stover creek shelter to gooch mountain shelter

so far i’m hitting all the same spots i did in 2020. it’s pretty crazy how little i remember. the shelter last night i had pretty much no memory of. only some of the terrain around it.

woke up to gray skies. the weather report was for thunderstorms tapering until 15:00, then more thunderstorms. breakfast and on trail pretty quickly after a fight with some full-fat milk powder i’m trying out. it’s pretty tasty, but it doesn’t mix well. i ended up burning it onto my pot and had to stop at the stream just outside the shelter to scrub it out .

ran into a hiker packing up a stealth spot where she had almost lost her food bag to the trees. she had managed to get her food down, but a sizeable length of her bear line was permanently stuck in the tree. this is one of my fears on trail.

pretty quickly caught up to nico, from quebec. i have only a fractionally faster pace than him, so we ended up hiking much of the day together.

it started raining and as usual, the trail only took minutes to become mud. we hiked to a gap before hawk mountain shelter and waited for the thunder and lightning to subside so we could get up and over the mountain safely. i got a great shot of nico in a hiker trash moment.

we were there probably half an hour counting the seconds between each lightning strike until finally we got to ten seconds. the wind kicked up and my umbrella was no longer enough. i broke down and put on my rain coat.

we hiked up the mountain and just a minute before the top there was lighning followed by thunder only three seconds later. not ideal, but we were too close to the top for it to matter, so we pressed on.

the rain persisted over the next few miles and finally tapered off just as we were coming down into coopers gap. at the bottom was a sketchy looking van covered in stickers. now, in the real world you’d keep your distance, but this is the trail. the windows were all fogged up and there were three packs outside the door. just as we got to the van, the passenger door opened and a bearded man said, “hey, want a coke?” oh yes. first trail magic.

the driver of the van was miss janet. she gave us cokes and little debbie cakes. we chatted while we ate. the three packs were for hikers sitting in the van. i was happy they didn’t encourage us to climb in with them. i took a crappy photo and the bearded man pointed his butt at the camera and immediately made a kissy face. it remanded me of something michael does on occasion.

standing and eating, we were losing heat fast. we said our goodbye’s and headed up the other side of the gap. we motored. nothing like some sugar before a climb to kick you into high gear.

the next few miles passed quickly as nico and i chatted. we arrived at gooch mountain shelter right at 15:00, and i was able to set up the tent without rain.

dinner was accompanied with a one man show, courtesy of ‘free’, who just never really stopped talking, but was pretty hilarious.

body worked well today. i can still feel the drive in my knees, but it’s starting to subside. otherwise the normal pains of hiking; shoulder aches after wearing the pack for a long while and random foot and knee pains. i still don’t feel the energy from 2020, but i’m still the strongest hiker (other than nico and one other guy) by a wide margin.