Day 13

Well, we found some hikers.

I slept fairly good last night. I fell asleep somewhere between 10:30 and 11 and I slept clean through to 3am. At 3am however, something unexpected happened -- I woke up to the sound of someone throwing up. Now, since we were the only people at this campsite, I knew that either spencer or walker were throwing up, turns out it was walker.

We're not quite sure what caused it, but we're guessing he got dehydrated coming out of Fontana and then drank to much water immediately after getting to camp. Like I said, really not sure. Could have been an electrolyte imbalance, but it doesn't seem to have been any sort of food poisoning, waterborn illness, or norovirus since it was just a one and done event.

Anyways, we woke up around 7 and we were on trail slightly before 8:30. For our morning climbs, we had doe knob, and devils tater patch.

Each climb was mild, and so was the weather. Probably 45 and mostly cloudy. There isn't a whole lot to say about the morning, I really just walked.

In the afternoon, our big climb of the day was thunderhead mountain, which is slightly over 5,500 feet. Up until 1 or so when I went up it, I was feeling absolutely perfect. But as I started the ascent I really started getting tired. Not sure if it was the slightly higher elevation, or the fact that I had gone pretty much 3 miles per hour for 4 hours up until this point, but I was feeling it.

Eventually, the climb up ended, and even with the clouds and lack of sun, the views were still pretty good. Although I expected the uphill to be the hardest part, the next 2 or 3 miles down / going up small ridges was at worse.

For reasons unknown to us, there are leaves everywhere on trail. And I don't just mean leaves covering the trail, I mean some areas have 6+ inches of oak and beech leaves. It's softer on the feet, I'll give them that, but they cover up and mask all the roots and stones, making it hard to know where to step or how much force to apply.

One neat thing about this section though is that I saw two decent sized deer and a turkey as I was coming around the corner. The hen was doing her thing, working her way up the hill, and the deer were so keyed in on her that they didn't care about me. I walked within 15 feet of them, made eye contact with them, said hello, and kept moving. Dunno what to make of that.

Derrick knob shelter finally came into sight after one last 300 foot vertical ascent up a small ridge. To my surprise, there were 7 AT hikers and 8 section hikers at the shelter. This meant two things: one, there are actually people on the trail, even if this group only does 8 to 12 miles a day. Secondly, there were two many people in the shelter, so I had to find a place to camp.

Oddly enough, I think I'll miss the lonely shelter nights that we enjoyed twice in the nanthahala section. It is nice to get out of any of the night elements, and gain time and efficiency by not having to setup a tent.

Typically, shelters are full of people snoring and mice that want to take your down in your sleeping bag. If it wasn't for the 15 people in a 12 person "maximum" shelter, then we probably would've stayed in there. Supposedly, we're going to get anywhere from 2 to 4 inches of rain in the next 24 hours. If that's the case, we may go into Gatlinburg tomorrow to dry off -- we'll see what happens. Thankfully, with me being in my tent tonight, I should sleep really good.

Daily recap:
- 17.5 miles
- from mile marker 172.6 to 190.1
- from birch springs to derrick knob
- high temp: 50
- low temp (both morning and night): 40

- ascent: 5,095

- descent: 3,983

Thanks for following along. 

Tyler M.