Day 18

Today flew by. 

As I'm writing this now, it's hard to imagine that I woke up this morning in a real bed. Really, I know this to obviously be the case, but if you spend enough time out on the trail, the zeros fade into the distance and it feels like you're just always on trail and in the woods. 

Anyways, I woke up to my alarm going off at 7am this morning and after a few rings, Walker turned on the lights. I had the majority of my things packed already, but I went ahead and loaded everything up after doing one last check. 

Instead of going to cracker barrel this morning, we tried out the breakfast of the hotel, and it was really good. Eggs, country fried steak, biscuits and sausage gravy and a blueberry muffin was my breakfast choice this morning. And it served me well. 

At 8:30, Ron picked us up and drove us back to Davenport gap, where we came out of the smokies two days ago. To our surprise, while the valley got a good downpour last night, the mountains actually got a dusting of frost and snow. Needless to say, I'm glad I didn't have to hike all day yesterday in those sorts of conditions. 

After starting our hike around 9:15, we made it to standing bear hostel around 10:30, for Spencer to pick up his mail dropped resupply. Originally, our plan was the send all of our packages to standing bear, but since we only decided to go into Newport a week ago, Spencer's package had already been sent out. Plus it was only a quarter mile off trail, so who cares.
After standing bear, our official day of hiking began. Today, we only had two peaks to climb up and over, snowbird, and max patch. Since we were coming out of a town, we had a roughly 2,400 foot climb over 4 miles. After having just crushed the smokies though, this was a surprisingly easy climb. 

Interestingly enough though, as we were less than a mile away from the summit, an overwhelming majority of the trees were completely covered in ice. From snowbird, we had a 360 degree view of the area around us, but with max patch in the distance and freezing winds, we decided to keep going. 

About halfway down the mountain, we stopped for lunch. During this time, 3 thru hikers that we passed minutes prior walked by us, and I finally placed where the one was from: Fontana Dam. 

We enjoyed our lunch, but the wind was only picking up, so just like on snowbird, we didn't linger for all to long. Finally, there was the ascent and descent for Max Patch and I really think this will be one of my favorite views. It's a completely bald top and you're surrounded by mountains. 

Overall, I'm happy with our pace today, how everyone is feeling, and the sunny weather, even if with the windchill the temps was in the teens. 

Daily recap:
Total miles hiked: 21.4 miles
From: Davenport Gap to Lemon Gap
From: mile marker 239.2 to 260.6
High: 40 and sunny but very windy
Low: (morning): not sure, in a motel. 
Low: (night) Low to mid 20's
Ascent = 6,033 feet
Descent = 4,563 feet

Thanks for following along. 
Tyler M.

Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 11, 2024 at 9:38 AM

    21.4 is nice mileage. You're trail hardening and will be ready to clip off miles in VA.

    ReplyDelete

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