21 hours in the Carter Gap shelter

An abbreviated retelling of the events of Sunday, March 21

11:30 a.m.

I get to the shelter, nestled in a thicket of trees and rhododendrons at 4,500 feet elevation, after a hard-charging, 3-mile hike from Beech Creek Gap. The Mist of Cold  Death has already descended ahead of schedule. The forecast calls for Thunderstorms in the afternoon. Three other hikers are there. One, Allgood, of Kentucky, has his FM radio on the table tuned to NPR in readiness for a weather report. "Wait, Wait! Don't Tell Me!" plays.

Three hikers who also camped at Beech Creek Gap, Denver, Dufus and Pebbles, show up and settle in. After an hour or so, I break my sleeping bag out and slide in to get warm. The writing's on the wall.

"I think I'm done," I say, because I don't want to summit Albert Mountain [elev. 5,250 ft.] in a T-storm. I can kind of tell that the other hikers are thinking the same thing. Nevertheless, Allgood and four other hikers head out, while the three I mentioned earlier remain and cook lunch.

Afternoon

[Interior of the Carter Gap Shelter, March 21. My sleeping bag is the orange one.]

I play with my phone, see that the weather says the T-storms aren't due until evening now. Denver and Pebbles string up a tarp along the front of the shelter. As I nap, more and more people find their way to the shelter and mill about on the other side of the tarp to get out of the cold rain. Some pitch tents, a couple claim shelter spots.

Around 5 p.m.

From force of habit, I cook food amid a collection of hikers shuffling around the elevated table in the shelter vestibule. The rain and wind whip around the shelter; I block the wind with a laminated house map. Eating temporarily breaks the lethargy of waiting for night to fall.

Night

A hiker arrives in the evening and sets up underneath the shelter, where a wood platform parallels the shelter floor, because the shelter is too full. Several other people are tenting nearby.

Around 5:30 a.m.

A phone alarm goes off in the shelter. It lasts ten minutes and wakes everyone. I get up to see if I can't squelch it; it's in the very bottom of a pack belonging to someone tenting. The alarm goes away on its own as I'm contemplating tearing everything out of the pack to get to it. I crawl back into my bag.

About 20 minutes later

It goes off again. Anger in the shelter.

"Somebody's going to find their pack in the privy," someone says.

Two hours later

I wake up and see the snow on the ground, like grits in the bowls of dead leaves. I've made a decision: I'm going to get up, get out and make it to Franklin - 16 trail miles and a hitch away - by later that afternoon. Before I leave I distribute the contents of my water bucket, which Denver fetched yesterday. The water is singeing to the skin it's so cold.

I'm the first hiker out. As I round the bend I give a final look back at Carter Gap Shelter, my chance home for 21 hours. Every step north is victory.