Date: 2014-04-09
From: Overmountain Shelter

To: Campsite (~Mountaineer Shelter)
Miles today: 18.8
Weather: scattered clouds

We started the morning out in a cloud. A cold cloud. This was compounded by the fact that we hadn't spread the base of the rain fly - the effect of which was to trap all the moisture from breathing in puddles around the edge of the tent and on almost everything inside. The only response to that is, of course, to roll over and continue sleeping. Trix and I were very near the last ones to leave the shelter. Moose and Flipper were still tenting outside and weren't planing on leaving before 11.Before we had even retraced our steps back to the actual AT it had started hailing lightly and the wind had begun to pick up. Trix wasn't feeling to confident about her moccasins standing up to the cold after the hike over Roan Mountain yesterday and decided she would feel safer just staying at the shelter until things cleared up, presumably in a few hours.I continued on alone through the fog, wind, hail, and over the grassy hill that seemed to go on forever. The visibility was low enough that you could only see 15-20 feet ahead of you, and the only thing you could see was more up. I'm still unsure of how long the climb was, or how steep it actually was, but it will be forever in my mind as an endless climb straight up.It finally crested and began descending into woodland once again. The shelter from the wind was incredible, as was the steady increase in temperature and eventual appearance of the sun. While still a tad on the chilly side, I was in fine spirits by the time I reached the road between Elk Park and Roan Mountain (the town). Still thinking the rest of Los Banditos were ahead of me I stopped for another snack and sent out texts to determine just how far ahead of me they were. These were shortly answered with directions to hitch into town and join them for some BBQ.The hitch was easy, finding them less so. There was some confusion somewhere along the chain of directions given and I ended up walking the length of the town twice before finding the place half a block from where I had been dropped off. It was well worth it though. I found Chef, Listen, Squirrel, and Rabbit already a few orders deep and joined them for Highlander BBQ's KWJ burger - a six dollar deal I would recommend to any thru hiker. Rabbit, Chef, and I each got one and they all came in weighing around 27 ounces. That's just shy of two pounds of burger, chili, pulled pork, ham steak, homemade sauce, homemade slaw, and jalapenos. It was to die for after the morning marathon. Chef ran into Moose and Flipper who confirmed that Trix had not left.After stopping for a quick resupply we hit the trail again, all five of us relatively spread out. After stopping to talk to a few other thru hikers setting up, Rabbit, Chef, and I bunched back up and stuck together for a while until reaching a blue blaze trail to a water fall. We stopped there for a snack, but didn't linger too long as air and spray were a tad chillyThere wasn't a whole lot to the afternoon after the falls and before we knew it we reached the 400 mile mark, conveniently marked by someone with some sticks. Just after that was the shelter we had hoped to camp at. We didn't find any tent sites, but we did find out that Trix had passed through about 45 minutes before us and was planning on camping at the next listed site. We pressed on another mile to find a perfectly tailored campsite set on the creek with just enough tent sites, a nice fire pit, a few benches, but no Trix leaving us even more perplexed and wondering whether she might in fact be a wraith.The evening chill rolls in pretty fast when you're camped next to a creek so we didn't hang out too late. But there was a nice fire, plenty of food, and of course good company - don't need to much more for a good night's sleep.