Don’t Listen to the Voices

I’m at mile 203 at the Mount Collins shelter in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Today was a pretty big day. I did about 13.5 miles, crossed the 200-mile mark, and hiked to the top of Clingman's Dome — the tallest point on the Appalachian Trail. I started out this morning at Derrick Knob shelter. I knew the day was going to be a long one and pretty challenging, so I made sure to get an early start, or early for me, anyway. I was packed up and ready to go by 7:45.

I think later on, further down the trail, when the sun is coming up earlier and the temperatures are warmer, I'll probably be hitting the trail closer to 7 a.m. There's really no reason not to. We certainly go to bed early enough. It's just that the temperatures and the darkness tend to impede early departures. Some people seem to be able to do it, but I haven't quite figured that out yet.

The first six miles weren't very eventful. There was shelter about six miles in, and a bunch of us converged on it and tried to get a bunch of calories in before the four-mile ascent to Clingman's Dome. So Yogi, Praying Mantis, Harmonica, and Boone were all there, and we were talking about how we were chronicling our progress along the trail. Harmonica is the guy I mentioned a while back that I thought was from South Africa. Turns out he’s from Australia. Anyway, he’s the one who’s following Nimblewell Nomad’s path from Florida to Canada, and he told me he has a web page. It has something to do with Harmonica and the Pied Piper.[Wife note: I think this is it.]

Boone has a YouTube channel, called “Boone on the Trail.” So those guys were all talking about how they do their video editing on their phones and sharing tips and such. When they heard that I was just in the text world, they didn't seem all that interested. I guess video is the way to go these days, but I kind of like the text.

Calorie-wise, I ate a Little Debbie Oatmeal Crème Pie (170 calories, 13g sugar). I had a Reese's candy bar (280 calories, 24g sugar). I ate a Stinger Energy Waffle (150 calories, 11g sugar). And I had at least half a packet of energy gummies (80 calories, 13g sugar) and close to a liter of water mixed with LMNT (0 calories, 0 sugar). Under normal circumstances, that would be an absolutely preposterous ingestion of calories and sugar for me (680 calories, 61g sugar) — especially for a snack — but obviously, these aren’t normal circumstances. I just can't keep doing this when I'm not hiking 13 miles a day anymore.

Everyone finished their food at different times and left the shelter at sort of a staggered pace, so even though we regularly run into each other here and there, we’re not really hiking together. Everyone generally hikes at their own pace, and it doesn’t take long before we’re all strung out along the trail.

About a mile after I’d had my snack, I bumped into a group of guys who were just out for a day hike, and one of them started asking me a lot of questions about how things were going. I got the sense that he’d thru-hiked before, and it turns out that he had. So I was telling him about my progress and how frustrating it’s been at times and harder than I expected, and he stopped me and said, “Look, don't listen to any of the voices in your head until you've been on the trail for at least four weeks. By the time you hit Damascus, you've got it made.”

I told him that he had no idea how much I had needed to hear that. I actually started to get choked up about it, because it's definitely been difficult so far. But today was a pretty good day, even though it was really hard. I could finally feel my hiking legs sort of under me.

 So that — along with the enormous amount of sugar that was in my system — gave me a nice boost, and I made some pretty good time on my way up to Clingman's Dome. Interestingly, about halfway up, the vegetation changed dramatically. It actually looked very much like Maine. It was this beautiful evergreen forest with a lot of felled trees, and it smelled of spruce and pine, and it was just really nice. Up until this point, most of the vegetation's been oak trees and the like.

 I reached the top of Clingman’s Dome by about 2 o'clock. This was about 10 miles into the day, and technically, I got there in plenty of time to see the eclipse, but the clouds had rolled in, so I decided to just continue on. Not that far off the peak, there was still a decent amount of ice on the trail. I’d heard that on April 4 or 5, there’d been a pretty big snowstorm that closed the road through the park for a day, so I’m guessing this was leftover from that storm.

I made my way down to Mt. Collins shelter and cooked up some mashed potatoes with salmon for dinner. You'll probably hear me say that a lot, because it makes a really good meal. I chatted with some people for a bit, and now I'm in my tent and very comfortable.

All in all, a very good day. I head into Gatlinburg tomorrow. I haven't really planned anything, so I'm just going to go to the main outfitters, and supposedly, they have some pretty good hookups for thru-hikers. I need to figure out a ride into town, but then we'll see what happens.