Date: 2012-04-05
From: Cosby Knob Shelter 

To: Groundhog Creek Shelter 
Miles today: 17.6
Weather: light rain

This morning we were all in good spirits because we will be out of the Smokey¢s today and will be able to camp where we want. From the front porch of the shelter, we could see down the valley and the sunrise was great¢¦but the skies were red and we knew that meant rain again. We were ready to get on the trail by 8:30 but Hare decided he'd better use the privy one last time so we did not leave till 8:45. We went down for a while and had to go back up to 5000 feet one last time and down 2500 feet to the next shelter. We passed Grand Bob and Precious on the way up and once again it was foggy so we skipped the fire tower and started down. We made good time hiking 7 plus miles going downhill and arrived at the next shelter at 11:45ish to eat lunch. We stayed extra-long because we were going so fast and soon enough Grand Bob and Precious showed up as well to eat lunch. We headed out at around 12:30pm and no more than four steps out of the shelter we could hear thunder behind us. We still had another two miles of downhill to go so we tried to outrun the storm but we only made it about one mile until it started to rain. We put our pack covers on once we officially got out of the Smokey Mountains and continued on to the Highway 40 underpass, our first highway crossing. Luckily that storm passed ahead of us and we only got the edge of it but it was just enough to make the trail slippery. Hare slipped and fell for the first time and it was a funny fall. He slipped and ended up completely airborne and body slammed the trail, we all laughed and started back up into the mountains. The trail goes from 1400 feet back up to 4200 feet and we slowly made our way up the steep trail. We got to the first camp site and ate a second lunch and decided to push on to the shelter that was another 4 miles up the trail. Once again we left the camp site and the thunder started again behind us, so we tried to get up and over the mountain before the storm got to us. We got about 500 feet from the top and it started to pour on us and by then we were on the ridge top so we had to just keep going. We continued on and the eye of the storm engulfed us; it was blowing, hailing and a few close lightning strikes so we went down off the ridgeline and hunkered down in a bunch of smaller trees. Once the worst of the storm passed by, we went back up to the trail and came upon a huge clearing with some weird building in the middle of it and the trail went right up and over the center of it. It was still raining and blowing and lightning was still dancing around us so we got off the trail and stayed along the edge of the clearing until we got to the other side....well there goes trying to be a purist and hike every inch of the trail but I think I had to do what I did!We finally got to the top of the mountain and we started down 2.5 miles to the shelter and half way down the rain finally let up. We arrived at the shelter at 6:30 and it turned out to be a very old and rickety shelter. We took the last four spots in the shelter and quickly changed into our dry cloths. About an hour later Bob showed up, he passed us when we were going up the big climb and we thought he had gone on up the trail. Here he was up on top of the clearing huddled under the building while the storm passed by, he just waited until the rain stopped and then continued down to the shelter. We were able to start a fire amazingly with all the rain we had all day so we warmed up and stuffed into the full shelter for the night and this shelter looks like the mice have lived here for a while so hope they stay out of all our packs.