Date: 2017-10-31
From: Gatlinburg

To: Derrick Knob shelter
Miles today: 17.8
Weather: overcast clouds

Does it make easier or harder to hitch hike in a redneck town while dressed as a pedo bear, Eeyore, Super Mario and a raging bull? And also when we're in a group of eight, since we also have OK, Happy Feet, Dirt and Packaged Meat in our crew? And also when hitch hiking is illegal in Gatlinburg?It turned out I needn't have worried because as we walked to the edge of Gatlinburg this morning, a guy came up and said: "Are you thru-hiking? Do you need a lift up to Newfound Gap? We're going that way."This was our introduction to Pizza Maker, who had thru-hiked the AT way back in 1984 but was in town for some kind of tourist convention as part of his T-shirt design job. What that meant was he had a van that could easily fit all of us in one go as he and some friends went up for a day hike. In the end, we split between the van and his friend's Jeep.He even offered to give us all free T-shirts, which led his friend to look askance at him and say that he'd never been offered a free T-shirt!But soon we were back up at the pass and profusely thanking our unlikely benefactor, then headed off along snow-covered trails under a clear but cold blue-sky day. I'd been worried about being warm enough but I ended up facing the opposite problem. My $20 Walmart bear suit was seriously toasty, to the extent that after unzipping it as far as possible (and beyond the demands of modesty) and rolling up the arms and legs, I was overheating.Getting sweaty is not pretty in the outdoors so after a couple of miles, I reluctantly ditched my bear suit and hiked in the thermal top and the short wash-day shorts I'd been wearing underneath. And since my wash-day shorts were chosen for low weight rather than high modesty, they were very shortIf I'd been getting odd looks for my pedo bear outfit -- oddly enough, it seemed few people were realising that today was Halloween -- that was nothing compared to the looks I was getting for walking through ice and snow in short shorts and a flimsy shirt. One South African guy section hiking northbound even asked if I'd "got the memo" about it being full wintery conditions. In truth, the level of clothing worked perfectly for the grunty climb up to Clingman's Dome, even though it was clear from the thick water ice on the trails that there'd been a freeze-thaw process going on yesterday.We had lunch at the bottom of the dome, which at 6643ft/2024m the highest point in Tennessee and on the entire AT. It also features a 1950s-era spiral-shaped concrete observation tower that was another 45ft higher but ever since we'd been in Maine, we'd heard that it was closed for the rest of the year for restoration work. Thanks to our extended stay in Gatlinburg, I wasn't entirely sure where Three Goldilocks and the Bear were at this point but I knew that the sisters, Pumba and Professor Sprout, had hiked to here from Springer as a warm-up for their sobo hike. That helped explain why they'd managed to hit the ground running in Maine but we weren't sure if they'd then finish their hikes here or accompany the other two, Cricket and Dr Bronner, for the remaining way to Springer so they could finish together. What we did know was that we reached the 200 miles to go marker was shortly after we left Clingman's Dome, which of course was done with the patently false admonition that it was "all downhill from here to Springer".We were pleasantly surprised to discover that the rest of the day was almost all on the sunny side of the range, which meant the near-total absence of the snow and ice that had prompted us to walk carefully all morning.Later we crossed the 2000-mile mark on an otherwise unremarkable traverse across a snowy, north-facing face of a knoll and then soon after that we arrived at the shelter where we intended to spend tonight.It was awesome to find Wizard there since we hadn't seen him since Damascus. Soon we were caught up on his recent adventures, which included being at Icewater Spring shelter -- our destination of our 27-mile day -- with Counsellor and Turtle Trax for the blizzards that we'd missed by being in Gatlinburg.It was clear we'd really dodged a bullet by getting out of the range when we did. Because it had been raining as they'd hiked up into the Smokies, all their stuff was wet and in the shelter everything froze rock hard as temperatures dropped to 17degF/-8degC. It sounded harrowing and particularly when they did a dash over to Newfound Gap to escape down to Gatlinburg, only to find the road closed by ice.But now we've got a fire going and telling lots of stories about the past few months on the trail. Life is good.AT fact of the day: With the tallest point on the entire AT officially closed for restoration work but with no work going on, we wouldn't possibly have ignored that closure, would we, just to get to the highest point on the trail?