I awoke to temps in 20s again. My first night sleeping in a shelter was ok. There must have been 20 of us in the shelter. We were crammed in like sardines in a can. I stayed fairly warm in my sleeping bag surrounded by other hikers on both sides of me and more on the platform above me.
We all emerged from our cocoons and pushed our way through the tarp door that protected us from the cold wind the night before. There were some deer at our campsite that morning so I snapped some photos. I was up first and got a fire going outside. The others joined me slowly but surely around the campfire to warm up and eat breakfast. We discussed our plans for the day and the weather that was in the forecast. It was supposed to start snowing around 10am.
My original plan was to split up the total distance to my pick up spot in 15 mile days. But for one reason or another, like stopping early at a shelter because I knew several people there, or it simply getting too late in the day, I was behind my plan. Which meant I needed to hike even further the last day. So I needed to hike 18 miles to New Found Gap today. Crossing the highest point on the entire AT as well…Clingman’s Dome.
I checked my phone and got a message from my driver telling me she could get me at Clingman’s Dome in 12 miles instead of 18. That was good news. But then checked my other message she left shortly after telling me that road wasn’t opened yet so we’d need to stick to our original plan of 18 miles.
A robin landed on a post nearby. I took some photos and remember a young day hiking looking at me like “dude it’s just a robin”. She didn’t realize we had been hiking for weeks and hadn’t really seen much wildlife at all. So this was kind of a big deal.
I packed up and hit the trail saying farewell to my hiking buddies. I needed to get a jump on the day to make sure I reached my destination in time. Sure enough around 10:30am I started seeing a few snow flurries. Only a few though. It stayed pretty all day with just a few snow flurries here and there.
I stopped at the next shelter for a quick snack. I only had a sugar free protein bar for breakfast. I had some beef jerky and another bar for lunch. Cushy life, spinner, trigger and CoCo all stopped for lunch too. CoCo wasn’t doing well. He was sweating badly and it was really cold. He was shivering uncontrollably. His plan was to stay in a shelter that night and he was concerned. I told him I had a ride scheduled and asked him if he wanted to join me. He did. The father and 3 sons arrived just as we all were leaving. They planned to stay at that shelter for the night so they could see Clingman’s Dome in better weather tomorrow. That turned out to be a great plan.
The rest of us hit the trail again. As the day went on the weather got worse. It was really snowing now. It was pretty though. It was dry and just bounced off us. It was starting to stick to the ground though so we had to be careful walking. We finally reached the top but there was so much fog and snow coming down we couldn’t see anything. We snapped a few photos and continued down the mountain.
Another 7 miles to go. The other side of the mountain had already been hit with the snow. And to make things worse, the snow from days before had melted, and then refroze, and this ice was hidden under the snow on the trail. So we cautiously clambered our way downhill.
There was a side road leading from Clingman’s Dome down to New Found Gap. We could take it, it would be easier, but we’d need to come back later to re-hike the part of the trail we’d miss. So we decided to stick to the trail. It was all supposed to be downhill anyway, right?
Everyone was behind me as we went down. Feeling rushed I slipped on the ice falling backwards on all fours. I caught myself before landing on my butt and slid a few feet. I got up and carried on. This happened again not too much longer after the first fall. This time I landed hard on my butt and wrist smack the hard ice. It hurt but I was okay. I decided to let the others go ahead of me. CoCo ended up falling several times, and I believe the others did as well.
I kept checking on CoCo to make sure he wasn’t still cold and sweaty. Since we were moving he was warm and doing better.
It wasn’t all downhill at all. There were quite a few inclines. I noticed I was really getting fatigued. I was really struggling on the uphills. I had no energy. My city life diet wasn’t working out here at all. Sugar free food, no carbs, all meat, doesn’t cut it when your consistently hiking 15 miles and burning thousands of calories a day. And this was the worst place to come to this realIzation.
CoCo gave me some MnMs and trail mix. Ironically it started out me looking after CoCo and here we were several hours later he was looking after me. I barely had the energy to chew the trail mix. But the snacks helped with my energy levels almost immediately. We still had several miles to go though. Were we going to make it?
I had a toboggan on and the whole side of my face and beard and head on one side was covered with snow and ice. CoCo kept asking me if I was ok. He started asking me silly simple questions to see how I’d respond. To make sure hyperthermia wasn’t setting in. I knew what he was doing and responded as such “dude I’m fine”:)
Cushy, Trigger and Spinner got ahead of us as we stopped for water and food. I found out later they left a note for us on the trail saying they were taking the side road the rest of the way down. In our hurrying we didn’t see it. With about a few miles to go a guy by the name of Luke caught up to us. He was hiking alone. He saw our foot prints and was trying to catch us. He didn’t have much battery left in his phone or service so he was hoping we might be heading off the mountain and he could ride with us. He was in luck. Or so we thought he was…
We finished the last few miles together arriving at the parking lot at New Found Gap. We were all excited to get out of the snow and wind, get a warm meal and hot showers. We looked around for our ride. She was nowhere to be found. I checked my phone and had a few messages. They closed the road right when our driver got there. I called her. She repeated what she said in her message. We thought we could walk down the road to where she was. It was too far. I told her I had a funeral to get to the next day. She said she was sorry there was nothing she could do.
So here we were stranded in the middle of New Found Gap parking lot, completely covered in snow, the wind howling all around us, with no where to go. The next shelter was 3 miles away. We noticed there were public bathrooms so we ran over to check to see if they were open. They were. We were in luck. If you could call sleeping in a public bathroom luck…
It was surprisingly warm. We unpacked our gear, rolled out our sleeping pads and bags, cooked a little dinner, talked about our day, and got to know Luke a little. He did 25 miles that day. He was cool. We enjoyed getting to know him. We were all exhausted though so we went to sleep pretty early (as always). We stayed in the women’s room. I’m not sure why. But the next day we were happy we did so. I’ll share why in my next post ?
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