Life After the Smokies

Day 31 4/22/17  Over a month on the trail

• Miles traveled: 10
• Shelter: tent at Brown Gap
• High point: getting camp set up before the storms
• Low Point: storms

It was a pretty uneventful day. We got out of the hostel and headed up the trail. It was a bit of a climb out but it's expected at this point. Everywhere you need to go is UP.
We did hike over Snowbird Mountain and got a great view back to the Smokies and we headed north.

Ups and downs, cloudy weather with rain on and off. We hiked until we found a place to set up camp before the rain comes through.

Day 32  4/25/17

• Miles traveled: 20.1
• Shelter: tent near Deer Spring Shelter in a very large puddle
• High point: getting to Max Patch
• Low Point: literally this huge puddle we are sleeping in

What a day. It rained all night long last night. You begin to think "surely the sky can't hold any more rain" and then it continues. It's mentally exhausting.
When we left Brown Spring Gap this morning.. in the rain... with a very wet tent... we did not know how many miles we were going to hike. We knew it was going to rain most of the day and we knew Hot Springs was over 25 miles away. 😐
We hiked like it was our job (pretty much is anyways). We hiked in the rain, through high creeks, and down the muddiest trail we have seen. Russ even slipped and bent his hiking pole.

Eventually we reached Max Patch, a NC bald with supposedly 360 views in which we have been looking forward to since the beginning of our trip. It was a complete white out with a torrential downpour. Sideways wind and rain coming from all directions and pretty darn cold gusts coming across the bald. We knew as soon as we got up there that we needed to get down fast. We hiked as fast as could to the safety of the forest but not without picking up some rain soaked trail magic left at the bald for crazy thru-hikers like us.

Russ at the top with the trail magic.

The geological marker at the top.

We made it back to the less windy but just as wet forest. We knew we had to keep moving because we lose too much body heat when we stop. Rain gear isn't really there to keep you dry, it's there to keep you warm. If you stop moving the cold from the rain immediately sets in.
And that's what brought us 20 miles. The impact of the 20 miles on our bodies brought exhaustion. We are a little over 4 miles from Hot Springs and it's pouring. It was getting late and we didn't have any plans set up for Hot Springs so we decided to set up the wet tent in the rain. Luckily for us, we found a flat spot for our tent. It instantly turned into a puddle and is well on its way to becoming a pond. ☹️ We are mostly dry and are hoping our air mattresses will float enough that we can remain dry until the morning when we can reach Hot Springs.
The thing about rain is... It can't last forever. Eventually we will be dry again, right?