Troll's 2010 AT Journal

14 April 2010, Mollies Ridge Shelter
Today was a relatively easy day. I had a couple of views. The only issues I had today was some left knee pain and the damn nats. I would compare the nats to the black flies we have in Maine. They are very annoying and were not biting a few days ago, that all seemed to change today and they started biting. If they landed on you and you did now swat them off then they would bite.

I dropped off my back country permit at the Fontana Dam visitor’s center this morning. The box was so full that I had to force my permit into the box, and then I could not get it all the way into the box. They are not even emptying the box. It makes you wonder why we are wasting our time filling out the permits.

I stopped at Shuckstack Mountain fire tower for lunch. I was amaze at how high this tower is. We ate lunch in the top. I was scared going up because the place was really run down and the steps were made of wood and all dried up. Donna (my wife) you would have been freaking out and scared by just looking at it. Hopper sat on the roof and I was scared breathless just watching her because the roof was rotted out and had holes in it. All I could do was picture her falling to her death. Going down was worse than going up because some of the hand rails were missing. I went to grab for one of the missing rails once and it scared the daylights out of me.

I had a very large owl fly directly over me with a large wing span. It was white and fluffy. It was a snowy owl.

I am set up to sleep in the shelter tonight but I am in my hammock right now just to get away from the damn nats.

Here tonight are Snowman, Escargo, Shaken, Bizmark, Hopper, Chili, Pepper, Rob.