April 21

Talkin' smack

KB had arrived at the shelter last night too, and we headed out in the morning.  No real agenda today.  Just get up and walk, and see where the day takes us.  The day started off great with a bunch of ups and downs, and we got to a shelter for lunch, after about 8 miles.  KB headed out a few minutes before me, and said he'd meet me up at the top of the huge climb ahead, where there was a lookout tower.  There were already 5 people in this 6 person shelter, due to the weather forecast of rain and cold.  No sooner had I left the shelter, the sky opened up and started pelting me with cold, wet rain.  It then started to turn to hail.  Again.  Hooray.  I missed the side trail for the tower, and as I rounded a corner, the structure came into view, but I wasn't going back.  I thought about it though.  Maybe I could sleep up there.  But what if it didn't have a roof?  Oh well.  I caught up to KB and we slogged up to an intersection with the AT white blazes going up to the right, and a blue blazed "bad weather trail" going off to the left.  Of course we took the white blazes.  I can't miss a single one, right?  Haha.  So we climbed up the rocky trail over Firescald Knob.  I'm sure the views from this rocky scramble would have been amazing on a nice day.  But all I got was rain and fog, with about 50 feet of visibility.  In some places the trail was hard to find.  I second guessed myself many times, but never got off track.  A few not so nice words were uttered.  Fortunately, I was able to flip my mood like a switch.  I took it on as a challenge.  I started talking smack to the trail.  "Ok, so that's how you're going to be?  Up and over these rocks?  No blaze in sight?"  No problem.  I got this.  We get over that mountain, and lost a ton of time in the process.  Jerry Cabin shelter was just a couple miles away, and we were soaked to the bone.  Pulled in around 545pm, and the 6 person shelter had 8 people in it.  Sigh.  The shelter had a fireplace too.  Sigh.  Determined not to set up tents in the rain, we pushed on to the next shelter at Flint Mountain, 5.9 miles away.  The trail then played the I'm going to cross a random dirt road every 5 minutes game on us.  Thanks to the CMC, the trail was blazed well, and we didn't loose our direction.  There was a nice meadow at one point, which I'm sure looked really pleasant any other day.  Not today though, just dark, wet, dreary, walking through a rain cloud.  We rolled into the shelter, covering the distance in an impressive 2 hours and 15 minutes.  Everyone was already in their bags, but we got a spot in the shelter!  Hung everything out to 'dry'.  Changed into my only warm, dry clothes I had left, cooked dinner, and went to bed.  21.3 miles.  In the rain and hail.  Just about 1% of the whole trail.  The trail put the beat down on me today, but I got back up, and put a beat down on the trail.

Pink Lady's Slipper orchid.