Date: 2017-04-19
From: Siler Bald Shelter

To: Clingman's Done
Miles today: 4.6
Weather: overcast clouds

There's nothing quite like waking up to driving rain and cloudy mists whipping by in a shelter with 17 of your closest friends... especially when the shelter is designed to hold 12 people (but there's always more space in a shelter when it's raining out). We woke up early but ended up getting up pretty late since none of us wanted to move. We hadn't intended it this way, but it ended up that Liz slept the closest to the door and had placed her bear spray at her head... Ready to defend the entire shelter against any ursal intrusions.We eventually got moving, intending to do 12mi to get to Newfound Gap where we could get a ride into Gatlinburg where we could rent a car to drive to Asheville for our zero. We finally got moving and found ourselves hiking across some pretty narrow and rocky ridges, still surrounded in fog. We reached the next shelter and kept hiking, plunging into a dense coniferous forest where moss blanketed every downed tree and limb on the forest floor. As we continued to ascend the trail thankfully became rockier (probably the only time I'll say that) which made the mud less cumbersome to avoid. These factors made the trail started to feel much more northern, like what I had encountered on the Long Trail in northern Vermont, which was a nice change of scenery.We eventually emerged from the forest and onto more rocky ridges as we neared the summit, while clouds blew across the ridge in front of us. The trail eventually dumped out onto a paved path which we followed for just a little bit to the summit. The summit of Clingman's Dome (the highest point on the AT at 6640ft) is topped with a concrete observation tower which has a long spiral ramp leading to the top. We headed up to the top and took in the scenery we had worked so hard to enjoy... actually we just took a couple of pictures with the mist and joked about the fact that we hadn't seen ANY part of the Smokies yet. A couple minutes later we were joined by some day hikers who were estatic that they had "conquered" the mountain (after they had driven up the first 6340ft and walked up the 0.5mi paved path which covers the last 300ft of elevation. To each their own... we also felt good about our "conquest" for the day and so followed said paved path down to the visitors center. We had decided to cut our day a little short at 5mi (instead of the original 12mi) to take advantage of a free shuttle down from the visitors center to Gatlinburg. By stopping here we also would have another chance at seeing view from the top when were returned to the trail on Friday, hopefully with nicer weather.We grabbed a shuttle from a local Baptist Church and as we followed the winding road down into the valley the sky cleared as the sun started shining... it was a BEAUTIFUL day everywhere but where we were hiking... figures. Damage from the fires last fall were evident on the hillsides where huge swathes of trees were blackened and burnt, but the forest here seemed to be recovering faster than other sections we had hoped through as there were hints of green on many of the trees and the forest floor.We arrived in Gatlinburg and got dropped off at the NOC outfitter where we quickly changed out of our wet clothes. I'm addition to being uncomfortable, it felt a little incongruous to be in rain jackets and wet hiking clothes in the middle of a beautiful day. Afterwards we caught a ride from the one Uber driver in town to car rental place. We ended up getting a minivan (the only other option was a Jeep) and headed back downtown to get some food at the Smoky Mountain Brewery, where Lookout and I both got a flight of beer which included every beer the brewery makes, a totally of 12, the largest flight I've ever seen. After finishing the flight, some wings, and a pizza we drove the ~90 min to Asheville, got a hotel, pack-splosioned to start drying our gear out, and showered. Feeling refreshed and dressed in our least smelly clothes, we walked downtown to a brewery called Wicked Weed (in reference to hops) where we got burgers and enjoyed some beer for a couple hours.We closed the brewery down (not hard since it closed at 10) and headed back to our hotel room where Liz and I watched Avengers: Civil War until ~2am (we had been talking about the movie a couple days ago on the trail) on her iphone before collapsing into sleep.