Date: 2005-04-02
From: Hotel, Havens Budget Inn Franklin NC

To: Hotel, Tellico Gap
Miles today: 19.4
Weather: snow

Fisrt things first, THANK YOU Lynn Ladyhawk of Franklin NC and Carl Peterson (Pete 56) of Beaufort SC. These folks are angels extraordinary. More to follow on these folks. Today was brutal. We slack packed (hiked without full packs - only the essentials). You might think those phrases are mutually exclusive. They are not. We got up before 5 am, got our ride out around 6am and started hiking at 0705. Fortunately for us it started snowing around 0705. Why would Mother Nature want to miss out on a prime opportunity to add excitement to our hiking? Surely, we wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to mix hiking mega miles (for us) with the excitement of potential hypothermia and frostbite. The snow was pretty and fun to watch for the 1st couple of inches and there was an awful lot of mud. I spent part of the day pondering mud. There are really quite a lot of types of mud and applications of mud. A lot of mud on the trail has leaves and other humus type material mixed into it. That mud can be quite gummy and sticky, but by the end of a busy hiking day, it has been toughly mixed together by all of the hiker feet. A lot of the water has been pushed out of the mud and it has the consistency of well-worked clay. It is even kind of nice to walk through. Kind of cushiony on the feet. I didn't see any of that mud today. The same mud and humus mixture turns evil when additional water (or snow) is added. It becomes slick and slippery. It is most common on steep inclines and switchbacks. Worse it can be saturated with water and become shoe-sucking mud. I saw both the slick and the shoe sucking mud today. Today, I got to experience a new type of mud. I will call it the slicker than slug snot mud. It has no humus mixed into it and has their consistency of a smooth and creamy butter frosting. Did I mention that it is slicker than slug snot to walk in. I fell, Squeaker fell, and I am confidant that others fell. The hike started with a serious uphill that had all sorts of things in my legs screaming. The achilles, hamstring and calves all mentioned that hiking straight up in the snow somehow seemed stupid. I persuaded them to proceed, but they made their objections known. At this point in the day, Oblivious was literally skipping down the trail. Grrrr!!! We stopped at Cold Spring shelter to snack and sign the register. As we went on we came across some trail magic at Burning Town gap. Outdoor Source, an outfitter out of Columbus Ohio had set up a mountain hardware geodesic dome tent. Inside, Redneck and friends were serving up hot coffee and warm food. They had a ton of food and were ready to provide trail magic to any and all hikers. Very cool. On the southbound approach to Wayah bald there was a red flag path, which replaced a portion of the trail that was closed due to dangerous slide conditions. Red flag seems to equal bushwhacking. That is where I had the pleasure to experience the slicker than slug snot butter cr me frosting mud. It was exhausting. We finally got to Wayah Bald at 1230 (a mere 9.3 miles in 5.5 hrs). Oh did I mention that the snow continued and continued with the added pleasure of gusting winds. We left Wayah Bald and headed on. A trail angel had left energy giving coke, cookies and fruit at the steps to Wayah Gap. Thanks Pete 56. From there it just seemed to get more miserable. The snow continued and was very beautiful to LOOK at. Hiking in it was not so fun. Pretty much all the proceeding hikers footprints were gone - either blown away or snowed over. Oh yeah and then the drifts started, 3 to 6 inches of snow with gusty winds equal icicles on the eyelashes and beard (Troll's) and knee high drifts. The 2nd half of the day, Oblivious and I were the glass is half empty people. As we got more tired, you should have heard the complaining. I said I was going to make an entry about Trail Nazi Troll taking his family on a forced march thru the blizzard. Of course, it was all made much worse with Troll's damn glass is half full attitude. If I heard how beautiful the $^%$#@ damn snow was or how much fun it was to walk thru the $&$%$%$ damn snow one more time, I was going to stab him with my hiking poles. Well, I didn't stab him, even though I really wanted to. We finally made it to Winding stair gap around 1800. Of course it was still snowing. This is where the angel extraordinaire part comes in. Pete 52 had his pickup sitting there with a little butane stove he used to make warm drinks. yummmmm. Pete 56 had been hanging out there for approx 3 hours waiting for cold hikers. He warmed them up and got them into town. How awesome is that? Earlier in the day, he had gone up some of those mountain roads to ensure hikers were ok. He left trail magic out there. Oh yeah and he took vacation to be able to do this. And he had done the same thing for several days. We finally got back to our hotel where the magic continued. The hotel staff had turned on our heater because they knew we would be cold. The best magic was the crock-pot full of the most awesome homemade chili that I have ever had. Lyn Ladyhawk knew we were out and figured we would be cold, tired and hungry when we returned. She brought over chili, paper bowls, and crackers. We didn't have to go anywhere to get good food and we were able to share with other hikers. Lynn is a really neat lady who has helped us out a great deal while we have been here in Franklin. She helped us and others out with rides around town and just general support. I was able to purchase the raingear that kept Troll and I warm during our snowy expedition because she drove me to the right stores. We issued her an invite to visit any time in Washington. Now for some completely random items from Franklin. Troll and I gave someone a trail name. The guy next door had packages of dried squid that his brother sent him. You can only imagine the conversation that brought this information out. Of course, everyone wanted to see the dried squid product. As soon as I saw it, I said that it looked like squid jerky. Troll immediately decided that was a perfect trail name. So now Squid Jerky is traveling with Silent Bob and Louisville. I tried the bidet method listed in my guest book. That mixed with my private toilet paper roll shows great odor control promise. Of course since it was snowing, I used a handful of snow vice a handful of water. Believe me when I say that will get you immediately right back to hiking. No standing around lollygagging. Take care and we will see you on the trail.