The biggest concern about shelter sleeping is the mice. The reports of nocturnal activity of mice walking over one's face and the occasional mouse in a sleeping bag is enough for many hikers to prefer camping outside the shelter. Unfortunately, tenting isn't a guarantee some gear won't get messed with: a few years ago I was at a shelter in Shenandoah when a mouse chewed through a tent in the middle of the night. The intruder ended up squashed by a boot in the tent. Chipmunks crawled into my backpack in Vermont, and in West Virginia a mouse chewed through an outer pocket of my backpack one night and on another occasion chewed through my food bag and left droppings in my oatmeal.
Last night was a first for us! GG and I accomplished the monumental endeavor of sleeping in an actual shelter ALL NIGHT! To be honest, I didn't have the best night of sleep, being wakened by snores (even with my super duper purple earplugs), 10 hikers getting up to use the facilities in the middle of the night, and the occasional escape of wind from the esophagus or the other end... But no mice!! And we are relatively dry. Even in the shelter everything is damp from the humidity.
We woke in the pouring rain, walked in the woods in the rain, walked up a big hill in the rain, and arrived at the next shelter around 2pm during a deluge. The highlight of my day is trail magic left by an angel: a big bag of huge apples left at Stecoah Gap. We each take one, even though I could have eaten all of them. To the church who left this here, we really appreciated this! Thank you so much :-)
I did not take any pictures during the hike today because I didn't want my phone to drown.
Brown Fork Gap Shelter is the smallest shelter we see on the trail. Most of the other shelters fit 6 or 12 people. This shelter is advertised as six, yet most of the space is taken up by our sleeping pads - a huge gap in the floor with plywood "gangplanks" that can be retracted to keep four legged visitors out of the shelter removes a lot of usable space. A comment on the "Far Out" app we all use states the design is to prevent porcupines from coming in and destroying the wood structure. The odor wafting from the gap is evidence that past hikers have used the space for a latrine.
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| A crowded and soggy bunch |
We don't have enough room for 6 of us and all our stuff on the floor, so we get very creative at hanging our packs on the mouse hangers with all our gear hanging off every nook and cranny of the packs. We are drenched and cold. Shivering, we change into our night clothes and snuggle into our down quilts to warm up. It's 3 pm and going to be a long afternoon! I'm not a day sleeper and read a Stephen King book on my phone and the sound of light snoring combined with the loud plinking of rain on the tin roof is calming.
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| Croft in her tent outside the shelter |
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