Date: 2015-04-03
From: Greasy Creek Hostel

To: Over Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

We woke up early today to try and get a jump on the weather that was supposed to be coming in that afternoon and ran inside to settle up with Connie. I mentioned something to Connie about how hard it was to find the trail down to her house and I offered to blaze the trail for her with some Neon Green ductape she had laying around. She took the offer even though she feared that her neighbor would rip it down as soon as he saw it but I figured it'd help for at least a couple of days. We looked at the weather again one last time and there was still a 40% chance and I was really hoping the rain would hold off till the evening.Seeker and I had a long day ahead of us since we'd be climbing up into the roans which sit at around 6000 feet. The hike back up the old road to the trail seemed to go by quick as I marked the trail for the hostel. We ran into Ozzy again at the Trail Head and the two of them took off as I finished marking the trail down to Greasy Creek. I took off on the trail with a granola bar in my hand and left my poles back at the trail crossing so I had to run back down and grab them, ugh but at least I wasn't to far up. The climb into the Roans wasn't bad at all and I felt like I was eating through the miles catching up with Seeker pretty quickly. Thunder Started to roll in about 3/4 of the way up and he wasn't liking it one bit and asked continually if we should go down before a storm hit. I kept reassuring him that a storm wasn't going to come in, that we were already so far up there was no sense in going back down. We were only a couple miles away form the shelter at that point and the clouds were moving too quick to bunch up for a storm.We got into the first shelter by about 2 and from there it looked like things had cleared up a bit so we decided to push on to the barn. Seeker asked to hike together since I was determined to get there by 4 and the serious chance of thunderstorms would be looming. As we got to the balds more weather had started to come in so i started to really move it up over those mountains. We probably were going an easy 3 mph once it started to spit a little bit, I was not getting stuck in a storm on one of those balds.It didn't even take us 2 hours to hit Stan Murray and the sun was back out again so I stopped to sign the log and grab a couple handfuls of trail mix for the last couple of miles. I'd heard the Barn can get filled up quick so I didn't take too long in case some of the folks I'd passed on the way up were planning on making a stop. I passed a few folks on the way in that looked like they were section hiking and caught up to seeker pretty quick it felt like. The bumps on the map didn't look bad but after the long day and climb they felt a whole lot worse than they looked. There was a bunch of people when we got in but there was plenty of room inside for everyone. Everyone else had saved us a spot over near them in what we called "the hikers corner" which was a nice little surprise. In the far corner a dad and daughter were cooking up some hot dogs and I was lucky enough to snag one along with a little bit of pizza. All in All I'd have to say it was a great day