Date: 2022-04-10
From: Siler Bald Shelter

To: Wesser Bald Shelter
Miles today: 17.0
Weather: clear sky

My sleeping bag was toasty, so it was difficult getting out in the mid-20s temperature to pack up. The weather forecast was encouraging, though, calling for a clear day, afternoon highs of mid-50s and an evening low of around 40, a big improvement vs the past few days. Out of camp, Tom convinced me to climb the 0.2 mile steep uphill side trail to Siler Bald to see the 360-degree views of the mountains. Very cool views, but now it's 8:30am, I'm tired, and I haven't even begun the hiking day. Oh well, as my old boss from the non-PC 1990s would say, "Kurt, if you want sympathy, you can find it in the dictionary between sh*t and syphilis."The trail during the morning was cold and slick, as hikers compacted the snow turning it to ice. The afternoon was warmer and a muddy, slippery mess as the snow and ice melted and left large lakes on the trail. I fell down 4 times today, and I'm pretty happy I fell only 4 times given the conditions. Around midday, we came to Wayah Bald stone fire tower. I was about to ascend the tower when I saw Dorito coming down the steps and then fall the last 5 steps with his feet way above his head (ice on the steps). He was ok, but I decided to pass on the fire tower views. Just a big slippery mess of a day everywhere. Trail magic today by "I'm Nobody", who provided us with fresh fruit, granola bars, pop, a trash can, and a nice warm fire. He's a really nice guy who enjoys meeting the hikers. The trash can is the biggest perk for me in this set. I really enjoy getting rid of my packed trash. Only a few ounces of weight, but totally useless weight and nice to discard.  At around 2pm after 11 miles, I met up with JLD group and Tom at Cold Spring Shelter, and we discussed whether to go another 6 miles to Wesser Bald Shelter. JLD group wanted to spend the next night at a hostel close to the Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC), so they decided to stay at Cold Spring since the next day's hike was only 11 miles to the NOC. Tom was section hiking for 2 weeks, so he wanted to get some more miles done, and he convinced me to continue on to Wesser Bald. Tom's ideas definitely sound easy and reasonable to a naive novice like me, but generally resulted in pain to the novice's feet, legs and back :)More about Tom: he's an engineer, about my age, incredibly fit, trained by hiking 20 miles and camping in 10-degree weather, enjoys competitive cross-country skiing in the winter and long-distance sailing in the summer, and paddle boards and runs up sand dunes for fitness. Biggest difference in mindset between Tom and me: I trained by doing 10-mile hikes and thought I could do 12-15 mile days on the AT; Tom trained by doing 20-mile hikes and thought he could do 12-15 mile days on the AT. Engineers are a different breed of cat, for sure. The last 4 miles of the day involved 2.4 miles of steep incline followed by 1.4 miles of steep decline into camp. I saw this coming on the Far Out app, so I told Tom, "You're much faster and I'm dying, so go ahead and I'll meet you at camp." I think Tom was concerned about the "I'm dying" part of my statement, so he slowed way down to keep an eye on me. I felt bad about slowing him down, but not so bad that I said anything further about him going ahead - the conversation helped take my mind off the steep incline we were hiking. The incline led to a fire tower (2nd of the day) with more beautiful views. We arrived in camp at around 5pm.