Day 22: 12.6 miles hiked (trail mile 223.4)
We hit the trail by 8:45 this morning. It’s nice not needing an alarm out here. If we tent camp the sun wakes us up. If we shelter camp, we are sure to be woken up by other hikers rustling and deflating pads. Gandalf has a dumb joke on the ready every morning to break the solemn silence of focused packing.
We covered six miles before noon, keeping up with Rocket Man and fueled by good conversation, and took a small diversion to visit Charlie’s Bunion, a popular overlook point in the Smokies that is accessible in a day hike from Newfound Gap. We were rewarded with a fantastic view.
Rocket Man and Chris
We ate lunch at another overlook and continued to Tri-Corner Shelter, trying to beat the rain. We got spit on a bit but made it into camp around 4:30 with plenty of time to eat dinner, brush our teeth, and get our bear bags hung before the downpour started at 7pm.
Gandalf made a fire—very impressive since all the wood was damp—and we sat around the fire with him and 3 solo female hikers: Dance Party, Spring, and Ramen. The Curator DMed a short D&D session which sounded awesome, and Bug careened right off the trail and into the shelter mere seconds before the skies opened up and the entire shelter break out into a welcoming cheer!
Ramen, Spring, and Dance Party
Chris received his trail name this evening, too! Snapshot started calling him Ranger Chris, or Ranger for short. Snapshot is from Georgia and has a distinct southern drawl so Ranger Chris phonetically sounds a bit like “Rayengerr Chriyess”.
There are maybe 18 of us crammed into this two-level shelter (not two stories but two deep shelves) pad to pad. Tonight is our first night on the lower level of the shelter, and it is super awkward climbing into the slot as it is very narrow and one cannot sit up straight. Once inside it’s nice and cozy. It is raining ferociously outside and we are all very grateful for this solid shelter.
Day 23: 14.6 miles hiked (trail mile 238)
The wind and rain roared against the shelter all night long and didn’t let up in the least the next day. The storm drowned out all other sounds and made for a good night’s sleep. In debriefing with other hikers about how the night went, it turns out every single woman who snuck around the side of the shelter for a middle-of-the-night pee in the pouring rain managed to smack our heads in the same low-hanging spot of the roof as we tried to stay under the tiny overhang of awning to keep from being in the worst of the downpour.
We donned our rain gear, and people popped out of the shelter and disappeared into the heavy wall of rain one by one. The trail was a torrent of ankle-deep water for the first four miles of the day. Our feet stayed dry for the first 10 minutes or so and then we gave into it and just trudged through the stream. It’s days like this that are the reason most thruhikers opt for quick-drying trail-runners rather than heavy duty waterproof boots. A couple hours in the sun will dry out most lightweight trail runners and insoles whereas waterlogged waterproof boots just turn into a heavy, wet nightmare for the next couple days.
As we were hiking with Bug over one mountain crest, the clouds broke suddenly, and we were rewarded with a fleeting view of a rainbow over the valley below. We stopped at Cosby Knob shelter around midday at the eighth mile of the day. Since the sun had come out, we took this opportunity to dry out our shoes and socks and enjoyed a Backpacker Pantry meal before heading back out for the second half of the hike.
While removing our shoes and socks to dry them out during lunch we discovered that our Sealskin waterproof socks kept our feet dry during the morning even though our shoes were drenched. Amazing! Although we thought our socks had been breached what we had been feeling was only the cold of the water sloshing inside our shoes.
In the afternoon we took a 1.2 mile round trip detour to Mt Cammerer, an octagonal fire tower built in the 1930’s. It was worth the extra mile, and it felt right to end our time in the Smokies with another fire tower to mark the descent, as Shuckstack had marked our ascent.
Shortly after making our way back to the trail the sky began to grow dark and spit on us again so we hiked as fast as possible over the last few miles to our final shelter of the Smokies, Davenport Gap Shelter. We arrived within minutes of the heavy rains and hopped onto the second level next to Spots and Snapshot, who we have bunked next to the past few nights and have gone so far as to save us a spot a couple times.
This shelter has no bear cables, no good trees for bear bagging and has a chain link fence running across the front of the shelter from floor to ceiling with a gate that locks, so we will be sleeping with our food tonight. The only concern is the mice (The Dream has already spotted a couple) so we all hung our food inside the shelter in hopes of making the food more of a challenge for mice to access.
It has been fun, and necessary, to experience the shelters in these mountains, but we will be transitioning back to our tent as we are now returning to lower elevations and can once again camp wherever we like. Tomorrow we will hike one mile before we are officially out of Smokey Mountain National Park. We will deposit the other half of our Smokies permits in the box on the other side. Permits require that you exit the Smokies within 10 days of entering. If you don’t deposit the other half of your slip within those 10 days supposedly someone will contact your emergency contact.
It will have taken us just over six days to hike the mountain range from the southern to the northern entrance of the park. It’s a great feeling and we are in awe of the power of this place.
Day 24: 3.5 miles hiked (trail mile 241.5)
Miraculously, everyone’s food bags were intact this morning. The wadded-up toilet paper offering we made to the mice had vanished overnight, and there was an acorn tucked inside Chris, Snapshot (despite his loud protests, “If there’s an acorn in my shoe I’m gonna be SO PISSED”), and my shoes, which made Spots and me laugh until we cried.
We hiked out of the park and deposited the other half of our permits in the permit box, then over a huge river and under i40. At the 4-mile mark we veered off to Standing Bear Farm, a popular hostel on the trail just after the Smokies.
At Standing Bear we called Gandalf, who had offered for us to stay at Pigeon Campground, right next to the whitewater rafting outfitter he works seasonally at as a rafting guide. While we waited for him to pick us up in a loaner car, we purchased lunch items at the Standing Bear resupply shed. A lot of stuff was expired, and we didn’t find many vegan options so we stuck with our pb&j tacos and hung out with The Dream while waiting for Gandalf.
Gandalf arrived in a borrowed car with The Curator and we headed for the campground. We stopped to grab bootleggers moonshine slushies at Tennessee Moonshine, where Gandalf and Chris split a moonshine strawberry slushy.
The campground is just what we needed. As friend of Gandalf’s we got a discount on our cabin and we were able to shower and do laundry. We cranked the heat up to 80 degrees in our cabin and spent the rest of the day lounging.
At 7:30 we rode with some of the rafting guides to a Mexican restaurant down the road and ate a huge veggie fajita dinner. Chris and I also took this opportunity to run to the Walmart next door and do a resupply for our next section of the trail. Walmart feels like a resupply Mecca after the NOC General Store, Fontana Lodge snack bar, and Standing Bear food bunker. We are so stoked for all the quality food we will be carrying with us over Max Patch.
We need to up our calorie intake moving forward. We walked out of the Smokey Mountains with a single, tiny, repacked bag of hemp seeds between us, having underestimated how much our appetites would grow in one short week. I’ve lost about 10 pounds and Chris even more since starting the trail, which is an unsustainable rate.
Day 25: 5.3 miles hiked (trail mile 246.8)
Chris woke me up with a birthday massage and breakfast! We spent the morning packing and snacking. Around noon we headed to the rafting outfit next to the campground, where Gandalf recruited one of his rafting buddies to take us down the river! The Pigeon River was swollen from all the rain and flowing at 2,000 cubic feet per second, promising a wild whitewater rafting experience. We boarded a big red school bus with other rafters and put in about 6.5 miles from the outfit.
Neither of us had rafted before so it was super exciting for both of us! Sharing the raft with us was Gandalf, Rocket Man, The Curator, Kitchen Sink, and Caramel, whom we will henceforth describe as Team Rocket. Geoffrey was our guide and shouted commands from the back of the boat as we navigated class 2-4 rapids. It was about 50° out and the water was freezing cold, which made it even more exhilarating when we were enveloped by waves. We all wore our wool base layers under our rain gear but still managed to get very wet - especially The Curator who went for a brief swim.
Gandalf’s rafting buddies gave us a ride back to Standing Bear Farm where Chris left his ultralight Six Moons Design umbrella in the hiker box. We figure if he didn’t find use for it in the torrential downpour in the Smokies he wouldn’t likely find use for it later. Plus, it had proven very fragile and was breaking apart even with so minimal of use.
Back on the trail we hiked up toward Max Patch and saw a blazing sunset on Snowbird Peak. We also passed an FAA tower just over the mountain. Just before the residual light faded, we stopped to set up camp. It’s so much colder after sundown in the mountains but we are snug in our quilts and with the rainfly on.
Best birthday on record. No question about it.
Day 26: 15 miles hiked (trail mile 261.8)
We broke down camp by 8:30. It was a cold morning but warmed up around midday. We hiked up to Max Patch and marveled at the 360° view from the large grassy bald. It was extremely windy on the bald, so we just passed right over and didn’t linger.
On the other side of Max Patch back in the woods we encountered Coffee Bean and Philco. They were doing a 30-mile section hike from Standing Bear to Hot Springs. Philco had hiked the AT in its entirety a couple years back and Coffee Bean had completed the Camino del Santiago. It turned out that Coffee Bean was the owner of a snack pouch that Chris had picked up a few miles back in the woods so that was a neat feeling to reunite a bit of lost gear with its owner. It is always a tough decision whether to leave something lost right where you found it or carry it forward and attempt to locate its owner ahead.
We stopped and ate a huge lunch—carrots, pb&j on an everything bagel, Fritos, and oatmeal cookies—gleefully noting that we both felt sufficiently full today and have managed to significantly level up our calorie intakes.
Just before reaching Walnut Mountain Shelter, we encountered Coffee Bean and Philco down in the valley, who needed to end the trip a day early for health-reasons. We climbed up the next mountain to gain cell service to call them a shuttle, then Ranger went back down into the valley to make sure they got help, while I relaxed with the packs on the mountain-side and kept a watchful eye over our food bags (and incidentally ate a lot of our snacks, too).
We reached the shelter with plenty of time to eat a hot dinner and relax a bit with Team Rocket before turning in at our tent. We are eager to reach Hot Springs tomorrow and take our first zero at Elmer’s Sunnyside Inn, a hiker hostel.