Boy Scouts and Mice

I am taking my second zero day on my birthday in Hot Springs, NC, 270 miles from Springer. I rolled in around 1pm yesterday after a 13 mile day, and I am waiting to get some mail, and send some stuff home tomorrow morning. I am staying at Elmer's. He has a wonderful old house and cooks amazing vegetarian dinners and breakfasts. I will be celebrating my birthday by soaking in the hot springs and getting a massage. I am also breaking in my new trail runners. I started out hiking in my tried and true full leather hiking boats. I was not having blister problems and the leather is still good, but they are starting to leak between the leather and the sole. I am also lightening up by about a pound per foot, which is nice.
I have been rained on everyday since I left Fontana Dam and entered the Smokies. Most of the the time I was hiking in a cloud. It is not too bad, I would rather be in a cloud then getting rained on, and it is good for making time because you do not want to stop. However, the views are not as good. About half an hour after I passed Clingman's Dome, which is the highest mountain on the Trail, the clouds broke and I had two half days of gorgeous weather. The next day at Icewater shelter I had a marvelous sunrise with undercast. By that evening it was raining again. I took an easy day when it was sunny to enjoy the weather, but I have started to push it as it clouded again and I did back to back 18 and 20 mile days. As I leave Hot Springs I will be pushing it some more so that when I get to areas where I know people I can take the time off to visit.
Thru hikers tend to have a love/hate relationship with Boy Scouts. If you cannot yogi food off of a boy scout you are in trouble (defn. yogi, to get free food from someone without asking for it). On my second day in the Smokies I pulled into a shelter after a tough 17 mile day in the rain at around 6pm. The shelter was full of Boy Scouts. I later talked to a bunch to through hikers who had come through earlier in the day who had all seen the Boy Scouts and pushed on 1.7 miles to the next shelter. As I walked in, not wanting to go any further, they were lighting a fire in the shelter. Normally this is a good sign. Unfortunately the chimney was not working and the shelter quickly filled up with smoke and they put out the fire. They were cooking as a came in and after they finished eating said if I had been in a little earlier they would have saved me some. However, as I started cooking they were dividing up dessert and offered me some raspberry crumble. It made a great appetizer. I am trying not to turn down free food. The next night I ran into a different group of boy scouts. These were more annoying but I did get four hot chocolate and two tuna packets in the deal. So all in all, not too bad on the exchange.
Mice are something that thru hikers just have a hate relationship with. While most shelters have bear cables for hanging food, what you are really worried about are mice. I had not had too much trouble until Walnut Mountain shelter. It was another rainy day and I arrived to this shelter after 20+ miles. Otherwise I would have kept on going. It was old and slanted with a not so great water source, but I was done for the day. There were 5 of us in the shelter that night and we were kept up a bit with mice running through everybody's packs'. This is why you leave all the zippers open, so they can get in and out without chewing through your gear. At one point I had a mouse run over my forehead. But the worst was when I woke up with a mouse in my pants. It had been raining as I got into the shelter and my pants were wet so I hung them up to dry. I had forgotten to take the peanut M&M's out of my pocket, so I woke up to the sound of a mouse in my pants. Luckily I had left the pocket open so Ionly lost one handfull of M&M's, and no damage to my only pants.
I have also started to have things break. I had a minor part break on my water filter the first week that I easily replaced. But the first real break was my spoon. On night 13 while stirring my dinner to prevent something burning to the bottom of the pot my spoon broke in half. Luckily Shadow Cast lent me his spoon for dinner and I was able to buy a new one the next day in Fontana Dam. The first major issue was my water filter. Last Sunday the handle on the pump broke, so I spent a week borrowing other people's filters and treating with iodine (I had brought iodine as a backup). Thursday night I stayed at a hostel and called Katadyn and they mailed a replacement part to Erwin, TN (still three days away). As I got into town here in Hot Springs I went to the outdoor store and got the handle replaced. So it is now fixed and I have a handle waiting for me in Erwin. When the filter wasn't working I had a lot of people tell me to get rid of the filter to save weight and not treat the water. I do not think my stomach is strong enough for that.
Before the Smokies I had been hiking for a week with Shadow Cast. He decided to not zero in Knoxville, but he was going to try and meet up with friends in Ashville. So I would hike a day behind him and we would meet up after the Smokies. He kept leaving me notes in the shelter journals asking when I would catch up to him, and talked to people about me, so almost all the people I passed had heard of me, which was nice. However, as I finished the Smokies I found out he was not taking the day off in Ashville and instead did 23 and 26 miles days when I did 18 and 20. Luckily he took enough time off in Hot Springs for me to catch up and was lounging in Elmer's when I walked in. Tomorrow we will be back to hiking together again. We both realized how nice it is to have someone hiking the same pace.
My next planned town stop will be Damascus, VA in about 10 days on March 17th. So if anyone feels like sending me anything, good lucks or belated birthday cards, you can address it to
Jeffrey Berliss
c/o General Delivery
Damascus, VA 24236
and write "Hold for AT Thru Hiker" on the envelope.
Take care and keep on posting comments, I love the feedback, and if you have any questions, ask away.