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I was hiking in the smokies in the pouring rain...had my hood pulled tight to keep the rain out and my eyes on the ground to assure proper foot placement so I wouldn't trip over a rock or a root...all of the sudden WHACK...I hit my head so hard I literally saw stars and before I knew it I fell backwards into a mud puddle...there was a blowdown that was positioned perfectly so that I couldn't see it from the angle I was looking at the ground but was high enough that I hit it with my head...I was walking VERY FAST because I just wanted to get to the shelter where it would be dry and warm, so I hit that tree at full speed...it hurt really bad, but I found myself sitting in a mud puddle in the pouring rain and all I could do was laugh. I must have sat there in that puddle laughing for 10 minutes. That was the day I knew I was having fun out there on the trail.
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Not on the AT, but I remember once when I was trying to bushwhack my way to a cave whose location I knew, but thought a shortcut would take a couple of miles off my trip. Was following my GPS, and didn't realize I had it zoomed in almost all the way... Those contour lines were close, but didn't seem as close as I would normally think for, say, a sudden three hundred foot drop. Stepped out with one foot into thin air and narrowly avoided falling by grabbing a very small, whippy tree. It was a good lesson in keeping my eye on the ground in front of me and not on my GPS.
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Back in the day. I fell asleep one night in Kay Wood Shelter, got up to relieve myself forgetting where I was and walked right off the edge, tool out and did a bodyplant into mud. Took a second to figure out what happened. Hid my face for the next couple days.