Looking back this is one of the hardest days on the whole trail. We walk 12 miles - the longest distance we had covered in a day, so far. We climb a total of 2800 ft and descend 3200 ft. And we do it in mist, heavy rain and a thunderstorm. We are drenched and it is the closest we get to hypothermia on the AT. What heroes! For more details of our misery, read on, dear reader.
We wake up in mist and very cold temperatures. We hike uphill for most of the day. The heavy rain sets in early, and we discover that our rain jackets are not up to the task. We did buy them in 1995 so I guess their time had come. It meant I had cold water dribbling down my back and I was wearing all my polypro gear - including long johns. Our first 7 days had been beautiful and hot - weren't we lucky to get such a great start.
We arrive at the Tray Mt Shelter after a steep climb and find 8 hikers huddled together wearing all their clothes, rugged up in beanies, wearing sleeping bags, sitting out the thunderstorm. One of these hikers is Jamie, who we get to know later on the trail, when I give him his trail name of 'tea-cozy' because the beanie he wears looks exactly like a tea-cozy. He is wearing his tea-cozy in the shelter at Tray Mt.and looks really cute. (For those of you who are American, a beanie is a knitted woollen hat, usually with a pom-pom on the top, and a tea-cozy is a knitted woollen cover which goes over a tea-pot to keep the tea warm while it draws. A tea-pot is what Australians use to make a cup of tea, when you don't use tea bags. Got it?)
We have a quick lunch and decide to keep going to stay warm. We battle through the rain and lightening all afternoon to reach the shelter at Deep Gap. A venture scout group is in residence.
We set up camp and discover our mattresses are soaked, our dry clothes are soaked, and the temperature is dropping quickly. We are able to pitch the tent and retreat to a warm (relatively) space.
The scary thing about this day of hiking was that we were 'green' and lacked understanding of USA hiking conditions. We had never seen a lightening storm like it. At one stage we leapt into a ditch to protect ourselves, but the rest of the time, we just plugged on. We should have stopped and waited for the lightening to stop or move away. Later in the season several AT hikers were killed by lightening. The rule is to seek cover and wait it out. We just didn't know and nobody told us. Over the next few months we experienced a lot of lightening - so different to Australian hiking, and learned to treat it with more respect.
There are no photos taken on this day - it was too wet and cold to stop and take out the camera. We don't need a photo. It is memorable without them.
Our first wet night and the discovery that our tent has a leaky seam, we wake up to puddles under the air mattress. So begins a long saga of trying to find the leak(s) and repeated seam sealing with a diverse array of glues at every dry spell after a rainy night.
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