Thursday, June 10, 2010

An Appalachian Tale: Part 10

14 May 2010

Yin:  Today was another planned easy day.  We went to the next shelter , about six miles down the trail, called Cable Gap.  Even though the day was short it was made rough by a passing storm we had last night.  There were bugs everywhere!  We got through it though and made it to the shelter by about noon.  This place also had no bear cables.  After about an hour of trial and error (I got the chord tangled in the tree several times) we had a working pulley.  A few people passed through for lunch and put our fire out accidentally when they spilled their boiling water in it, so I had to reconstruct it.  I took the Sven saw and cut down a standing dead pine, and burned most of it.  There are two others staying at the Cable Gap shelter with Yang and I tonight.  One north and one south bounder.  Looking forward to reaching Fontana Dam tomorrow and the famous Fontana Dam "Hilton" shelter.  Early to bed, early to rise.

Yang:  Today was not a great day for hiking.  We think that the cold spell last week may have prevented insects from hatching for several days.  When it warmed back up, we think, they all hatched at once.  Add that to today's swampy muddy trail and ... well... it sucked.  Aside from that the past couple days have been very humid here.  Oh well.  When we arrived at the shelter we noticed that it (Cable Gap) also did not have bear cables.  Yin rigged up our pulley system and we were in business.  I cut up some logs and Yin built a very nice fire.  It was pretty much "by the book" perfect in construction so I took a picture of it.  A little bit later I noticed that Yin had dissapeared.  Soon after I noticed that, I heard a large crash down the hill.  Upon investigation I found that he had cut down a large dead pine.  It took a while to get cut up but we did it.  Staying with us tonight are a south-bound section hiker and a north-bound through hiker.  We've had fire and good conversation.  Now is time for bed.  Fontana here we come.

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