Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Cold Rainy Day 1/3

10-14-09 day 134
start: Double Spring Shelter, TN
end: Vandeventer Shelter, TN
daily mileage: 14.4
total mileage: 1748.2

It was a cold night, and we woke up to some cold, cold rain. We're hiking in a biggish group, and No Money had decided to sleep in his hammock last night - the poor guy really seemed trapped in the elements out there as we were packing up in our shelter. We started hiking in just our T-shirts (as usual), but only made it about 5 minutes down the trail before we stopped and realized that wasn't going to work. We put on our warm layer and our rain gear overtop, and continued hiking in our toasty warm clothes. It's the first time we've ever hiked in warm layers - up to this point the body heat we've generated while hiking has always been enough.

When we got to the lunch shelter, we froze our butts off while we waited for our food to cook. None of the other thru-hikers we're with have warm lunches, so they were all able to scarf down a cold lunch and leave before they got too cold. I'm telling you, sitting still in that freezing cold rainy weather is not a good idea!

We got to Vandeventer and couldn't decide whether or not to hike on and only do 10 miles tomorrow, or to stay and do 17 tomorrow. It was pretty clear that the day couldn't be worse tomorrow, so we decided to stay the night and jump into our sleeping bags. Everyone was tightly packed and cozy in the shelter, and the wind and rain were really howling all around... we were really looking forward to the hostel tomorrow!

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