Date: 2005-04-02
From: Sassafrass Gap Shelter, NC

To: Brown Fork Gap Shelter, NC
Miles today: 9.1
Weather: snow

Day 20, in which Jess sinks to a new hygienic low, beats me to the inevitable Sondheim reference, shits in the woods, evokes Christmas carols in April, discovers that you don't have to be a weather man (or even Weatherman) to know which way the wind is blowing, defies common sense by walking uphill through the snow when she doesn't have to, loses her friend, won't go looking for said friend because of she doesn't have the right outfit (dry clothes are so 2004), and mocks a guy who walked four extra miles in the freezing cold:   Another shorter-than-anticipated day, but again with good reason: after a night of heavy wind and rain, we awoke to snow. I made another mad dash to the privy, obliged to retrieve the pair of liner gloves I'd accidentally dropped on the floor in there the night before. (KT suggested I soak the gloves in Purell before deigning to wear them again.) I made a hot breakfast-- oatmeal, and coffee from G-- and then Cuppa Joe and I hit the trail. As was not uncommon, fragments of Into the Woods ran through my head, but this time, setting out into the show, the fragments in question came from the Baker's Wife's song: "This is ridiculous/What am I doing here/I'm in the wrong story!" It didn't turn out to be as bad as I'd feared, though-- in fact, there wasn't much wind, and the snow was falling gently.In fact-- though perhaps the discreetness of this allegedly family-safe website may here be called into question-- the morning's primary locus of interest crystallized about three miles into the hike, when my body informed me, politely yet firmly, that all of its constituent parts had called a meeting and decided they were categorically unwilling to wait, as I had been urging them to do, six more miles to get to the next privy. Therefore, continued my body, I had better suck it up and drop trou. And try not to have my back to the wind. Defeated, I trudged through a snowdrift, and went behind a large stand of mountain laurel. Suffice it to say, the next ten minutes were... cold.Crisis managed, I kept on going. The pace was slow, through the snow. At one point, Treetrunks passed me and for kicks I began measuring my own stride against his footprints: for every three strides of his, it turned out, I took four steps. Still, even though the trail was, in essence, rocky leafy rooty snow-covered mud-- the land around the trail was beautiful, a very winter wonderland.Coming down Stecoah Gap-- slick as hell and muddy-- the wind picked up. Then, the following exchange:Cuppa Joe: WE HIT THE WIND TUNNEL COMING OUT OF THAT VALLEY.me:   YOU THINK?Cuppa Joe: HOW'S 9.1 MILES SOUND?me: SOUNDING BETTER.The wind didn't let up, either-- and the snow began to fall harder. Cuppa Joe and I caught up with Treetrunks at the road crossing just past Stecoah Gap. He was eyeing the road-- "How about hitching a ride into Robbinsville?" he said. But I was feeling good, and I didn't want to go into town. "It's 2.4 miles to the next shelter," I said, "and by God I am getting there tonight." Not twenty minutes later, Cuppa Joe and I ran into Socks and KT headed south. "We're going into town," they said flatly. "There are snowdrifts feet high up there, and the wind's blowing 40 mph, and the trail's almost impossible to follow, and we hear the shelter's packed."I felt a familiar sinking feeling: so near, and yet so far. "What do you think?" said Cuppa Joe. "I kind of want to keep going," I said. "Me too," he said. We nodded, and headed uphill.Shortly, I pulled ahead of him. I knew the climb out of Sweetwater was going to be a steep one, but this climb was beyond reckoning. Snow-covered hills stretching eternally upward. I felt as if in some Norse myth, or Narnia before the thaw, headed up a mountain with no summit. Skating, sledding, sliding, hauling-- turning around at times to keep the wind gusts from knocking me over-- watching extra carefully for white blazes among the snowdrifts-- this was like nothing else, ever, and I looked up at the no-sign-of-ending slope more than a few times, and burst into helpless laughter.I felt good though-- gratified. My body couldn't have done this three weeks earlier, at least not without serious complaint. But I'm strong and not too cold and knew there were food and dry clothes in my pack. The entire situation was, in fact, fun-- ridiculous, yes, but fun. Even including my hands, which have been curled up inside the palms of my gloves all day against the cold, with the result that I looked not a little like a Muppet.So eventually I reached the shelter. I waited a few minutes for Cuppa Joe, who usually falls behind on the uphills, but it was beginning to get cold, and I figured he'd be along momentarily. After all, my tracks-- the only ones out there by then-- took a sharp right at the shelter sign-- and besides, the sign itself was two feet wide. Impossible to miss. Right? I walked the 0.1 miles down to the shelter, and discovered tarps rigged over the entrance, windproofing the place; inside were four warm and dry hikers-- Jake, Trip, Chuck, and TurboJoe. I stepped in and being to realize that, having stopped moving, I was quickly growing cold. "Want some soup?" said TurboJoe, and held out a steaming bowl. I gave him an incredulous look-- did I actually just stumble out of the snow into a place where someone immediately offered me hot soup?-- and took it. I put dry clothes on, made hot ramen, and curled up in my sleeping bag, letting the shivers pass.At some point thereabouts, I began to worry: Cuppa Joe hadn't shown up yet. The hill had been a nasty one, true, but he still ought to have shown up by then. Was he hurt? Was he out in that snow-- and that bitter cold, not moving? Should I go back and look for him? I didn't have another change of clothes-- if I got cold and wet again, I'd be f----d. And not much help to a fellow hypothermic.Luckily, TurboJoe-- who'd been holed up in the shelter all day and consequently had all his clothes dry-- offered to go back down the trail aways and look. He came back half n hour later with the news that the only tracks he saw had turned around and were heading south. I was worried-- it was only a couple miles to the road, but I knew Cuppa Joe wouldn't have turned around unless something was seriously wrong. It seemed equally foolhardy, though, to go back out looking-- the storm wasn't letting up, it was getting dark, and if he had gone into town, we'd never know it. What to do?And then, suddenly, he was there-- arrived safe and sound, though a little chilled-- having, it transpired, somehow managed to walk past the ginormous shelter sign, walked 2 extra miles north, figured he'd overshot, and decided to backtrack. "We need some rules on getting lost," he said, pulling his glasses out of his sodden shirt. "Keep your glasses on, for starters," I said drily.But all's well that ends well. And as it ended safe, warm and dry-- and as Chuck kept his JetBoil going for five solid hours to keep us all supplied with hot water-- it was, on the whole, a-- dare I say-- marvelous day.