Time out for Spas

Hot Springs! You know what's in Hot Springs? Hot Springs!

Scribe has been waiting 270 miles to soak in the natural mineral baths in this town. She's super excited about it.

Hot Springs is a big physcological milestone on this hike. It's one of the most well-known trail towns, and it was great to be here. We took two zero days here, partly because everything closes at 4 or 5 and it's hard to get everything done, and partly because Scribe's ankle was in a lot of pain. She tried to see a doctor, but their specialist was out of town.

We stayed at Elmer's Sunnybank Inn, a historical place that used to house German fraus in town to visit their husband in POW camp/hotels and other interesting people. The history there is really cool, and it's all antique decorating and stuff.

We don't have much time (the outfitter is closing) but we'll post more from Erwin, Tennesse. We should be there in 6 days.

We just posted 300 pictures and captions - check them out, and leave us comments!

Groundhog Creek Shelter

In for the night at Groundhog creek shelter. 10.3 miles today. Heading to max patch tomorrow.

Springtime Snowstorms in the Smokies

We found a little time and a computer, so let me tell you a bit about the Great Smokey Mountains National Park.

The smokies were beautiful, really fantastic hiking. It's the highest mountain range on the AT until the Whites up north, and the highest we've been ever. The AT crosses it's highest point here. The mountains range above 6,000 feet. The highest mountain we'd climbed prior was 4,000 feet in the Catskills, so it was a new experiance being up on the high ridges. The views were incredible - check out the pictures. We saw some wildlife: a coyote, a mother bear and two cubs, a red squirrel, lots of pretty birds.

Our first few days were good but cold, nothing super-exciting to write about. Then one night when we were still a good mile or more from the shelter, it began to pour and thunder and lightning. Now, this may not seem like such a big deal, but let me tell you, being the tallest object on an exposed ridgeline at 6,000 ft with lightning flashing all around you isnt just scary, it's downright dangerous. We had to make a tough call. Either 1.) immeditley bushwack down the side of the mountain to slightly lower ground, shed our pack and poles and spend a freezing night exposed in the rain crouching on our foam packs in our raingear 200 yds away from each other (risking hypothermia), or 2.) run for the shelter, and lower ground (risking a strike). Since we were only a mile or 2 away, we ran.

We made it safely (soaked) to the shelter and shared it with 2 weekending navy boys (dry), an overnighter and another thru-hiker (both soaked) named Hartly Hounddog. The good navy boys shared carrots with us - fresh veggies, yum! The other non-thru-hiker gave us some food too. I think he felt bad. Later that night two more thru-hikers rolled in, SwampFox and BlueSky from Bangor, ME.

In the morning we noticed the couple from Maine had left a bunch of food garbage in the fireplace, probably not thinking much of it, but that attracts mice and bears and various other critters. We started a quick fire to burn it and dry out our clothing. By the time we were ready to leave, we looked outside and -surprise surprise - it was snowing. Not flurrying, mind you, really blowing down. In an hour we had an inch accumilated. Hikers started pouring in, half of them unfocused and distant, a few thinking they were hot (advanced hypothermia). Now, there was no way we were heading out in below freezing, snowstorm conditions with sopping wet clothing. Again, hypothermia is a real risk out here. We stayed put, kept the fire burning, hung clotheslines, heated hot water bottles, plyed the hypothermic hikers with hot tea and stayed as warm as possible. It was the smartest thing we could have done.

To make a really long story slightly shorter, we ended up sharing a 12 person hiker with 25 people. We were packed like sardines. There were like 10 on the top level, 12 on the bottom and 3 on the dirt floor near the fire. One person tented. A few pushed on through the storm to the next shelter. It was below freezing in the shelter, but 25 bodies warmed it up a little. When we all fired up our stoves to make dinner the temperature jumped like 7 degrees for a few minutes!
We met some neat people, like Sandalwood, a lovable carpender from Toronto, and Mike, a Pa-born missionary based in China taking a break.

The next morning there was just under a foot of snow outside. Hiking to the next shelter was infuriatingly slow-going. I feel so bad for whoever headed out first and had to break trail. It was hard enough following footsteps. On the ridges, it was difficult to push through the gale-force winds trying to blow us off the mountains. Everywhere else, we had to negotiate tons of fresh blowdowns. Climbing over huge trees, getting lost in the evergreen branches, and then having to scout for the trail again is quite an experiance.

The next few days weren't much better. The snow started to melt, but then the trail was always one of three things: slushy, muddy, or icey. Still, we consider ourselves lucky for several reasons. One, we made it through safely by the grace of God and good decisions. Two, we got to see and experience a side of the Smokies many people don't get too see. And three... I'm not sure I've ever seen anything as beautiful as that snowy wonderland that we walked though for 3 days.

Safe and sound

Made it through the Smokey mountains alive and kicking. In town for the night with Persistant and Nicole.


Will be in Hot Springs in four days. Will post more info and pics from there.

Stress fractures, blisters, and food poisoning, oh my!

Just wanted to fill everyone in on what been going on to slow us down. We haven't made a lot of miles, and have spent more time in town than we'd like. For some reason, we keep hitting a stream of bad luck. Maybe we're being tested. Here's what gone wrong:

1. Stress fracture: Scribe, as you know, has a very hurty ankle. Without a brace, she can hardly walk on it. It's getting better slowly, and as long as we don't do too many miles, it should heal itself eventually.

2. Blisters: Although these don't seem like a bit deal, they actually can ruin your hike pretty fast. Not only are they painful, but they get infected very easily, and once infected can cause blood poisoning. You really have to be careful with them out here.

3. Cold: Like we said, Ron shuttled over a hundred hikers in last week, many of whom were hypothermic. Hypothermia is the leading cause of death in hikers, and so, when a cold and wet spell is coming, we tend to play it safe and book it into town. Scribe has a general cold.

4. Food poisoning: I got food poisoning from Easter trail magic. How's that for ironic? That kept us in town 3 extra days, and was no fun at all. A batch of hikers had it. A few even had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night!

5. Shuttles: With town being so busy with all this cold and sickness, we haven't been able to get too many shuttles to slackpack and make up some miles. They're swamped here, which we can totally understand.

6. Knee problems: I have a trick knee - sometimes it acts up and sometimes it doesn't.

7. Other stuff: Everyday, something new pops up that we have to deal with. Sunburn, posion ivy, menacing black flies, and other general annoyances barely slow us down, but enough to be mentioned here.

Anyway, we finally feel at least 70 to 80 % of our healthy selves now, and we just wanted to let everyone know we're heading back out. We still have to tangle with some of these issues, but it's all part of the journey. We're heading back out today. Good riddance town! Wish us luck!

$42,000 worth of emeralds

Emeralds we found

Today we went gem mining, just for fun. I'm a bit of a rock hound, so we thought it would be neat to find some local stones to send home as soviniers. Well, we ended up doing a bit (a lot) better than we expected - if we were to cut and polish and sell all the stones we found, we could make about $70,000 to $80,000. Of course that would be a big hassle, and they are only worth as much as someone will pay for them, but we'll probably get a few of our favorites polished up. It's $60 a Caret to get them cut, and then they're worth around $300 a Caret - not a bad net profit! We found emeralds, sapphires, and rubies. The emeralds in Scribe's hand above are worth about $42,000 when finished!

Slackpacking - Day 2

When we woke up this morning, we both felt not rested, and I still feel a bit sick. I think we're gonna head up to the trail and slackpack 4 miles from Rock Gap to Winding Stair Gap a bit later this afternoon. Doing so cuts the 14 miles the next day down to 10 miles, which will help.

Also found out today that the Internet Cafe in town is closed till April 17th, so I prolly won't be able to post more pictures until we get to Fontana Dam.

Sickness

Woke up today with a nasty stomach ache, thinking it might be food poisioning from the Easter Trail Magic at Rock Gap. Scribe said she didn't eat the bacon cause it didn't taste right, but not until after I had already finished mine.

Stayed in bed most of the day, and we wondered around town and checked out the Gem Musuem, and the Scottish Tartan Museum. Will try and get back out tomorrow depending on how I'm feeling.

Slackpacking - Day 1

Today we slack packed from Mooney Gap to Rock gap, close to 8 miles. We meant to push on to Winding Stair, but as we came into Rock Gap, we stumbled upon some Easter Trail magic.

The trail magic crew even had menus they were handing out so you could custom order omlets, sandwiches, drinks, and what kind of chips you wanted with your meal.

We ended up being the last people they serviced before packing up. As we were finishing up our food, Ron drove past with the shuttle and we flagged him down for a ride back to Franklin. We figured it would save him a trip back out later.

Tomorrow we're planning on doing Wayah Bald back to Rock Gap, which is a 14 mile stretch.

Happy Easter everyone!

Franklin - Take 2

Well, we're back in Franklin now, and I'm trying to get my blog up to date. There's no Internet service up in the mountains here, so posting will be far and few between.

We planned to Slackpack the 11 miles from Mooney Gap to Winding Stair Gap today, should be an easy hike without packs. Unfortunatly we can't get a shuttle to the trail today because the people driving them are busy rescuing hypothermic hikers from the mountain tops. It's probably for the best, because with temperatures as they are I'm not sure I even want to be slackpacking out there. Our gear is not rated for this cold.

It is COLD out there. It's zero degrees in the mountains, with a 20 to 25 mph wind which makes it feel like -22. That's during the day - I can't even imagine how cold it will be tonight. Tons of people who made the decision to stay out in the cold last night are in dangerous conditions on the mountains. Hypothermia is the #1 killer of hikers. Luckily, Ron and KTR (the shuttle people) are incredible and are working their butts off bringing hikers to the warmth. So far over the last 2 days they've pulled over 70 hikers into safe conditions.

It's still snowing here, and they're calling for record low temps tonight, luckily we'll have a nice warm room.

I'll post more when I get a chance, but other people need to get on the computers now.

-Gadget-

Mooney Gap

We made it 8 miles past a georgous viewpoint into Mooney Gap today. In checking the weather, it's supposed to drop to the single digits in the mountains tonight. We decided to grab a shuttle back to Franklin and spend a night in town, then slackpack the next few sections.

Slackpacking is when you don't carry your heavy pack and only carry food and water and get a shuttle to and from the section of trail you're currently hiking. It's been recommended to help Scribe's ankle, being less weight on it and all, and hopefully we can pick up some of our lost mileage.

Mooney Gap is about an hour drive from Franklin on Forest Service roads so we had a bit of a wait ahead of us. We built a small fire next to the road and prepared to wait, after a few minutes it started to snow. We were very excited when the shuttle finally arrived, and we didn't have to struggle to keep warm.

Day Off

With only doing 5 miles the previous day, and it being a cold night, our morales were low when we woke up. Scribe has several new blisters - it seems like her feet refuse to get used to all this walking. We decided to take a day off in Beech Gap to reflect and plan our attack on the next section. It's really hard to go from easy, long days to only being able to do a few miles because of an injury, but past thru-hikers keep telling us we're doing the right thing. We keep hearing stories about people who ignored their injuries and ended up going home, and we refuse to be one of those statistics. So for now its slow, but we're not giving up.

Standing Indian

We climbed up and over Standing Indian Mt. today, wow.. what an amazing view from the top.
The climb up was pretty easy, the trail was an old road, so it was graded for cars. The summit was grassy and looked as if there used to have been a communication tower there. In the next week or so I'll try and get that batch of pictures posted, but the Internet cafe is closed for this week.

We ended up in Beech Gap for the night, which was a slow 5 mile day. Scribe's ankle was killing her after a few miles, so even that was a push. Everyone keeps telling her to take it super easy. It's better to go slow now and let it heal than screw it up permantly and be forced off the trail.

Thunderstorms

Well we headed back out today, and started up Standing Indian.. We heard there were going to be bad storms bad tonight, so we only did 1 mile up to the shelter and waited out the storms there. It ended up being quite a wicked storm, so we're quite glad we stayed where we did, and didn't push on to the top of the mountain.

One more day

We both woke up today feeling a bit sick, so we took one last day in town.

We've booked the shuttle, and went through our packs to try and lighten them up a bit. I believe we both lost about 1lb from our packs, which is good.

We had a lovely dinner at a local chuch banquet.

We're heading back to Deep Gap in the morning to pick up where we left off.

If anyone has anything they want to mail to us, get it to scribe's parents as we have another mail drop being sent out soon.

Trail Names

Well, I think it's official, Kay finally got a trail name. She'll now be referred to as "Scribe."
Which means we both have trail names now... yay!

Hiker Festival - Day 2 and 3

Saturday at the festival was loads of fun, lots of people showed up.. although not nearly as many as people had originally said were coming, but there were prolly 200 or so here.

Alot of people from Whiteblaze.net were in attendance, like Sgt. Rock, Skids, Frolicking Dinos, Baltimore Jack, Bag-O-Tricks, and Mother Nature to name a few.

The next time I get to a place where I can upload more photos, I'll post some of the festival.

All in all, it was a blast.. Good food, great company that's either hiking, or has hiked in the past.. what more can you ask for?

Today, they just did breakfast, and a small lunch .. but we were up late last night and slept through breakfast. Just had whatever was left over for lunch.