Date: 2016-05-05
From: standing bear hostel

To: roarig forks shelter
Miles today: 15.0

Day 24- May 5, 2016This morning dregs crawled down from his bunk and sat on the bed next to me. I took out my earplugs and he whispered, "they have an alarm chicken". I couldn't help but laugh in the quiet bunk house. A rooster had been crowing every ten minutes since 5am. He then whispered, "someone keeps hitting snooze on the alarm chicken". It was pretty funny first thing in the morning. We got up late, around 7:30, and began to get ready for another 15 mile day. We still had to check out of the hostel and had the opportunity to make coffee. After dregs made a community pot of coffee, before it was done, a crowd of people began to take cups of the coffee. This caused the plunger in the coffee maker to get stuck and the filter to overflow. The impatient group of people accused dregs of screwing up the coffee which aggravated him a bit because it was their acts that caused the problem. He was slightly bitter for part of the morning, but things got better after a few cups of coffee. We set out with funfact for a day filled with uphill funness. The first part of the day would be 4 miles up a mountain, then a few miles down, up another large mountain and a very steep long climb. As we started up the mountain, I got into a slow but steady pace. With this pace I didn't need to stop or take breaks, just kept my heart rate under control and small steps. We lost funfact to a different pace but were able to meet up with him later at camp. In the first part of the day it started hailing on us. It was cool cause it would bounce off of us and didn't get us wet. As we went on, it began to rain and that was cold. We picked up our pace to stay warm. Later on in the day it began to hail again and we were exited but then it started to worsen into an actual snow storm. Yes, a snow storm in May. It was really neat but we were now soaking wet and freezing cold. A dangerous combination. The storm calmed down and the fog picked up. As we were climbing the steep portion of our day headed to Max Patch, which is a large bald mountain top, the fog got thick and bright like the ridge line in the smokies. Max Patch was another on of the amazing and famous views that dregs was looking forward to but when we got there, our view was again a wall of fog. The denseness of the fog combined with the 360degree empty coverage of it was disorienting and quite ominous. Dregs was disappointed yet again that his chance to see this famous view of surrounding mountains was blocked by fog. The ground was extremely squishy and slippery from the snow and the wind was brutal and cold. We were passed by two other hikers who were going to the same shelter as us. Once we got to the shelter it started pouring rain again. The 6 person shelter was already packed with 10 people so we had to set up the tent. Luckily, we had practiced setting up our tent in a way that let us put the internal part up without getting wet, covered by the rain fly and footprint. We were able to get our tent up and keep it dry. It took a long time for us to warm up after changing into dry clothing, but eventually we got warm. We had dinner and funfact showed up so we hung out with him for a little bit. Once we got into our tent, dregs joked around for a bit making me laugh and snort which I'm sure the other campers could hear. They probably think we are in here having a party... It's been a very physicality challenging day with additional challenges from weather and recovering from a long day yesterday, but we made it and can look back and say it's been a good day.