Date: 2017-04-06
From: Tray Mt Shelter

To: Dick's Creek Gap
Miles today: 11.0
Weather: moderate rain

Snow?!? Snow!?! We'll get to that part...We were quite cozy last night... Overnight the temperature dropped (31F when we woke up), but having so many people in the shelter we were so close together with kept us nice and warm. I woke up a couple times to unusually loud rain, and as others emerged from the shelter in the morning, I, from the safety of my sleeping bag, learned that that was actually sleet. It took ~10 minutes to muster the will to leave the warmth of the bag and start packing up. I left the least pleasant process for last... Doning wet 30deg clothes is not something I'd wish on anyone...We left camp (the highest we had yet camped at 4200ft) at 730am, moving quickly to try to warm our clothes and using our cold weather gear (hats/gloves) for the first time. The miles came quickly as we descended Tray Mt and onto a series of ridges which afforded easy hiking. We had a good view of the surrounding terrain, bright and clearing to the east and still pretty gray to the west. The west eventually won out as the mountains around us quickly disappeared into a white veil and the precipitation started. Blown in on a gust of wind, sleet began to pepper us and the trail, sounding like a bunch of rainsticks as the ice pellets hit the dead leaves on the ground around us. Mixed with the sleet were a few snowflakes, and the two forms of precipitation competing against each other for dominance as we hiked but neither managing to accumulate in the ground.Our only major challenge for the day was Kelley Knob, which brought us back up at 4100ft (our last time that high in Georgia), and we felt the full force of the wind which made the sleet feel more like it was sandblasting us. Even the warmth generated from climbing the knob wasn't quite enough to combat the 30deg temperatures combined with the 20+mph winds, and both of us had to bundle up.Snow had actually started to accumulate at the top of Kelly and the flora at the peak far been covered in a layer of freezing rain sometime earlier and still bore the ice. We stopped for a quick snack break after cresting the ridge and traversing to the eastern face and out of the wind and I managed to give myself a brain freeze from drinking my water too quickly.From Kelly it was basically all downhill from there, but we did stop and take a side trail 0.2 to a vista and grab a couple pictures, since the weather had stolen our views from blood and tray mountains. The trail led down into Dick's Creek Gap where a shuttle for the Top of Georgia was waiting (purely by luck) and brought us down to the hostel at ~1130.At checkin we were given a quick tour and a pair of medical scrubs to wear while our clothes were wearing. The staff said that we could wear them into town... That the locals were used to it and hikers did it all the time, but I'm not sure if that's actually true or if they were just trying to make us feel better...Regardless, we grabbed quick showers, changed into our scrubs, left our clothes for laundry, and grabbed the shuttle into town. First order of business: food. We grabbed lunch at a local BBQ place before heading to the Dollar General to look for a pair of Crocs to use as camp shoes (the sandals I brought can't be worn with socks and take a minute to get on/off, both of which aren't ideal in cold and/or rain). Failing to find anything but children's sizes (which wouldn't work... We checked), we headed to the food store and picked up some fruits and veggies and a chicken to snack on back at the hostel.We caught a ride back to the hostel and spent most of the afternoon chilling... reading, listening to music, chatting, eating. It turns out that Lookout and I slightly overestimated hiker hunger at this point in the trail... we're only capable of eating 1/2 a rotisserie chicken each, so we have some left over for tomorrow. McKaine showed up here later in the afternoon and is also going to zero tomorrow to escape the cold, so we'll also be hanging out with him again. Tomorrow is a day of relaxing... We'll take the shuttle back into town in the afternoon to pick up supplies for the leg up to Franklin. We're both feeling good so we'd like to see if we can stretch our fledgling trail legs a bit do a 20mi day (without it killing us) but we're also starting to see people developing knee/foot problems, so we'll see what we decide tomorrow. Also, we heard rumor of a place that serves breakfast and dinner all day that you can get eggs, bacon, hash browns, and a burger and make it all into a giant egg burger, so we might check that out. I'm already down 3lbs from my starting body weight, which isn't going to be sustainable for the entire trail, so I'm? going to be packing more food for the trail and continuing to try to eat as many calories in town as possible. Should be a fun first zero tomorrow!