Rain

On the 21st we left Hiawassee and hiked a heroic 4.4 miles to Plumorchard shelter. The next day was more exciting as we finally made it out of Georgia and into North Carolina. As a welcome, we had two really steep climbs totaling about 1,000 feet. It was pretty difficult and yet another wake up as to how hard the trail can be. North Carolina is no joke. That same night we spent the night on the top of Standing Indain Mountain at 5,498 feet. The view from the top was great but the sunset that evening was even better. Neither of our point and shoot cameras could do it justice. The next morning we woke up in a cloud and hiked down almost as far as we had come up the previous day. The visibility was bad for the first half of the day. At the bottom, the trail was very disorienting winding through the mountains. It ended up going south for a good distance. The day ended with a very technical half mile climb that was almost straight up in certain sections. It was tough at the end of the day but also a lot of fun. We hurried down from the top the last half mile because it started to rain and we spent the night in the shelter for the first time rather than in our tent.

The next morning we left the shelter at 8am and hiked 10 miles by 11:30am. I have no idea how we went that fast but we did. It was probably because we had decided the previous night that we wanted to get a ride into Framklin, NC to get pizza. Jon and I along with two other hikers that we have been hiking with easily caught a shuttle into town, got our much wanted pizza for lunch, and hitch hiked back to the trail. We hiked about 4 more miles to Siler Bald shelter where we spent a cold night. It got down to about 25 degrees and everything was covered with frost in the morning. After packing up our frozen gear and hearing the weather forecast we decided we would take a long day to try to avoid rain the following day. In the end we ended up going 18.5 miles for our longest day yet. The terrain was very up and down and the last 6 miles or so were exhausting but somehow we made it.

Yesterday, the 26th, we hiked the last 6 miles into the NOC, an outdoor and kayaking center in the middle of nowhere where we spent last night in a hostel. Despite our best efforts to avoid the rain it came early and we got pretty wet but we're dry today thanks to laundry services and we're ready to hike uphill for 7 straight miles--I think. We'll probably stay at a shelter at the 7 mile point and do a longer day tomorrow. We should be at Fontana Dam by Wednesday. Look for another update around then.

-Dave