered out. Out west, you’d just leave your poncho on for awhile to be sure the rain had really finished. Out here, in the nasty, musty humidity, if you try that you will self-steam in a matter of minutes. So we took the ponchos off.

And then the real rain started. At least we’d kept the ponchos handy.

Laura and Hobz, in the distance, walk down the trail away from the camera wearing their rain gear. They are surrounded by bright green undergrown and towering trees. Sunbeams filter through, providing more green light. Only the smallest patches of sky can be seen between branches. — This is one of my favorite pics from the trip.

If we hadn’t been doused for four solid hours in the Smokies two days ago, I would have been unable to believe this rain. It came down and down and down. My pants legs soaked through, and soon my toes were swimming.

“And yet we keep avoiding puddles,” Hobz observed from behind me. He was right. The instinct to avoid getting my sopping wet toes any wetter remained strong today. I believe that instinct can survive about 90 minutes of rain.

We tromped steadily onward, remembering the 9-mile shelter Hobz’s trail map had promised when we’d considered backup plans the day before. I just wanted a chance to wring the water out of my pants before my underwear got wet again.

Vandeventer Shelter appeared like a (and along side a) ray of sunshine on a stormy day. In fact, the rain had mostly broken up ten minutes or so before we arrived, though in a manner so untrustworthy all three of us elected to steam in our plastic wrappers rather than risk removal again.

Negotiations on whether to stay here or move on to a tent site four miles farther up the road resolved quickly. Hobz’s shelter is that green poncho he’s been wearing, propped up by a stick. The ground at a tent site would be wet, and if it rained again, he’d be one soggy, sad, pirate-witch-hiker.

Yeah… That’s right… We quit four miles early in deference to Hobz’s sensitivities. Nothing to do with pansy me.

Rain gear and backpacks and discarded clothing hang from every available hook on the roof of a three-sided AT shelter building. Hobz sits on the shelter's platform to the far left, Laura lays on the platform, looking at the camera, to the far right. Sun hits the ground through the trees. — In the Smokies, we had a propane heater to dry us out. Here, we had hooks.
Bless the hooks.

Really, though, I was feeling pretty good. I think I could have managed those last four miles with considerably more grace than I’d had available yesterday. I wasn’t complaining about stopping early, obviously, but I felt relief deep in my soul that I wasn’t going to be as bad at this long hike as yesterday’s feeble effort had foreshadowed.

We settled in, hogging all the hooks and surfaces in the shelter. Since we’d seen no one else in a backpack hiking the trail during the last two days, we figured there was a reasonable chance we’d have the whole thing to ourselves, which turned out to be true.

A high view down into the valley with part of the reservoir visible. Boats and buildings can be seen on the reservoirs left side. The sky is very overcast. — Behind the shelter, we got one of our first long views of the whole adventure, out over Watauga Reservoir (still – we’re never getting away from this lake) and the “Yacht Club” parked in its marina.

I’d never stayed in a shelter before, and the whole concept was new to me.

“Are there rules?” I asked Hobz, imagining how this would have played out if we had arrived to find six people already in residence.

“No pitching your tent inside the shelter,” he said. “That’s about it.” Stories he told us over the next few days would help me understand that, if we had turned up to find the shelter already full, we would have just asked everyone to scoot over and wedged ourselves in, sad little sardines on a wooden shelf. You get real cozy with strangers on the Appalachian Trail.

“I’d pitch my tent instead,” Dustin said in those later conversations.

“If there were too many people?” Hobz asked.

“If there were any people,” Dustin said. Given the rain-proof awesomeness of our tent, I’m with him.

A photo looking into the shelter with gear, clothing, and backpacks hanging from every hook. Hobz and Laura can almost be seen behind all of it.

These items negotiated, we set about dealing with the overabundance of water in our clothing and underabundance in our bottles.

“Hobz? You okay pretending I’m wearing a swimming suit?” I asked, already peeling off my pants. I’d only brought one pair, forsaking the longjohns I would usually have brought for sleeping in when I saw the temperatures in this week’s forecast. I wasn’t really worried about Hobz’s delicate sensibilities, but I didn’t want his wife banning him from ever coming out hiking with us again because of a smelly-girl backcountry strip tease.

“There’s not much modesty on the trail,” Hobz noted, “but I have an extra pair of shorts that are still clean, if you’d like to put something on while your pants dry.”

And that is how I wound up in Hobz’s pants. (Somehow no one got a photo?!)

About two hours later, I remembered I had a pair of RAIN PANTS with me that, having utterly failed to do their proper job, were available to cover my legs right now.

“So the water source is back about half a mile,” Hobz said, consulting his ap, “and my ap suggests we might be better off licking the rainwater off these trees than trying to get down there.”

A screenshot from Hobz's trail guide. It says:

[left arrow] Piped Spring
off Mile 437.7 of Appalachian Trail
Elevation: 3261 feet

COMMENTS

Trudge '22
Very steep, very far, very buggy. Do everything in your power not to have to get water here. If you must, do yourself a favor, bring all your shit and build a cabin at the bottom. It would be easier than hiking back out. Upside: the flow is good.
[6 likes]

traileagle
I hiked all the way down and got my water. the hike back up was so exhausting that I drank all my water on the way up. I had to turn around and go get more water. this has happened five times. I feel like I'm stuck in Groundhog Day.
[8 likes]

Roosta
I felt like I hiked down to sea level and back
[0 likes]

“There’s plenty of water still in my pants,” I said. “We could ring that out and filter it.” This suggestion was met with exactly as much comic disgust as I could have hoped for. (But seriously. My pants absorbed SO MUCH WATER.)

In the end, we agreed that as long as we were careful, the water remaining in our bottles would be sufficient to get us the remaining four miles to the tent site we’d originally aimed for, where water should be awaiting us tomorrow.

We also hung our water bag from a leaky spot on the shelter’s gutter, just in case it rained overnight.

A photo taken from the shelter looking out into the trees at twilight. The trunks appear white against the dark leaves and undergrown. Patches of sky behind the trees appear pink. — Beautiful twilight trees. (Photo credit: Hobz)

A photo taken from inside the shelter. The sleeping bag the photographer is in can be seen a the bottom. Plastic rain ponchos hang from the ceiling, with trees and a pink sky in the background. — Beautiful twilight trees… the actual view.
The water bag is the blue thing in the background. Dustin took this photo as the sun was setting. Our gear is dumb and ugly, but the light was really pretty.

We went to bed. I laid there, listening to the creak of the shelter and the “tick tick” of leaves or drops of water occasionally falling on the roof. It was strange and not terribly comfortable. I knew a whole swarm of bugs must be coming for me. Maybe it wasn’t too late to set up the tent after all-

And then the rain started. It was another proper soaker, designed to make us feel really good about being in this shelter and not on a squishy tent site four miles further up. It rained and rained. Dustin squinted at the water bag in the dark, cursed, and got up. It hadn’t been hanging right and wasn’t catching any of the copious water pouring down from the shelter’s roof.

A nighttime photo with strange light. The trail can be seen at the bottom, with underbrush and trees in the background. The trail appears to be pink and wet. The background disappears into fog. — Yay rain! (Photo credit: Hobz)

Two pairs of muddy feet and twenty minutes later (Hobz got up to help – I just laid around), everyone was back in their sleeping bags and the bag of water was nearly full. The rain carried on for awhile then left us alone to fall asleep.

I fell promptly asleep, for a pleasant change, and woke up ten hours later to bright daylight. How surprising! Could I have overslept?? I cracked my eyes open and peered at my watch. 12:32am. Dammit. Nasty full moon tricked my brain.

A photo showing the same reservoir valley that was shown above. The entire valley is filled with fog, with hills rimming it in the background. A nearly full moon shines down from the center top of the photo, lighting up the fog. — Stupid moon was, however, responsible for the coolest photo of the trip, courtesy of a midnight wander conducted by Hobz on behalf of his bladder. This is the same valley as above, but filled with clouds and moonlight. (*Photo credit: Hobz.*)

Falling back asleep wasn’t so easy. I passed a fitful night on a wooden shelf in the middle of the mountains.

DAY FOUR STATS:

Trail Map Says: 9.2 miles (cumulative: 33.7)
Laura’s Watch Says: 10.59 miles (cumulative: 40.1)
Cumulative Elevation Gain: 2,864 feet
Cumulative Elevation Loss: 1,286 feet
Start Time: 8:15am
End Time: 3:37pm
Active Hiking Time: 5:26
Average Pace: 30’30″/mile (best: 24’09″/mile, worst: 36’14”)
Average Heart Rate: 128bpm (high: 154bpm)
Calories Burned: 2,979

What I like about this is how my watch gives me LESS credit for the 9.2 miles today (10.59 miles) than it gave me for the 8.4 miles yesterday (10.72 miles). Obviously I was moving better today, and that makes a difference to my watch.

And now, today’s trail photo-candy. Fewer critters today, more plants: