Date: 2017-01-07
From: Robbinsville, nc

To: Nantahala outdoor center
Miles today: 13.8

Today was our first real snow day. There was a solid 4 inch cover with drifts up to a foot in the gaps. And it was cold. Mustard seeds truck was reading 10 degrees where he dropped us off and that was the lowest elevation of the day. I'd guess it was below zero with the wind chill. Not sweating was not an option so my plan was just to take zero breaks and hope for the best at the NOC. I was pretty comfortable everywhere except my right foot. All I have are my trail runners, two pairs of wool socks wrapped in a hefty bag. Normally that's fine in the cold once I get moving but for some reason my right toes were not OK. Luckily I had some hand warmers that I gorilla taped to the bottom of my socks and that solved the problem. They were a little bulky to walk on but the toes got nice and toasty in about a half hour. Kate on the other hand was rocking it with the snow preparedness. All her heavy gear payed off big time. She's got the "wateeproof" boots, knee length gaiters and the badass micro spikes. She left us in the dust at the morning climb. I had my yak traks which I really like if only they wouldn't disintegrate. By 5 miles in the functional one had caught up with the crappy one and both were basically on top of my shoe. I think I can MacGyver them with some string ties underneath but that's pretty egregious it took two days of use to render them totally worthless. Aside from that and the occasional slip, the hike and day were totally gorgeous. It was a bluebird day and the snow above 4000 feet was dry fluffy pow pow. Really wish I had some skis at that point because that would've been amazing. It felt like skiing on the downhills anyway. I even threw in a few jump turns to avoid some slips. At one point my friend Kelly was gonna meet us at the NOC before the weather turned her around and I joked with buckshot, we'll half joked, that with all this pow she might end up taking us straight to the NC terrible ski areas. He's never skied and wasn't about to try and I was like we'll if youre having fun today is basically a half marathon of the non-fun part of skiing with none of the fun part at the end. I did actually have fun today eventually though. Just in case my toes started freezing again u thought it'd be smart to just hoof it on ahead to the NOC. once I got out ahead it was just glimmering, virgin pow with occasional animal tracks and gorgeous snowy views all around. I've done this section several times too and it was cool to recognize spots in their snowy versions. I got to the NOC around 4 and as I'd feared the restaurant had closed for weather and it was a ghost town.  I found a shuttle nu.ver on the message board and the dude was gonna charge me 100 bucks to go into bryson city. I saw a couple cars roll up and luckily they worked there. This dude was really excited there were still crazy sobos about and gave me a list of shuttles plus his nu.ber in case they didn't work out. They had been fly fishing whuch im guessing is even colder than mountain hiking. We'll 13 freezing phone calls later all I'd found was a 75 dollar shuttle. Then as I was resigning to defeat another guy that worked at the restaurant showed up out of snowed in boredom and I joked I'd give him 50 bucks for a beer. Kate showed up then and he let us in and gave us a craft beer of our choosing. That was some fantastic magic. I'd been running around trying to work out a shuttle and hadn't changed out if my wet layers. Being inside in the heat with a bells two hearted was flicking fantastic. Then for the icing he said he'd give us a ride into town for free, and that was before teashot had showed up. They dud about a half hour later and we celebrated with mcdonalds at the nantahala brewing Co, thankfully still open. It's supposed to be in the negative teens tomorrow then warm up so we decided not to risk it and just zero. Sleeping in!