Day 7

Grims and Mines Hiking Christmas Card FTW!

Day 7:

Sitting at Icewater Spring shelter. The water at the spring really is ice cold! It'
s delicious! Speaking of delicious, Dad and I ate cheddar broccoli salmon rice for dinner and it really wasn't that bad. This morning we woke up in the Quality Inn Gatlinburg, ate some delicious biscuits + gravy, tossed Dad's extra gear and swapped his damn Sumberjack sleeping pad for a Big Agnes backer pad. Happey Hiker Gatlinburg; what a cool outfitter. I bought a waterproof stuff sack to replace my food sack. I was sick of worrying about carrying sopping wet rations around. Now I can sleep in peace. Maybe. Still have yet to sleep through the night. I will do a victory dance when that happens. The shelter is FULL, which is bad because the Mines are illegal. We both have tents though so I'm not too worried. Paul and I went for a side hike, as we arrived at the shelter at 3pm. We climbed to "The Jump-off" which is about 300 feet of sheer cliff followed by a steep body-shredding slope. We promptly wizzed off of it. After we got back, the 3 dudes from Michigan came back to visit and I built a fire from wood Paul and I dug out of the slopes around the shelter. Views form the shelter are the best compared to any shelter we've stayed at so far. Fellow hiker reported a bear here in the morning. We'll find out soon enough.

*There are going to be a lot of things I casually write about in my journal entries which may not make sense to a non-hiker. I apologize for the plot holes but if they get too wide just drop me a comment and I'll patch it up. Shelters along the AT are spaced at about a half day's walk apart from each other. They range in style and size from a four person lean-to built during the great depression to fantastic multi-story log lodges (that you can order pizza to). You do not need to stay in the shelters except in some locations, including the Smokey Mountains. The Mines are illegal in the sense that they do not have shelter reservations, which are required for hikers who are not walking the entire park's length. If they were caught by the rangers they would probably face a fine and be extracted from the park. Shelters are usually situated around a natural water source, such as a river or a mountain spring. The springs usually have a pipe or a pool which allows you to draw water in order to treat it with either a filter or purifying chemicals. You can choose not to use purification equipment, but that may leave you with a nasty infection of Giardia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giardia). Once you read that wiki, I'm sure you'll choose to pump or pill. I love that the little critter is named after some French guy... if I'm ever famous enough to have something named after me I hope its symptoms don't include the runs.



Paul and I at "The Jump Off"