Day 21, 22, & 23

If you would have told me how today would have turned out in the morning, I would have laughed at you. 

I woke up slightly before 7 and called Kristina briefly. Besides wishing her a good day, I told her that I was feeling great and ready to do another day of big miles. 

Shortly afterwards, we tore down camp, ate breakfast, and got on trail. Since we had already gained a ton of elevation the previous day, we had two relatively easy ascents this morning: firescald knob and big butt.

We had a great day of weather, and the quick ascent and ridge walk up firescald was fantastic. However, when I was coming off it, I started to get the sense that something was seriously wrong. 

See, typically, if I'm fresh and hiking on flat ground or downhill, there's rarely a time that I won't go at a pace of 3 miles per hour, if not more -- and due to the amount of hiking that I've done, I'm usually a decent judge of my own personal pace. 

Between firescald and big butt, there was at least a half mile or relatively flat field walking, and I was slow... real slow. By the time I was going up big butt I was huffing and puffing. Dragging my trekking poles, I finally made it up to big butt. There, I found a shaded spot, tried to eat some food, and completely lost my appetite. I was sweating without doing any significant exertion. Something was seriously off. 

Big butt was roughly 6.5 miles into the day, and after 4 additional miles of flat and mostly downhill, I couldn't go another step farther. I had felt like I was going to throw up so many times during the descent. I was turning pale, my stomach was in knots, and I was lightheaded. Sometime between 1 and 2, the fun began. 

I tried to lay down briefly and prop my feet up on my bag to give them some rest. Well, whatever shifted in my stomach did the trick, and I quickly scrambled up, leaned over the log I was next to, and threw up everywhere. 

Immediately, I felt so much better. And I was really hoping that maybe, just maybe, this was a one off thing.  I was wrong. 

From, let's call it 1:30, to 10:30, I threw up every two hours. Thankfully, my condition wasn't very severe. It was just water, there wasn't any lingering dry heaving, and the nausea came and passed quickly. 

Originally, the guys had asked if we could make it 4 more miles, but after I threw up the second time, all bets were off for the day -- and that's for the best. 

I was pretty out of it and not all to sure exactly when Spencer started up, but before I had gone to sleep at 7, he started really burping. Not just a burp like after you drink a soda, but one that comes from your toes and seems like your stomach is turning over. Before we knew it, Spencer started violently throwing up -- and I use violently purposefully here. He had it way worse than me. Other than the time I ate shellfish, found out that I had a food allergy, and threw up and passed out every 15 minutes for 12 hours, I've never seen anyone throw up like Spencer did. From whenever he started that night, until 9 am the next morning, he must've thrown up and dry heaved hundreds of times. 

Walker on the other hand was feeling good. However, I woke up around 9:30 and walked over to see what everyone was up to. Once I noticed that Spencer had gotten sick while I was sleeping, I looked over at Walker and told him "you're next!" Unfortunatly, I was right. 

He didn't end up throwing up as much, but he did run through his remaining toilet paper very fast -- ill leave it at that, I think everyone gets what I'm saying. 

Long story short, the night of march the 13th and the morning of March the 14th will, fingers crossed, go down as our worst day on trail. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. 

Day 22: 

I woke up first, right around 6:30. At this point, I hadn't drank any water since 2 the day before. Any time I tried, I would instantly throw it up. Needless to say, I was incredibly dehydrated. Thankfully, I was able to drink, and keep down, about a quarter liter before I got the rest of the guys up and we got on trail. Everyone had a rough night, but I actually got sleep, and wasn't in awful shape. Although my stomach and guts weren't happy, I was feeling up for the 3.3 mile walk out to where we had scheduled a shuttle to meet us. I took down the bear bags, and started to get walker and spencer moving. They were having a real tough go, but with a little motivation, and a bit of an ultimatum of "the last thing we want to do is miss the shuttle / the only priority we have is getting out of here" we got on trail slightly before 9. 

After some bathroom stops and dry heaving, we got to the gap around 10:15 and Steve from Unicoi Shuttles picked us up at 10:30. 

Ever since then, we have be rehydrating and trying to get out stomachs in working condition again. 

After talking it through, we think that we got some sort of virus that was lurking in the water source at Allen gap. Needless to say, we'll be slightly more conscious of where we fill up in the future -- don't need to repeat this. 

Day 23:

I slept great last night. Not much to write about today since all I did was sleep, eat, and rest up. Looking forward to getting back on trail shortly. 

Thanks for following along.

Tyler M.