Reasons to avoid shelters

[Tin Man]

Here are ten reasons I avoid shelters. I am sure you have many of your own...

1. Sleeping with strangers is creepy
2. Sleeping with mice is disgusting
3. Sleeping with snorers is not sleeping
4. People come and go at different times interrupting your sleep or what you are doing
5. People tend to take up more room than they need
6. Large groups show up when you least expect it and most are whining, spoiled kids
7. People fart at will
8. Thru-hikers often think they are special and you need to make room for them, usually when there ain't none
9. Normally civilized folks in real life, have no manners in shelters
10. People think their dogs are welcome or if they ask, they think people will answer honestly

Do you open your house to just anyone walking by, I don't.

[NICKTHEGREEK]

Here are ten reasons I avoid shelters. I am sure you have many of your own...

1. Sleeping with strangers is creepy
2. Sleeping with mice is disgusting
3. Sleeping with snorers is not sleeping
4. People come and go at different times interrupting your sleep or what you are doing
5. People tend to take up more room than they need
6. Large groups show up when you least expect it and most are whining, spoiled kids
7. People fart at will
8. Thru-hikers often think they are special and you need to make room for them, usually when there ain't none
9. Normally civilized folks in real life, have no manners in shelters
10. Do you open your house to just anyone walking by, I don't

Hiker funk adds exponentially. Twice as many stinks 4 times as much

[FatMan]

There is only one reason for me to avoid shelters...Shelters Suck!

[Short Term]

1. Mice
2. Mice in the morning.
3. Mice at night.
4. Mice on the floor.
5. Mice on the roof.

...and you can guess what the bottom 5 are, right? MICE!!! At least other hikers don't keep you up all night scampering across the roof!

[Lone Wolf]

Here are ten reasons I avoid shelters. I am sure you have many of your own...

1. Sleeping with strangers is creepy
2. Sleeping with mice is disgusting
3. Sleeping with snorers is not sleeping
4. People come and go at different times interrupting your sleep or what you are doing
5. People tend to take up more room than they need
6. Large groups show up when you least expect it and most are whining, spoiled kids
7. People fart at will
8. Thru-hikers often think they are special and you need to make room for them, usually when there ain't none
9. Normally civilized folks in real life, have no manners in shelters
10. People think their dogs are welcome or if they ask, they think people will answer honestly

Do you open your house to just anyone walking by, I don't.

11. shelters are filthy and the floors are hard

[Gray Blazer]

A lot of them have holes in the roofs and will leak when raining making them not really good shelter. I can't believe some thrubees (I've heard of some) don't bring a tent and plan on sleeping in a shelter every night. Does that ever happen? Has anyone ever made it all the way only sleeping in shelters? My son ran into a guy who only carried trail mix and slept in a shelter every night.

[Yukon]

I think shelters are good to have on the trail in the case that someone truely NEEDS to have one. Me, I'll stick to tenting it

[Pedaling Fool]

A lot of them have holes in the roofs and will leak when raining making them not really good shelter. I can't believe some thrubees (I've heard of some) don't bring a tent and plan on sleeping in a shelter every night. Does that ever happen? Has anyone ever made it all the way only sleeping in shelters? My son ran into a guy who only carried trail mix and slept in a shelter every night.

I've known people that have done this for sections. One guy did it in the last part of Maine; he got caught in a rainstorm on the south side of the Kennebec, he planned to cross it but couldn't. He ended up sleeping under a guy that had a hammock.

[Marta]

A lot of them have holes in the roofs and will leak when raining making them not really good shelter. I can't believe some thrubees (I've heard of some) don't bring a tent and plan on sleeping in a shelter every night. Does that ever happen? Has anyone ever made it all the way only sleeping in shelters? My son ran into a guy who only carried trail mix and slept in a shelter every night.

I met a SOBO in '04 who had gone tentless since about Vermont. It wouldn't be all that hard to use shelters all the way on a SOBO hike. I only used my tent early on (July and Aug.) because of the bugs. I carried a tent the whole way, though. It was good exercise, I guess.

PS--The mouse issue pretty much goes away when the weather gets cold, too. Mice are not fools--they stay holed up in the warm little nests they've made with the pack towels and bandannas of earlier hikers.

[Tin Man]

One good thing about shelters... it saves the good tenting areas for people who know better.

[dessertrat]

11. shelters are filthy and the floors are hard

That's right: tent floors are much cleaner, and if you don't have a nice pad, pine needles or leaves are soft through your tent floor. (Try it sometime!)

[Jack Tarlin]

One other thing that folks don't like think about, never mind acknowledging:

Spending time in proximity to large numbers of unwashed strangers is a REALLY good way to get sick. Such things as colds, flus, fevers, intestinal bugs, etc. are all much easier to catch in these conditions.

While we're at it:

*Be leery of sharing food and drink with strangers, i.e. dipping into strange
pots or sharing water bottles. Most folks out there have a worse level of
personal hygeine than you do, and yours is probably pretty bad.

*Keep other people's hands out of your gorp or jerky bag. Unless of course
you enjoy people handling your food three minutes after they just wiped
their ass.

*Don't eat while reading shelter journals, or wash you hands after you do
for same reason as above.

*Carry hand sanitizer all the time and USE it. Most folks that get sick out
there get sick because of poor hygeine and sanitation, and not because
of bad water, etc.

*Avoid sleeping in shelters unless you have to. They tend to be filthy. You'll
sleep better in a tent and will certainly stay healthier.

[Short Term]

PS--The mouse issue pretty much goes away when the weather gets cold, too. Mice are not fools--they stay holed up in the warm little nests they've made with the pack towels and bandannas of earlier hikers.


I disagree, I spent a night at Sassafrass Gap Shelter when the temps were in the teens and we still had visitors. Or should I say the mice had visitors. All in all, just another reason to avoid shelters!

[bigcranky]

Do you open your house to just anyone walking by, I don't.

Huh. The shelter isn't my house, so there is no real comparison. It's a place for sharing the trail and the experience with other hikers.

1. Meeting other hikers with varied interests and backgrounds is cool.
2. My bivy/cover has mesh over the upper body and head. No mice.
3. One work: Earplugs. Maybe that's two words.
4. I sleep like a log.
5. Sometimes true. So?
6. Large groups and whining kids are also allowed to use the trail and the shelters. Teach by example.
7. Yeah, I do that. Nobody notices on account of the hiker funk.
8. They will eventually learn. Or not.
9. No, those people (and I haven't met that many) don't have any manners in the "real" world either.
10. So answer truthfully.

Maybe my experience is flawed because I mostly hike in cold weather. Fewer hikers, no mice. But there are plenty of times that I've been happy to get to a shelter at the end of the day. It's just another part of the A.T. experience. (And yes, I always carry my own shelter, too.)

[rafe]

This anti-shelter cluster4uk is truly a Whiteblaze fetish. I guess the Kennebec thread ran out of steam, Tin Man needed to dredge up another crap topic to hash over. ZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzzz.

[Jack Tarlin]

Instead of insulting other people and their threads, Terrapin, why not start one of your own?

Or better yet, if a subject doesn't interest you, there's always another easy option: Don't join the conversation.

[Tin Man]

This anti-shelter cluster4uk is truly a Whiteblaze fetish. I guess the Kennebec thread ran out of steam, Tin Man needed to dredge up another crap topic to hash over. ZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzzz.

I am not sure why you continually think folks are just trying to stir things up. We were talking shelters and dogs in another thread and superman asked if there was a thread about about avoiding shelters. I intended to post a link to an old discussion, but did not find one quickly. With all the new members, I thought it might be helpful to explain why some of us avoid shelters. So, if you have nothing pro or con to say about staying in shelters, then you are the one stirring things up.

[rafe]

Because, Jack (and TinMan), the newbies deserve to know that the anti-shelter stuff is pretty unique to WhiteBlaze. In 35 years of hiking, I'd never heard this kind of talk till I arrived at WhiteBlaze -- and Whiteblaze is not the first online hiking forum that I've been part of.

[Tin Man]

Because, Jack (TinMan), the newbies deserve to know that the anti-shelter stuff is pretty unique to WhiteBlaze. In 35 years of hiking, I'd never heard this kind of talk till I arrived at WhiteBlaze -- and Whiteblaze is not the first online hiking forum that I've been part of.

Then state your opinion on shelters. That is what the thread is about.

[rafe]

Then state your opinion on shelters. That is what the thread is about.

No thanks, your bait isn't appealing just now. Some other time, maybe. You may correctly infer that I disagree with the opening premise of the thread.