Date: 2017-04-12
From: Franklin

To: Wayah Bald Shelter
Miles today: 11.0
Weather: overcast clouds

We all awoke pretty early, as we're now accustomed to doing, even when indoors. The trail was open! So we packed up a readied ourselves for the 9am shuttle back to the trail. Unfortunately, Lookout had decided to hang back, get the haircut he had been wanting, and take a couple shorter days to allow his foot to finish healing, so we parted ways as Liz and I boarded the shuttle. We'll definitely see him again, if only at Trail Days next month, but there's also a chance he might catch us again after he's back to 100%... only time will tell.Liz, Bear, Tropical, and I got dropped at the trail head at ~930 along with a couple others from the budget inn shuttle? (Missionary, NotBad, KickATree, GearRat, and others) and hit the trail once again. Liz opted to continue listening to her audiobooks, so I moved on ahead and ended up passing all the hikers mentioned above, leaving nothing but open trail ahead.In the first couple hundred yards of trail I passed by a couple firefighters doing some mop-up work from the fire the day before (tamping out any remaining hot spots), but though the fire had come close to the trail it had been stopped about a hundred feet from the trail at it's closest. The air had a lingering smoky smell, but the sounds of the road abruptly disappeared as I rounded a hill, leaving me back in the wilderness on this beautiful sunny morning.The trail rose steadily out of the gap and onto a series of progressively taller peaks, but the incline was less tiring that normal... perhaps just because it was good to be moving again. Eventually the trail opened up into a clearing which contained a blue blazed trail which led to the summit of Siler Bald, 0.2mi away and uphill. Normally I might've skipped it, but since I was already ahead of everyone and it was about lunch time, I opted to take it and hiked up the steeply inclined meadow to the summit of the bald. The summit was marked by a pink granite plack proclaiming the name of the mountain and it's height (5,216ft), and from the top I could see Franklin (which I had just left), the Albert Mt Firetower (which we had passed a couple days earlier, now just a spec on the summit of the distant mountain), and the Nantahala River (which we'd reach in 2 days) in the panoramic view. It seems like I say this a lot, but this was the best view of the trip so far. It would be nice if sometime could make an Augmented Reality app which could add labels to mountains viewed by the phone's camera, because although the view was stunning it was hard to identify all but the most obvious landmarks.Anyways, I descended back to the AT and came across Liz, who had stopped for lunch just a few yards down from the summit trail, so I stopped and chatted for a bit. We agreed to meet at the top of Wayah Bald, our peak for the afternoon, so I kept cruising solo for the afternoon. The trail descended into a gap with a road (where we would've had to start had the trail still been closed), before climbing a long and tough incline which lasted a couple miles. Nearing the top I ran into a couple hikers heading down who informed me that there was trail magic at the summit.There's nothing quite like a bit of magic to make a hill feel not as steep, and it didn't take long to reach the summit. The TRAIL MAGIC consisted of a cooler of drinks, a cooler of fresh fruit, and a ton of snacks and candy, a much appreciated gift. The guy providing the gift hadn't had many hikers through today, because of the fires, which meant there was plenty to go around as hikers started trickling in.   When asked for why he liked to provide the magic, he responded in his usual (somewhat gruff) manner with "if you're dumb enough to walk to Maine, someone otta reward you for it".While enjoying the treats I met Fireproof, a guy from Maine (from the town next to where I went to high school), learned that the trail had been reclosed for at least a little while at 1045 this morning, which meant we were extremely lucky in when we started to have made it, and learned that skateboard guy (who I saw my first day on trail) was still hiking a few days behind.For whatever reason, either the time of year or the fact that this area had burned last fall, there were a ton of tiny gnats flying around and so we decided to move on. We visited the stove observation tower, also crisped by the fires, before continuing to the shelter, which was only a mile away. We opted to sleep inside tonight because of a chance of rain (packing up wet gear isn't very fun, so might as well avoid it if possible). Sure enough, 5min after reaching the shelter a quick shower passed through as we unpacked. Logjam showed up and also Twisted, an older gentleman from midcoast Maine.As we were cooking dinner we were treated to a couple rainbows as a shower passed through the valley below and caught the last rays of sun of the day. We headed to bed, as the sun set, shading the clear sky above our heads with a perfect gradient of orange to blue. I got up a little later and was treated to a rare sight... A light shower was passing through by the shelter but the stars were still brightly visible in the night sky above as were the lights of a town in the valley below, including it's blinking stoplights.