Uh-Oh
It’s a little after 5 o'clock, on Friday, April 12, and I'm at the Standing Bear Farm Hostel in Tennessee. I am officially out of the Smokies, so that’s a good thing.
This morning, I woke up at Cosby Knob shelter. Everyone was scurrying around, trying to stay warm and get their things as dry as they could after the super wet day yesterday. I decided to try to air out my tent, because I didn't have a very long hike today. It was going to be about 10.5 miles, but pretty easy terrain — mostly downhill, and pretty smooth downhill. Sometimes, the downhills can be very challenging and almost slower than the uphills, but that wasn't the case today. So I knew I wasn't facing a very long hike.
That meant I had some time in the morning to try to dry out my equipment a little bit. So I decided to hang my tent using the bear bag cables. I was like, “Yeah, you know, I’ll get it up in the air, it'll blow around in the wind, and it'll dry out pretty quickly.”
I left it up there flapping around for about an hour, at which point, I decided that that was probably enough for it to have gotten pretty dry. So I went to take it down. Well, I hadn't paying attention, and the wind had kicked up, and basically, my tent had completely wrapped itself around the metal bear cable. Not just that, but the metal cable was all frayed, so there were all these little metal burrs that had embedded themselves in my twisted-up tent.
I had a heck of a time getting it back down. The whole time, I was hoping for the best, but — spoiler alert — there's now a roughly four inch by four inch section of my tent that is riddled with tiny holes. [Wife note: Insert sad trombone.] I need to see whether there's any chance of recovering that or whether I just made a $700 mistake. Later this evening, I'm going to go back to the main house here at Standing Bear to do some research on ways to patch holes in a tent.
Once I had retrieved my now-perforated tent, I packed up all my gear and got the heck out of Cosby Knob by about 8:45. That was an intentionally late exit, because I didn't want to get to the hostel too early. It was a very windy start to the day, but then it was just a pretty good cruise downhill. Eventually, the sun came out, which was really nice, and I finally made it to the exit of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which was a relief. That whole stretch was a very challenging 72 miles of the trail.
The weather was challenging. The terrain was challenging. The regulations and the camping situation were challenging. And apparently, maintaining my gear properly was challenging. So, I'm glad to have that all behind me. I put the second half of my permit into the box, and I finished the park about the same time as Boone, another thru-hiker I’ve mentioned. He’s a nice guy from New Hampshire, a retired teacher.
Boone and I then hiked the remaining few miles from the exit of the park to the hostel. You kind of pop out by the highway, and you have to walk under the Route 40 underpass, and then it's about another mile and a half. It's pretty much straight up until you get to a little road, at which point, you have to walk up two tenths of a mile more to get to the hostel.
A lot of people give this hostel questionable reviews, but I think you just have to know what you're getting into. It's a very rustic, almost commune-like place. Personally, I’m thrilled with my accommodations. I’m staying in a cute little tree house, and now I’m going to go eat a frozen pizza and drink a beer and do some research to figure out whether I can salvage my tent.
