Day 33

The Station at 19e might be the best hostel on trail. 

We woke up at 8 and began packing up frantically to get out of the wind. Throughout the night, a cold wind moved in and started rushing up the hill we were camped on. In the middle of the night, I developed a random headache, had to pretty much put all of my clothes on that I brought with me, finagle with the bear bags for 30 minutes to get them down (which is a whole different story), grab ibuprofen, and then get back and go to bed. Really, I only slept from about 330 to 8. Not to bad, but not ideal. 

Our day was split up into two sections -- descend from the roans, and head back into the mountains after resupplying. One caveat is that before we could descend, we had 1.5 miles of hiking up to hump summit...

In 2020, when Walker and I summited hump, we had brutal rain / sleep and horrendous winds. We'll, this time, we didn't have rain, but the wind was otherworldly. Based off what we felt and based off what we head from other hikers / the locals, the constant wind was around 40mph but gusts were up to 70mph. In order to walk straight, I was legitimately leaning towards my right side and into the wind. Really something else. 

After descending hump, we crossed out of NC for the final time and made our way down to US 19e. In an awesome turn of events, a lone trail runner that we had seen earlier in the day was returning to his car and offered to give us a shuttle before we had even asked. 

The Station at 19e was where we had dropped off a resupply a couple of days before, and we made that mile uphill a lot quicker in the car than on foot. 

We then stayed at the station for 4 hours. We ate plenty of food, relaxed, talked to the owners, charged our electronics, and even found out they had a pool table, which I made sure to take advantage of. We had a fantastic time, and we're super glad to have gone and spent some time there!

We then go dropped back off at the trail and we hiked 3 hours from 3:15 to 6:15. Really, there wasn't a ton that happened through here except for crossing the 400 mile mark. It's just so nice being back on trail again and really feeling like we're making progress 

The next couple days look like rain but the forecast might be clearing out -- we might be lucky. 

Daily recap: 
- Total miles hiked: 15.8
- From mile marker 388.6 to 404.4
- From a tentsite after little hump mountain to mountaineer falls shelter
- High temp: 50 and partly sunny
- Low temp (morning): 15 with wind chill
- low temp (tonight): 40 and windy
- Total ascent: 2,894 feet
- Total descent: 4,908 feet

Thanks for following along. 
Tyler M.

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