I completely agree with CowHead.
Sorry, I just wanted to type a sentence once in my life that no one else ever had.
I completely agree with CowHead.
Sorry, I just wanted to type a sentence once in my life that no one else ever had.
Thank you all for the feedback - educational and entertaining!!! So for those who have slept in shelters, what (if any) strategies have you seen deployed to keep mice off of the body? Zip up sleeping bag entirely? Wear some mesh thing around the head? Do the mice crawl into the sleeping bags or just crawl over the outside? And lastly in summer time when it is warm at night and you sleep on top of bag is it worse with no protection wrapped around you?
The only time I had a mouse touch me was when my butt was against the wall. It crawled over my butt on the outside of my bag. It freaked me out and I screamed.
Mice generally stick close to the walls. They generally just want some food and don't want to bother people (like most animals). The easiest way to avoid them touching you is sleep head out, in the middle, or as others have stated, sleep somewhere else.
It's good the shelters are there for those who seem to need them, or maybe just want them. Many trails don't have any shelters at all, while the AT is blessed with over 200 of them.
But as y'all can read, there are a bunch of folks here—among them a high percentage of more experienced backpackers—who will sleep in one only under drastic conditions if then. The reasons expressed are valid IMHO.
HYOH.
Shelters on trails are the very opposite of Leave No Trace.
"Let's leave no trace of our being here, but first let's build these huts."
I can't understand WANTING to sleep with vermin.
Mice will go where mice want to go. They live to torture hikers.
Are mice your only shelter-related concern? What about snoring, farting, barfing, human- and animal-derived disease, loud unpacking/packing/conversations/cooking/drinking/drug use late at night or early in the morning, or the often filthy conditions?
Follow my logic for 1 sec. Say you were a city planner for a village of 1000, in Sim-city. If your goal was to keep as much of the area as pristine as possible, would you set all the citizens loose to make a home wherever they felt like? Or would you concentrate them in as small an area as possible, say in a high-rise?
I have onle section hiked so far, about 750 mi. Every shelter I come to it seems no one wants to tent until no chose becouse the shelter is full. Shelters have all the problems that have been talked about, but you can not beat the convience of, get up pack a dry bag and start hiking. the times that I had to tent I was 15 to 20 min. longer geting on the trail, and many times everything was wet. Say what you want, but by the time you reach VA. you will be in a shelter when its raining or you get in late.
I've often thought the shelters should be eliminated. Then have a park bench every mile or so. The benches would be great places to sit down and rest or have a snack or take a snooze. After a few years tent sites would probably appear around some of the benches. Maybe wfi and licensed massage therapists too.