Ample Time for Regret
It's 7 o'clock on April 10, and I'm at Tricorner Knob shelter at mile marker 223.6. I did 15.7 miles today. And in what's becoming a common theme on this hike, I'm already in my tent for the night. This campsite is at about 5,900 feet in elevation, and it's quite windy. The temperature is dropping quickly, so everyone has basically retreated to their respective sleeping bags.
This morning, I woke up in a very comfortable bed at the Days Inn in Gatlinburg. It was already raining pretty hard, so that wasn’t the greatest motivator, but I got up and got moving anyway. I took advantage of the hotel breakfast and had a bagel and some fruit and a cup of coffee, all of which were surprisingly good. I bumped into three other thru-hikers who had decided to take a zero today. The weather forecast was not predicting a great day for hiking, but I'd committed to getting back out there, rather than staying another night. And now I’m feeling a little smug that I did more than 15 miles on a day that they thought wouldn’t be a good one to hike — though they were at least partially right.
At 8:30, I caught a free shuttle outside the outfitters that's run by a Baptist church in Sevierville. I'm not really sure why they do this, but I appreciated it. So thank you, Baptist church in Sevierville.
It's about a 30-minute ride from Gatlinburg back to the trail, so all of us in the van had ample time to regret our decision to hike today.
Great! Only 1,972 miles to go!
A little after 9 a.m., we arrived at Newfound Gap. It was foggy and windy, and as we got out of the van, it began to rain. We were all kind of in our own little worlds, so no one really talked to anyone else. We just loaded up and hit the trail.
There was a lot more uphill than downhill today, but the grade wasn't too steep. About three miles in, I came to a shelter with a fireplace (some of the shelters in the GSMNP have built-in fireplaces), and someone had a fire going. I was wet and pretty cold at that point, so the temptation to just drop everything and go sit by a nice fire was almost too much to resist, but I did. Eventually, it stopped raining, though it stayed pretty overcast and windy. At one point, I passed an iconic rock outcropping called Charlies Bunion, but it would have been pointless to go check it out, because there would have been no view, thanks to the fog. So I just kept moving.
About midway through my day, I started noticing these little squirrel-chipmunk-hybrid-looking creatures. I tried to channel my inner Bob Ross to get one to stay still long enough for me to get a picture of it, but I didn't have much success. [Wife note: I think that’s just a squirrel. ?? ]
I was making pretty good time, which I assume was because of the bad weather. Basically, if I stopped, I'd get cold, so the best solution was to just keep moving. By a little after 2 o'clock, I had already done 10.5 miles and reached the shelter I'd planned on staying at tonight. But I decided to press on instead, because the next shelter was only five more miles down the trail.
The weather tomorrow is supposed to be miserable, so I essentially have three options. One, I take a zero day at the shelter here. Two, I hike in the rain to the next shelter, about 7.5 miles away. Or three — which some people are talking about doing — hiking 17 miles and getting out of the Smokies. It's mostly downhill, which isn’t a terrible hike, but it's a long way when it's pouring rain on you the whole time. And they're forecasting wind gusts of up to 40 mph, so I guess I'll make my decision in the morning.
