Mouse Hang at Blood Mountain
Wild Boars and No Water
I got up and my mouth was so dry I was choking on my tongue. I didn't realize they had an air dryer running all night to keep condensation down from the hikers' gear. It properly dried everything including my salivary glands and sinuses right through to my eye sockets. Luckily, I discovered no holes in my pack so the cats had done their jobs well. We got over to the Walasi Yi outfitter and picked up a ton of food. This place was built back in Roosevelt’s Conservation Corps days and was saved from demolition in the 1970’s but some tree-huggers saved it and now it’s privately owned and it is also the only place on the entire AT where the trail passes through a building. There was a pack scale by the front door and my pack weighed 55 lbs after food and water even though we’ve been steadily dropping gear off at post offices along the trail. We sent home some more stuff, ran into a guy named Billy and picked up a few necessaries. Food selection was tough. We spent way too much time jawjackin’ and eating hamburgers and stuff so Doc went ahead (about an hour ahead) while we deliberated over pop tarts and ramen noodles and the various caloric values of all foods versus the weight and so on. You should have seen the faces of the people around us as we dickered over tuna and Ritz or pre-made Fettuccine Alfredo. We finally made it out of The outfitter at Walasi-Yi and ate breakfast back at the hostel where we heated up frozen barbecue sandwiches in the microwave, once we headed out on the trail it looked like rain and we donned our rain gear. It was a grueling day, our longest yet.
As I was hiking down a particular stretch in Cold Springs, we came upon a section where the earth was torn apart; like some mad Appalachian farmer had dragged one of those roto-tillers up the mountains and went to town on the wilderness. At first I thought it was the work of some kind of tractor or something yet I couldn't understand how the hell it had gotten up there. The footpath to these mountains seems impenetrable by modern machinery. It was crazy. It was almost like I could hear the earth screaming in protest at the carnage and destructions; however, the saplings and trees were relatively undisturbed. The leaves were torn up and the earth was all turned over. Everything but the trees and some plants had been torn up. I was in a kind of surreal daze a few minutes later when I was startled back to consciousness as ten or twelve HUGE brown monsters ran uphill across the path about a hundred yards ahead of us. I abruptly halted as my mind was trying to figure out what they looked like and I realized it was wild boar! "Holy SHIT! BOARS!" I yelled. My brothers were behind me and hadn't seen them. I didn’t know if they even understood the danger of wild pigs. I was pointing down the trail and telling them what happened when suddenly, another ten boars, a little smaller, ran across in the same place! It was terrifying! One boar will kill a pack of pit bulls in a few minutes. 20 or so Boars running around as we weak little humans lumbered along with cumbersome packs was horrific. I’ve rarely felt so vulnerable in my life. They are vicious attackers and I was totally freaked out. I yelled, "Get out of here pigs!" and kept moving, nervously looking from side to side and banging my trekking poles while looking for a good tree to climb in case they came back. I warned my brothers to keep an eye on the trees so you would have your escape planned. Then an epiphany: The boars are what tore up the earth! It was everywhere! I couldn't believe the destruction they caused. WOW! I had a newfound respect for these powerful animals. We cautiously hustled along and warned everyone we saw.
The Sterilizing instrument we brought to use on our water died later that day and we were out of luck. We got in to Blue Mountain Shelter hungry and wet with no clean water but there were already a bunch of fellas there and one of them lent us his Steri-pen. More rain was coming but we all fit in the shelter and sat by a campfire until everyone retired. The mice were everywhere and we hung our packs with some 550 cord and cut up Doug's Frisbee to make a mouse stopper on the cord. I hung my hammock from the shelter beams to stay out of the rain. I realized that the thing I took a picture of at Blood Mountain which I thought was a bell was actually a Mouse stopper innovation called a “Mouse Hang”. I'll post the picture later. We need to get some of those...
David AKA "Jukebox"
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