Day 26 – Mile 200

Once again out of fuel, I bummed from Birthday Boy, (my name for) one of the Warrior Expedition guys who was very kind and let me use his fuel canister for my breakfast.

I rushed a bit to get out of camp this morning, not wanting to be last out or stuck in a parade down the trail, so took my breakfast grits to go.

I was already feeling stressed about running out of food over the next few days and knew that I hadn’t packed myself enough calories for the hiking days that I was having back when I was still feeling sick at Fontana. My past self had only been able to stomach candy, and I had packed one ramen and tuna for each night. Good job, past self.

Probably for the reason of not having enough calories or protein plus the long extents of uphills, my legs really didn’t want to hike today. I was dragging myself up the hills and getting passed by everyone else who had left the shelter soon after me. I do my best to not let my ego get in the way when I’m hiking and really don’t care when people pass, but it was getting to the point that I was just feeling like I was not making the progress that I could be making if I was more well fed and rested.

So when I got to a shelter at noon with a good little group of other hikers (not calling them slow, we were just going the same pace today), I decided to take a long lunch in the sun and get some stretching in. I put out the call to the group that I was low on food and if anyone wanted to lose some pack weight, I was an open mouth. I was blessed by Juice, a hiker who donated a protein cookie to my cause! Now I’ve had a protein pop tart and a protein cookie in my hiking. The cookie was definitely better than the pop tart.

After a very nice rest on my pad in the sun and some glute stretches, (and the protein cookie), I was feeling refreshed, and took off down the trail. Everyone else from the lunch group had continued on, so I was on my own again, but I was grooving. While I didn’t catch up to any NOBO thruhikers for some time, I kept passing day hikers! That meant I was close to Kuwohi, but what were they doing? As far as I knew, the top of Kuwohi was the reason for being on this mountain, why were they hiking down the mountain for seemingly no reason??

And then I remembered that day hiking for fun is a thing for a lot of people, plus there’s another parking lot they may have parked at.

Either way, the feeling of “I must be close” to Kuwohi AKA the highest point of the Smokies (!?), lasted wayyy too long. The AT’s highest elevation of 6600ft kept feeling farther and farther away as the trail kept going down hills, then back up, then back down !!

At the higher elevations at least, there was an interesting change of scenery. The forest changed drastically from deciduous trees to purely pine.

The pines were just a beautiful distraction! The trail was still going up. I suppose to get to 6600ft you have to go up.

Someone at lunch earlier said “it’s all downhill from here”. Haha. Ha.

This last 200 miles of hiking is apparently some of the hardest mileage of the AT! At least until the Whites, which seems crazy until you’re hiking it and dying up every hill. I will believe it when I exit the Smokies and suddenly the trail seems “easier”.

Trail thoughts as I sweat up this mountain today: as someone from the West Coast, people think the Cascades and Olympics and Rockies are “real mountains” and the Appalachians are “hills”. I admit that I’ve been guilty of this thinking. I have been humbled. These are mountains, guys.

I don’t normally listen to music or podcasts or anything while hiking, preferring the quiet and birdsong (and leaving my ears open in case of bears or crazy mountain folk…or just fellow hikers saying hello). Today, I put my earbuds in. I listened to some of the most upbeat music I had, then switched to a podcast to distract myself from the hip-height stairs leading up, and up, and up, and up….

Eventually I caught up with one of the hikers from the lunch spot, and I told her “crying sounds like it would feel really good right now”.

And so I started crying. Up and up and up the last 0.5 mile to Kuwohi, dreaming of hot dog trail magic at the top. I quickly put on my sunglasses and composed myself as I realized the closer to the top meant more day hikers. One particular couple was super kind and offered me a more essential trail magic of ice cold water “fresh from the fridge filter”. Thank you, trail angels. While I dreamed of hot dogs, you saw my water bottles were empty and gave me fridge cold water.

Finally, I stumbled out of the woods and onto… a paved trail teeming with day hikers and tourists.

I was so confused.

I knew Kuwohi was a destination spot, but I did not expect this. This wasn’t just another rock outcropping with a fantastic view, like Standing Indian or Rocky Top. This was a tower on the mountain with a ramp and a wealth of families with small children coming up from their trip to Gatlinburg to see the sights.

And there were no hot dogs.

🙁

To the more entrepreneurialy minded folks out there: this would be the perfect spot for a hot dog cart with sodas and candy bars for tourists and hikers alike.

There were also no amenities such as bathrooms or water fountains for tourists or hikers unless you went about 0.5 down the paved footpath to the visitor’s center, which had bathrooms, no water fountains, and sold only room temperature soda water and small cups of trail mix. I did not personally visit this visitor’s center, but heard over and over from exhausted hikers that it wasn’t worth it.

After all that… At least I ran into more hikers, and I only had about 3 miles to go to get to camp tonight. I took my sweet time resting on the concrete bench and started chatting with Alex, a section hikers with lots of questions about thruhiking the AT!

One by one the others went on down the trail until it was just me and Alex killing time because I was absolutely not ready for 3 more miles!

After hanging out and people watching for 30-40min and probably getting sunburnt, we hiked on to the shelter together. As it turns out, we’re both engineers in similar fields, and the next 3 miles turned into a super fun brainstorming session of what business we would start. I joked about finding a business partner on trail, but I really do think we had some good ideas! 😁

After resting and finding a new hiking friend for the evening, my attitude got a lot better and I fully appreciated the beautiful forest we were hiking through to camp in.

The shelter and surrounding campground were stocked full of familiar faces once we finally arrived, including Four Squares!! We both yelled with excitement when we saw each other again, I was so happy I had caught up after having to turn around when she went into the Smokies just a few days before.

I borrowed her fuel for my dinner (last borrowing of fuel for this leg of the journey, I promise!), scarfed down my last two ramen and tuna packets, then spent a good amount of time laughing with other hikers around a fire about the consequences of burning poop in the woods vs packing it out when you poop your pants.