Date: 2016-10-28
From: Derek Knob Shelter

To: Mt. Collins Shelter
Miles today: 13.8
Weather: broken clouds

10/28 Day 6: I was starting to have doubts this morning about the way I set up our trip through the Smokeys. Not being thru-hikers, we had to reserve spots at specific shelters. I set up for longer days at the beginning of the Smokeys, thinking that even though our bags would be heavier with food, we would be much fresher physically. This was done way in advance of knowing what the water situation was. After yesterday¢s waterless walk to Derek Knob, Blister felt like he was somehow holding me up and started to contemplate finding a way to hike out and catch up to me. It was the usual mental ups and downs of a hike playing games in our heads, so recognizing this, we tried to say some things to lift our spirits a little; kind of fake it until you make it stuff. On this day for me, I had to goal of hitting 200 miles on the southern AT, we had the prospect of hitting the highest point on the AT, and we kept saying, well, our packs are getting lighter and lighter.Starting out in the morning, it was clear my legs were still feeling tired from the previous days steep ups and downs. We reached Silers Bald shelter mid morning and stopped for a pack break and a snack. We had to cover so many miles each day, we were really not stopping very frequently and taking the packs off to rest. Normally this coincides with getting water for me on a routine AT trek, however, obviously this was not happening on this trip. At Silers Bald, Blister talked to his wife on the phone and it appeared his spirits were much improved and all the talk about finding an exit had vanished like our morning snacks. After a short break, we continued to climb up towards Double Spring Gap Shelter, where we ate lunch¢¦and low and behold, there was a trickle of water on the North Carolina side. It was slow and probably took me 15 minutes to fill 3 liters, but it was water!It was around this shelter that we started running into quite a few overnight hikers and day hikers who had started out at Clingmans Dome. Following lunch, we started the long climb towards the apex of the AT, elevation wise. We noticed the forest started changing a bit as we were hitting a section of nice pine trees. The climb towards Clingmans was very gradual up until we got to Mt. Buckley. Here the trail got quite steep and seemed to go on and on. There were some very beautiful views from Mt. Buckley, so the climbing did indeed have a payoff. Eventually, I could see the man-made ramp and lookout that sits atop Clingmans Dome. I knew we were close.We made it to a paved path and took that to the lookout at Clingmans Dome and were met by legions of people. They came from all walks of life¢¦and they all drove there. While were were really lucky to have a clear day weather wise atop the tower, we didn¢t get much of a clear day on the tower to look around and take photographs. I was hoping my hiker stench would move some people away, but considering the lands that some of these people had come from (I did watch Slumdog Millionaire), I probably smelled normal.After taking our turn on the perch, we sat at the bottom for a snack like museum pieces with people buzzing all around us. A very nice volunteer ranger seemed to take a liking to us, probably because he was more of a back country guy who only put up with the masses of people in order to protect this spot. He talked about Charlie¢s Bunyon being one of his favorite places. I was also eager to see that as well. He gave us a 32 oz. Gatorade to split and took our trash for us. He was a true kind gentleman.   From the looks of the sun in the sky and knowing the miles we had left to go, we decided to start hiking on again. We made sure to put our headlamps somewhere handy, because it looked like at our pace, darkness was going to beat us to the shelter.We dropped the steep descent down the north side of Clingmans Dome, losing 891 feet while getting to Collins Gap. The trail and the road to the dome paralleled each other most of the way down. Halfway down the hill, I hit the 200 mile mark for the southern AT. There was no sign, but AWOL¢s guide assured me of that. The sun set just after crossing Collins Gap and I knew we were going to be night hiking soon.The woods grew dark and a little eerie. I had never night hiked before, so this would be a first for me. As we reached the top, I kept thinking somehow we missed the sign for the Sugarland Mountain Trail which would bring us the half mile to Mt. Collins Shelter. I was getting frustrated, but soon realized on my guide book, there was a bit of a descent prior to reaching the trail. Man were the woods dark. There was no moon to speak of and we were walking through a fresh pine forest with thousands of arm width trees in massive groves. I periodically would wake a bird up that was perched just above the trail and would jump when it would fly off fast making noise in the quiet woods.At long last, after around an hour of night hiking, we reached the sign and then hiked the half mile to Mt. Collins. The shelter was full with many through hikers and some section hikers, so we were able to set up our hammocks in a beautifully soft pine needle carpeted floor. We did the usual at night, eating, conversing with the new hikers we met, hung our packs and food, and went off to sleep.This day seemed to be the turning point for our trip in terms of difficulty. Our packs got lighter, water became more available, and the difficulty of the climbs became a bit easier as our bodies got used to the physical challenges. We paid it forward, so to speak, by getting some big mile days out of the way so we could have some shorter days at the end. Including the half mile side trail to get to Mt. Collins Shelter, we did a total of 14.3 miles today and climbed around 2300 feet.