Bud and Vicki Hogan's 1996 Appalachian Trail Journey
May 26
1 mile past Blue Mt. Shelter to Sassafras Gap...........................................11 miles
Rather uneventful hike, so far. Fairly warm day. Late afternoon a welcome sprinkle came and cooled us off. We put our pack covers on and sang as we hiked, not knowing what was about to happen. It started raining harder, so we took out our very cheap rain jackets, put them on, and hiked on. On in ingnorance, on to Sassafras Gap.
The rain came down harder, and harder, and harder, as we walked into the gap. We put our packs down and sat on a log. That is when the deluge hit. The trails became a torrent, flooding the gap and turning the spot where we sat into a pond. Our packs sat in 6 inches of water, and the water was well up on our boots, and this was the best place to sit. Thunder and lightening all around us. Even a light, small, pea size hail started to pelt us.
We were already soaked to the bone and the rain was getting colder. I started to get chilled and knew that I would catch pneumonia. Here we were out in the middle of nowhere with no help in sight, caught out in a driving rain storm, thunder and lightening all around. What were we doing here? Were we totally out of our minds? This was insane! I got up and reached in my water soaked pack for the emergency blanket that I had brought, huddled together with my wife, and covered ourselves with it.
During this time, two other hikers had walked down the flooded trail, took off their packs, put on their great looking rain gear and sat with their backs against a tree. It amazed me how calm and comfortable these guys seemed to be when I wasn't sure that my wife and I would survive the next few hours. When the rain let up, our two companions picked up and off they went, as if this was a normal occurance. (We would discover later that it was normal).
But this was our first outdoor encounter with lightning and thunder and flooded trails so we decided to set up our tent in a spot that hadn't flooded during the last 30 minutes, get out of our wet clothes and try to keep from getting sick. We had fears of not getting the tent set up before the flood started again and the thought of having to live in a soaked tent for the next several days didn't really appeal to me. We got lucky and got the tent set up. It stayed nice and dry. Just getting out of our wet clothes and getting warm again seemed to make the last hour much more bearable. We had survived.
We cooked Shrimp Newburgh for dinner and had Cappucino for desert. Our gourmet meal in the middle of nowhere, inside the safety of our dry tent. We both needed that. Vicki writes "Bud sure was my hero. He never looked so good to me as he did that night. After weathering this bad weather crisis, we both knew we could make it through anything else we came across. I was and still am a self-confessed wimp."
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