Shelter stories mishaps and what not

[phishpapond]

I am guessing that everyone has a story or two about a night in a shelter.

Here is mine.

I was staying in Gravel spring shelter in SNP.
There was a mist all day and the shelter was wet. i put down my tarp and 3 of us slept on that. One other person Slept in the loft above .

I got up to water the trees halfway into the night and when I get back Teabag an 80 plus year old man from the UK was climbing down to water the trees. I thought I would be nice and hold the light up for him.

Well Teabag sleeps in the nude. Those wern't grapes I saw that night.
It got worse when he came back. He had to climb back up and was right above me.
I pulled my bag over my head and prayed that he wouldn't fall on me

Well what have you people got

[Cool AT Breeze]

My son and I stayed in Deep Gap shelter in GA. Woke up in the morning to a bird stuck in the window. SOB was raising all kinds of hell trying to get through that plexiglass.

[Manwich]

Teabag

Wanna take a guess as to where he got his trailname?


I would refuse to stay in a shelter with anybody calling themselves teabag on principle.

[daddytwosticks]

Met the infamous Baltimore Jack and his hiking partner Mtn. Dew at Brown Fork Gap (or was it Cable Gap?) shelter one very early May Saturday night in 2005. Mtn. Dew and I had a deep philosophical discussion about milk and cookies (I like my milk very very cold) that evening. B. Jack arouse early the next morning and left solo right at sunup humping a big azz Osprey pack and puffing away on a Camel. It was a great experience and made this weekend-dirtbag-section-hiking-fools day. Thanks guys.

[Tin Man]

...

your wiki could prove interesting. good luck.

[tiptoe]

I met Teabag (fully clothed) on the trail a couple of years ago. Boy, was he chatty. He's put a lot of miles on that 80-year-old body. True to his Brit roots, he was in the habit of stopping for afternoon tea, that's how he got his trail name.

[bigmac_in]

Never spent a night in a shelter, never will. Shelters suck.

The End.

[ki0eh]

I stayed at Rausch Gap shelter once when the area between the shelter and the spring trough was glare melting ice. Trying to go from one to the other, I lost my footing and quickly accelerated off the edge, tumbling down the rocky slope below. Man did my knee hurt for the hike out and weeks afterward. Taught me the need to make room in the pack for a bottle full of Vitamin I.

[Valmet]

Way back in 1975 at Spence Field, late one night when a couple thought everyone was sleeping they got to well you know. Back then the bunks were made out of wire and they got to squeaking really loud. The guy under them announced that if anything drips on him they are dead. The whole shelter busted out laughing. The girl then said I thought you said everyone was sleeping. The next morning, the joke was "Is that a mouse I hear squeaking".

[Lilred]

The first night I spent in a shelter was the one just north of Neel Gap. It was november and cold. I was with Rain Man and some other guy. All night, a mouse kept biting at my hair, trying to get nesting material I guess. About 4am I was abruptly awakened by the other person in the shelter. He had taken his hiking pole and slammed it on the shelter floor. I was sitting up before I realized I was awake. He said "almost got him". He was trying to kill a mouse. Just as I was dozing back off to sleep, he did it again. I told him in no uncertain if it happened again where I was going to shove that pole.

I was also at a shelter with a foreign couple that spent 10 minutes looking for a garbage can. When they asked me where to put their garbage, they were quite surprised when I told them to put it in their packs.

[Kanati]

Fester, Stovie and I spent a cold, sleepless night their on 3/2/08. I swear the wind was 50 miles per hour and the temp in the teens. Those boulders must have a funnel effect or something on the wind. We tried putting tyvek over the window and securing it with a broom, but the wind made it pop like a tarp on an 18 wheeler. That was my first experience with shelter mice also. I must have had my head too close to the wall as I was awakened by a mouse scratching in my hair. I knocked myself silly slapping at him.

[elmotoots]

We were staying at the old Ice Water Springs shelter. Had our mostly empty packs hanging on nails out front. All night long i hear a mouse running in and out of a pack close to where i have mine hung. But I am just to lazy to get up and see if it is mine.

the next morning i get up and check my pack and find that the mouse had gotten into my toilet paper. I tear off all the chewed on paper and look deeper into to my pack and find a big ball of that very same paper. I reach down and grab the ball and toss it onto the ground close to the fireplace to use as a firestarter. It no sooner hits the ground than the squeaking starts. There were five little baby mice in the ball.

Well I do not like mice or rats so i raise my hiking boot high off the ground to rid the world of the little rodents, when almost everybody in the shelter let out a big gasp at the same time. I turned to look and said WHAT!!!. I swear six people said at the same time don't kill them.... I think to myself to bad so sad, and start lowering my foot. When all of a sudden off to my left i hear a little squeak. I look over on the rock wall and there sets the momma mouse on her hind legs begging for her babys lives. So being the killer i am, i picked one of the little fellows up and held it in front of her saying if you want it, get it out of here. Much to my supprise she took it out of my fingers and went outside someplace, she then came back for another until she had gotten them all.

When it was over I had gone from a zero to a hero

I still hate mice and rats.

[Manwich]

Never spent a night in a shelter, never will. Shelters suck.

The End.

yeah yeah yeah and I can pee further than you.

Oh, Look! Some hammocking threads! Let's go post in them about how we don't hammock and that they suck, because they'll obviously care.

[Jim Adams]

...did I ever tell you about the night at the Carl Newhall Shelter where the Phat Rat kept singing to me.." spill the wine, eat that squirrel" !

geek

[Dances with Mice]

This is copied from an old trip report from March 2000. Me and some Venture Scouts bicycled FS42 from Cooper Gap to Springer Mtn, climbed Springer and set up a tarp. I had a bike wreck on the way to Springer and injured my hand. The weather turns into a March storm and since the upper level of the Springer shelter was unoccupied we moved in there for the night. As the night went on other hikers showed up and moved in with us. That's the background....

This wasn't an official Venture trip, just two boys and myself scouting out the trip for a future activity.

Paul is my son, Nathan is his friend.

On with the story....

After supper everyone goes to bed but we stay up playing dominoes by flashlight until the late hour of 8 PM before we turn in. At 8:30 there’s suddenly an incredibly loud blood-curdling scream that instantly turns on every flashlight in the place. It looked like a WWII movie with the anti-aircraft lights searching tje slu for enemy war planes. Didn't bother me at all; I always wake up with my arms wrapped around a roof rafter. One of the guests upstairs, in fact the one sleeping right next to me, has developed leg cramps. Evidently quite painful leg cramps.

Now it’s a group project to get him to stretch and drink water and I dig out some Advil tablets. The cramps leave. All lights go back off. Half an hour later there’s another blood curdling scream in the dark right next to my elbow, but this time I only jump 3 feet high when it starts. After much moaning and groaning the cramps leave. But an hour later I woke up in the dark to yet another blood curdling scream. I start to think that sleeping on the ground under a tarp in winds with near hurricane-strength gusts and freezing rain is sounding like a really good idea.

Everyone survives the night. Our cramping partner has decided to call his AT quest quits. He wants to go back home to Las Vegas. I tell him we’d be glad to drop in off at the Greyhound station in Gainesville but first we have to bike back to the van. We pack up after breakfast and head down while I’m trying to figure out our schedule. 2 or 3 hours back to the van, slow going because of fog, wet conditions, and new found respect for rocky downhill roads. Half an hour drive back to Springer to pick up the victim. Half hour again to get back to paved roads in Dahlonega. Then a drive to Gainesville. This is going to make for a long day.

In the parking lot someone has just dropped off two hikers and is heading out. Putting on all the charm a man dressed in muddy nylon with a day-old beard and a bandaged hand can, I wrangle a hitch to my van. Our schedule is starting to look better. The boys agree to stay at the parking lot to guard the bikes and the backpacks of hikers going up to the Springer summit. Half an hour later I’m at my van and half an hour after that I’m back at the Springer parking lot. Which is now a crime scene. Someone had slashed two tires of each car in the lot that night. I hadn’t noticed when we walked down, I was more interested in the car that was leaving.

So when I pull into the parking lot there’s a county deputy police car with its blue lights flashing. And Nathan’s sitting in the back seat of the police car. Oh, good. That’s exactly what I always expect to find when I leave them alone for any length of time. Paul's faster, they've probably sent the dogs out after him. Nathan was just keeping warm, I find out later, just keeping warm and chatting with the deputy.

So I walk back up to the Springer summit to tell the evacuee that his chariot has arrived and to find Jason to tell him that if his truck is in the parking lot maybe he oughta walk down there and check on it.

Back at the van the boys have already packed the bikes and we’re ready to go. We re-trace yesterday’s ride, get back to civilization, stop for burgers in Dahlonega, then I drop the kids off before going to Gainesville to hunt down the Greyhound station I get home about 4:30.

So that was our trip. Just pretty much the same old stuff we always do.

[Magic Man]

And excerpt from Boo-Boo's TJ
“So here is my first great animal story (the dead moose in the Mahoosuc Notch was great but had been over hyped at least for us southbounders).
We try to do all our camp chores before going to bed so we can get going in the morning. This includes collecting and treating the water for the following morning's breakfast and hiking (at least for the first section of the day's hike). I use a Platypus water tank which is like a heavy duty ziplock bag with handles that holds 4 Liters of water and can stand upright. Most of the time it stands up on the ground and does not tip over (if it does the ziplock closure at the top does not hold and all the water spills out - it has happened once and got a lot of stuff wet).
Music Man was on water duty and had hung the water tank on a branch in a tree because there was no super flat space to stand it up. So I was the first up in the morning (not too surprising) and I was going to get water to make coffee. The walls of the water tank are clear and as I walked up to it I could see that the top had opened up and it looked like a leaf had fallen in, ok no big deal. I got closer and found that it was not a leaf but a dead mouse floating in the tank (not upside down, though). I announced loudly to Music Man that there was a mouse in my water tank. I don't think he totally believed me until he finally got out of his tent to check it out.
And after that, all three of us were up for the day, despite the very chilly weather. It did not help that the campsite was somehow placed in a sizeable ravine and thus prone to settling cold air at night. But it was town day and we were motivated. Needless to say, the water tank was placed on permanent decommission status, emptied by Hedgehog and he also volunteered to pack it out to town (I had wanted to bury it).”
Boo-Boo (ME>GA ’07)
http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=200636
Here's a photo of that mouse?
http://www.trailjournals.com/photos.cfm?id=251854

[superman]

And excerpt from Boo-Boo's TJ
“So here is my first great animal story (the dead moose in the Mahoosuc Notch was great but had been over hyped at least for us southbounders).
We try to do all our camp chores before going to bed so we can get going in the morning. This includes collecting and treating the water for the following morning's breakfast and hiking (at least for the first section of the day's hike). I use a Platypus water tank which is like a heavy duty ziplock bag with handles that holds 4 Liters of water and can stand upright. Most of the time it stands up on the ground and does not tip over (if it does the ziplock closure at the top does not hold and all the water spills out - it has happened once and got a lot of stuff wet).
Music Man was on water duty and had hung the water tank on a branch in a tree because there was no super flat space to stand it up. So I was the first up in the morning (not too surprising) and I was going to get water to make coffee. The walls of the water tank are clear and as I walked up to it I could see that the top had opened up and it looked like a leaf had fallen in, ok no big deal. I got closer and found that it was not a leaf but a dead mouse floating in the tank (not upside down, though). I announced loudly to Music Man that there was a mouse in my water tank. I don't think he totally believed me until he finally got out of his tent to check it out.
And after that, all three of us were up for the day, despite the very chilly weather. It did not help that the campsite was somehow placed in a sizeable ravine and thus prone to settling cold air at night. But it was town day and we were motivated. Needless to say, the water tank was placed on permanent decommission status, emptied by Hedgehog and he also volunteered to pack it out to town (I had wanted to bury it).”
Boo-Boo (ME>GA ’07)
http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=200636
Here's a photo of that mouse?
http://www.trailjournals.com/photos.cfm?id=251854

So no one tried to resuscitate the mouse? A little mouth to mouse might have done it.

[windex]

My husband and I went on a 4 day trip from Sam's Gap SOBO during spring break. We had our dog with us and tented that night near Flint Mtn. Shelter. There were a lot of boyscouts there and a few thru-hikers. We located our tenting spot about 30 feet from the shelter and started to chat with folks. I met "The General" who told us that he had found a food bag a few shelters back that someone had left and he was hoping to find the owner. We told him it wasn't ours.
We go ahead and head to bed in the tent. At around one in the morning, my dog starts growling and I hear someone rustling around outside our tent, since we were forced to tent near the trail. It is raining and the dude is shining his headlamp directly on our tent. I holler out, "who is it" The guy says something about a foodbag and if I have it. I say, no, you want the General... he is a couple tents down. This guy goes on to cuss his way down to the General, get him out of his tent to drop the foodbag from the bearbag that has everyone's food on it in the middle of the rainy night. By the time it was over, everyone in camp was up, even the boyscouts who had taken over the shelter. I found out that the guy's trailname is "The Jerk" and he only hikes at night. Thus, The General found his foodbag hanging on a tincan string thing in the previous shelter while The Jerk was sleeping behind the shelter during the day.
It was quite bizarre..... I hated for that to be one of my husband's first trail experiences with thru-hikers... but what can you do?

[Sarge]

I normally don't like shelters either, but I would stay in them occasionally under certain conditions such as if it was a decent shelter, it wasn't crowded, and the weather was real bad. Other than that I liked my tent much better. Here are a few interesting experiences either in shelters or around them.
- My wife and I were tenting by the Gooch Mtn shelter a couple of years ago and there was a group of about a dozen kids and adults in the shelter. In the middle of the night we heard a loud crash. One of the teenage boys had rolled off the loft and landed on the edge of the shelter floor. He was OK, but had a nice big bruise on his ribs.
- In the Smokies I was staying at the Russell Field shelter and someone tried to start a fire in the stone fireplace. The only problem was that the wind was blowing very fierce outside and the entire shelter got filled with smoke.
- At Brink Rd shelter in NJ some young kid came in with a full pack saying he had just been dropped off by his dad at Delaware Water Gap that morning. He was feeling sick, had bent hiking poles already, and a dead cell phone. He borrowed my phone, called his dad, and walked off to meet him. He had walked all day with a full pack and never even camped. Tough lesson learned.
- Was at the Mt Algo shelter in Conn during Tropical Storm Barry in 2007. About 5:00 in the morning we heard a loud crash behind the shelter. Three trees had crashed down around the privy, but never hit it. I'm glad nobody was in it or it would have scared the crap out of them - literally.
- At Hurd Brook shelter I was cleaning up after dinner. I was sitting in the middle of the floor and had my food bag by my leg. A mouse walked right over and stuck his head in my food bag! I normally leave them alone, but this one crossed the line. I grabbed my cookpot and whacked him!

[Manwich]

At Brink Rd shelter in NJ some young kid came in with a full pack saying he had just been dropped off by his dad at Delaware Water Gap that morning.

sucks for him. that's a 24mi day.