When I opened my eyes in the morning, everything was quiet. The thunderstorm had stopped during he night. When I went to open the zipper of my tent, I found that it was frozen shut. With a little bit of a struggle, I was able to open the zipper and climb out. Now standing outside, I saw that everything was covered with ice and about an inch of snow. In my tent I was warm and dry all night, but standing in the grey cold morning, I knew I would be packing up a wet tent. The ice was crusted to every surface. I tried to get most of it off with my Sham Wow, but after about 15 minutes, I gave up. A single tear rolled down Vince’s face somewhere. I knew that it would add a pound or two of extra weight, and make my tent soggy, but it was time to get moving. The randomness of the weather was something I hadn’t anticipated before starting the trail. The previous day I had gotten a sunburn, and the next day I was scraping ice and snow off my tent. It snowed for another four hours in the morning, by the afternoon it had warmed up to between 50 and 60 degrees. We all reached a consensus that we would do 15 miles to the Nantahala Outdoor Center, and stay over one night to eat some real food, and get showers. The Nantahala Outdoor Center, is a small family type destination, that included a couple of restaurants, an outfitter and some boating on the river. The first ten miles felt great. I was practically running up some of the mountains. I wasn’t actually running, but I was hiking pretty fast.
Someone’s happy! This was before the tear started flowing on the death march to the Nantahala Outdoor Center.
It was kind of an experiment to see how fast I could comfortably go with a full pack. It felt good to challenge myself. The NOC was at 1,723 feet, so we had to drop 2,600 feet in elevation over six miles. It was a long, long way down. As soon as we started to descend the mountain, my knees started to take a beating, my morale did too. The weather was beautiful and the forest was awesome, but I was so focused on getting off the mountain that I couldn’t really enjoy it. As the temperature rose and I started to sweat, it started to seem like a never-ending slog. The joy faded and it became a death march. Just when I was at the end of my rope, I could see some buildings far below. I was almost there! It was many, many switchbacks down to the road. When I got to the bottom, I ran across to a convenience store. I bought an ice-cold coke and some salt and vinegar chips. As soon as I took my pack off and sat down with my snack, my bad attitude turned around and I was in a great mood.
The Nantahala Outdoor Center.
There was a hostel inside the NOC, but as we explored the area, we began to hear from other hikers that it was full. We also heard through the grapevine that it was dirty and loud. In that case, I was happy to just stealth camp nearby. As we were discussing our options, someone called about some trailers we could rent for the night. They were cheap and close by, so sight unseen, we all decided to go for it. Pacecar, Vegan, Seth, Navigator, Biscuit and some other hikers ate dinner at the Restaurant. I had a BBQ burger, fries and Blackberry cobbler for desert. Then some dude gave us a ride in the back of his truck to the trailers. They were old, and smelled like a grandma’s basement, but I always get a kick out of the strange experiences, so I was happy. I stayed in a trailer with Seth, we hung up our wet tents, took some showers, refilled our waters and fell asleep on the musty beds.
Smooth's Appalachian Trail Thru-Hike 