01 October

01 October
From: Mountain Crossings hostel
To: Blue Mountain shelter
Mileage: 18.8
Weather: Cool to mild, cloudy to sunny

I didn't have a restful night at the Mountain Crossings hostel. It was a bit stuffy despite fans and dehumidifiers, but worse was the intermittent squeaks and scrambling sounds of rats in the paneling right beside my head. I realized my food bag was open on the floor and I hadn't opened the new rodent-resistant Ursack, yet, so I put the bag on the unoccupied top bunk and rolled it shut. I slept a little once I felt that the rats might stay on their side of the wall.

After eating a breakfast sandwich I bought the day before, I left around 8am. I almost visited a campsite that Beat Rap recommended for the view, but it wasn't close enough to the trail. I did stop at Low Gap shelter, which was down an access trail blocked by a couple fallen trees and not clearly blazed. I had a snack and made an entry in the log.

I nearly walked into a large spider web across the trail, complete with large spider in the middle. Unfortunately, I had to knock it down to get past.

Then I stepped right next to a 4 foot rattlesnake on the trail just before Poor Mountain. The snake moved its head when my foot went down and I saw it, did a very fast two-step down the trail before looking back and recognizing it was a rattler. Apparently the snake was as startled as I and did not have time to rattle a warning. I'm glad it showed restraint. I started paying more attention to the trail.

It was a nice gentle grade trail after Low Gap, following an old mountain road.

I passed and briefly chatted with the SoBo hiker and his parents that I met at Neel Gap as they headed for the Low Gap shelter for the night.

Just as I was getting tired, the trail became uneven and rocky for the last couple of miles to the Blue Mountain shelter. The shelter was very nice with a view on the ridge. Two women from the Raleigh NC area were already there on a section hike to Springer Mountain. They warned me about a hornets nest where they had been stung just past the summit of Rocky Mountain, the next peak north on the trail.

It was a cool night and very peaceful, despite a previous comment from Beat Rap that bears frequented the area.