Date: 2017-04-24
From: Standing Bear Hostel

To: Roaring Fork Shelter
Miles today: 15.2
Weather: light rain

Thankfully the rain has stopped by the time we woke up this morning, but the sky was still gray outside the windows of the unfinished addition we had slept in. No complaints here though... It was dry and warm.We got about our morning chores, although slower than usual since Lookout and I weren't planning on leaving until noon since we only had 13 miles to do today. Liz's mom is meeting her at the hostel today and then hiking with Liz for 4 days to Hot Springs, so she's staying behind. Lookout and I are planning to hike to and camp on top of Max Patch, a bald mountain that will hopefully give us a really amazing sunrise, stars, and sunset. The forecast doesn't look particularly promising for it, but though this mountain is supposed to be really good, there will be other balds if it isn't, so it's not worth taking a zero over. We're trying to convince Liz to skip ahead to wherever we are when her mom leaves and rejoin us, but we'll see what happens.Throughout the morning I picked up 2 days of food from the little store at the hostel, charged my cell phone and external battery pack, and dried my socks in the dryer, but by 11am both Lookout and I had run out of things to do and were getting a bit antsy and so decided to get hiking. Liz walked us down to the trail to give us "a big long drawn out Texas goodbye" and after a couple hugs Lookout and I were on our way.The first order of business today was a 2500ft climb out of the gap and back into the mountains. Though long, the climb wasn't particularly steep and Lookout and I were able to power up it with relative ease. The sun was shining (the first time in 6days!) in between occasional clouds while we hiked. Across the valley we could see the edge of the Smokies with some of the day off peaks still wreathed in clouds even on this gorgeous day.It has been pretty interesting... I don't think I've ever experienced spring so many times as this year. I've been hiking into and back out of spring regularly, sometimes several times a day, as we climb and descend. As we ascended and move back in time the fully bloomed leaves return to buds and the bright green new foliage reverts back to the browns and grays of dormant trees.Lookout and I (to the dismay/teasing of some other hikers) cruised up the endless series of hills, some fairly steep, up towards max patch. We eventually topped out and came across a FAA VOR navigational system installation, the first of a couple I think we pass on the hike. Along the way we found YardDart, who I had met at Standing Bear the night before (he isn't hiking the trail, but is supporting his wife, Mrs Bobby, as she hikes. He meets up with her whenever he can and sleeps in the back of their Honda Element) in a gap offering TRAIL MAGIC in the form of cookies, drinks, fruit, and slices of a bagguette (sounds weird, but white bread tastes REALLY good right now).We hit the trail again, climbed another steep hill, filled up enough water to last the night, and made our final climb of the day onto Max Patch. We passed through a horse gate and emerged from the woods onto a giant hilly meadow, stretching over multiple peaks. The top of this mountain had once been cleared and used as pastureland for livestock and now offers spectacular views of the surrounding countryside to hikers. It took a couple minutes of hiking to actually reach the top during which we noticed a wall is fog rolling in from the west. Noooooooo. We reached the peak, frantically enjoyed the remaining eastward view, and not 5 minutes later were enveloped in the mists. Visibility dropped to the point where you could barely make out sillouettes at 100ft, the temperature dropped about 15deg over the course of the next 15min, a little bit of wind picked up, cell service disappeared, and our plans of camping at the summit evaporated just as quickly as our views had.We reluctantly shouldered our packs and continued down the trail, taking the 2mi to the next shelter quickly as rain began to fall. We hit camp, took stock of the shelter situation, decided we didn't want to share the shelter with the current inhabitants, and went to setup our tents in the rain. We returned to the protection of the shelter to make dinner and hung out with Lipstick, Missionary, Kelsey, Kali, Honeybunz, Hinz, LeftFoot, and Diesel.While we were eating the (in)famous baby couple walked by (they're hiking with their infant... One carries the pack, one carries the infant in a backpack carrier on their back), but they moved on since apparently they don't camp with others if they can help it (to protect the baby). It's unfortunate... I had carried a small stick of body glide for the first 200 miles, but ditched it in Asheville since I hadn't used it. Well, not 2 days after getting rid of it, the constant rain-induced wetness of my hiking clothes resulted in some mild chafing. It's not bad enough to slow me down or cause issues, but it's still annoying. Also, Liz is potentially trying out the trail name "Classy" (hence the post's title), since the first thing she's going to do once she gets off trail is get a manicure/pedicure/facial and she enjoys talking fashion, so we'll see if this one sticks.We made plans to share room with Lipstick, missionary, etc in hot springs tomorrow night... just 18 miles to get there. We're going to get a pretty early start and try to get into town fairly early so that we can get food and relax since we're not planning to zero there.