Date: 2017-04-23
From: Tri-corner Knob Shelter

To: Standing Bear Hostel
Miles today: 18.4
Weather: moderate rain

Oh boy did it rain last night. The sound of the rain on the roof alternated between a pleasant background noise and a mildly worrying "how much rain can this shelter take?" throughout the night. Except for the one leak in the roof, which we were easily able to avoid, we had no issues. Last night we had planned on getting an early start, on the trail by 6 since Standing Bear Hostel located just outside of the Smokies doesn't take reservations, but both Lookout and I woke up to our alarms, rolled over, saw Liz (who takes the longest of us to get ready) still in her sleeping bag, and went back to sleep since the rain still echoed on the roof.We finally dragged ourselves out of our sleeping bags at 730, as everyone else in the shelter was getting ready. While we packed up we heard from a couple of the tenters who had setup in a bad spot and who had had a river flowing through their tent, or who had woken up in a pool of water, or who had had the seamsealing on their tent fail... not a good night for several people.A couple people, unwilling to deal with the rain today, decided to zero at the shelter by the time we set out into the rain at 9am. We did our best anti-raindance throughout the morning, jumping over mud, pole vaulting over puddles, and eventually just giving up and walking straight through the stream... I mean trail. The temperature was only in the high 40s and a fair amount of wind was buffeting the peaks and ridges we were crossing, so we moved pretty quickly to stay warm.We reached the next shelter and took a quick lunch, chatting with Ranger, who had decided to zero at the shelter, while we ate. Luckily she had a deck of cards to amuse herself with for the day, in addition to the hikers stopping through for a respite from the rain. During the past couple hours Liz's cotton gloves had gotten soaked and combined with the cramping from holding poles all morning had made her hands hard to use. She had a bit of trouble uncliping the straps of her pack, opening the wrapping of her lunch, and do any other dextrous tasks. Lookout and I were happy to help her, but it remains to be seen if she'll live it down (Possible trail name: thumbs?). Mildly warmer than when we arrived, we headed back out into the rain and to continue our decent out of the Smokies. Surprisingly, despite dropping ~4500ft today, our largest descent of the trail, my knees hurt less today than coming down into NOC, perhaps because the weather was such a good distraction.We finally reached to the Davenport Gap Shelter (sometimes called the Smokies Sheraton, though it wasn't particularly better equipped than any other Smokies shelters, so I'm not sure why) and then shortly after the northern boundary of the park. We dropped the second half of our permit in the collection box to indicate we left the park and continued on our way just as a bit of sunshine peaked through the clouds. It rained literally from when we stepped into the park to when we left it... figures.We continued descending and crossed a gushing stream 4 times. Though it's probably normally pretty easy to step over the stream on the rocks which had been arranged for that purpose, those rocks were covered in ankle deep water that we had at wade through. It wasn't a big deal because at that point though because we were so wet it didn't matter anyways. Before we knew it we had reached I-40, the sound of the stream and waterfalls masking the sounds of the highway until we were right next to it. We crossed under and headed up the other side of the gap the highway ran along, soon reaching Standing Bear Hostel.Though out of bunks, the hostel was letting the droves of hikers fleeing the Smokies sleep on the floor of the unfinished addition, in the barn, anywhere warm and dry. Liz, Lookout, and I got put in the addition with GoodTime and Fireproof, among others. We showered, Lookout and I each ate a pizza (after waiting for an hour for all the hikers in the line to use the pizza oven to finish), showered (would not recommend their outdoor shower, which was all that was available when I showered), grabbed some beers and hung out for the rest of the night.