Tray Mountain AT Shelter — Hotel in Clayton

My son and I were hiking the AT 8 years ago and got to Tray Mountain shelter about 1 hour before sunset. We were the only ones there and with it being a good chance of rain that night, we just set up the tent in the shelter. Right after going to bed, we could both see lights and thought some other hikers approaching, but we never heard anything. The lights appeared to be 50' or so away and moving. We looked out of the tent and the 💡 went away, only to return a few minutes later. This went in for +/- 30 minutes. We never heard anything, and trust me, we were being quiet and listening. We finally fell asleep from being so tired. We awoke right at daybreak, thinking we might see someone, but there was nothing. Very...

This small Appalachian Trail Shelter provides some stunning views. That’s our yellow tent in the foreground and that was the view we saw in the morning - absolutely stunning but the sunup was even better; unfortunately, you can’t see it because we were stunned and didn’t take any photos. There were bear cables, a fire pit, and a privy. The water source is about .1 behind the shelter and down the mountain. The nighttime views on this thing were gorgeous - full stars, mountains in the background, and city lights on the floor of the valley. ...

Water source is not very close, go get it before dark. Privy's is convenient, I used it to clean myself before slipping into my sleeping bag. The wind on top was strong in the night and very noisy. We heard mouse or mice walking around us and chewing something during first few hours, next morning we found one mouthpiece was chewed up and my collapsible bowl also had a open hole. There's no open area to view sunrise,but it's still amazing by watching it through...