Date: 2015-11-15
To: A Bit Of Color
Miles today: 0.0

It is 2 am and I AM COLD. Here I am bundled up in a 15 degree bag, long underwear, hat, gloves, and jacket with the hood up, and I am cold. Every time I move, cold air rushes in to cool me down even more. I check the weather app on my phone and yep, it is 28 cold degrees. There is little wind, and the sky is bright with stars. How do I know this? Because of course, I had to get up numerous times during the night to pee. It¢s one of Murphy¢s Laws: the colder it is, the more often the human body has to pee. The only benefit to this was seeing all the beautiful night sky. I zipped my sleeping bag all the way up, pulled it up over my head and tried to sleep. I still felt cold spots. Finally, through trial and error, I discovered that if I pulled the bag closer to my body, taking out the excess air space, I got a tad warmer. Herein lays the problem. Now I am sure you have seen this coming, giving that I previously touted the benefits of this bag (semi-rectangular, plenty of room, not claustrophobic in it, etc.).   I had a major epiphany: because the bag is so roomy, my body¢s wimpy furnace is not able to heat all the dead air space. It¢s akin to trying to heat a 2100 sq. ft. house with a space heater! Therefore, I need to encase myself in the typical mummy style sleeping bag, which I was so trying to avoid. While I was laying there figuring this all out, I realized that while I was definitely cold, I was also very comfortable in this new hammock! So I focused on that thought while I waited for morning to arrive.Finally it was time to get up and I gingerly exited my hammock, trying to unfreeze my joints as I went. I could not wait to get some hot food in me, especially a hot cup of tea. The oatmeal and tea thawed me out and I quickly packed up, as we had some miles to cover today (around 8 miles). Off we set and quickly spread out as our hiking paces were quite different. Wild Thang and I remained in the back of the line. We had a slower, steadier pace than the jackrabbits ahead, but we would catch up at water sources and planned to lunch together. The hike today was minor ups and downs, with no great elevation changes. Not many views either, but it was wonderful to be able to see across the gaps and valleys. The trees were totally bare of leaves and everything had a brownish gray cast to it. I did manage to find a little spot of leaf color left. The photo doesn¢t do it justice, the way the reds juxtaposed with the gray of the trees. We remained at 3500 feet until we hit Blue Mountain and up we went. The good part of the climb was that from there it was all downhill to the car, civilization, shower and food. We exited the woods at dusk, said our goodbyes quickly as the temperature was dropping rapidly. Wild Thang and I caravanned to the Hiker Hostel in Dahlonega to get set for the second part of the adventure. We found it without too much trouble, unloaded and staggered uphill to the Lodge swaying from the weight of our packs and overnight bags. The door to the building opened and lo and behold who should it be, but Certificate! She traveled from SC to join us for the next round. Having read her trail journal entries previously and hearing about her from my hiking pals, I was looking forward to meeting her. I got settled in, exploded my backpack in my room, got rid of the trash, showered and got into nice clean wonderful smelling clothes! Wild Thang had done the same and we all headed into town to have dinner and get acquainted. I devoured the largest Shepard¢s pie I have ever seen. Back we went to the hostel to crash for the night. I went right to bed, hoping to catch up on lost sleep, as we were heading out again in the morning to hike another 3 days.