Day 25 - Icewater Shelter to Tricorner Shelter - 13 miles

We wake up to a shelter which is absolutely jam-packed with hikers. Most of them are weekend hikers. We eat breakfast, pack and leave quickly.

Alison is on the right wearing a red parka

Today with blue skies and sun, we cover 13 miles and are so impressed with ourselves.

The hike is beautiful - we are following a razorback ridge which is the border between North Carolina and Tennessee. We can stand astride the state boundaries. We walk through dark conifer forests, covered with moss - lord of the rings stuff.

This trail was cut in the 1930s by the conservation corps - unemployed men working
on an unemployment scheme by roosevelt i think.

Look at the size of this pack.

The only other hiker we see for the day is Fireball, a young German man who tells us he is studying maths at university and had to stop his studies to do 9 months of military service. He saw a documentary produced by National Geographic on the AT, and this made him decide to do the hike.

Two miles from Tricorner shelter and I sprain my ankle - just a quick twist with serious ramifications. I hobble slowly into the shelter, and soak the ankle under the spring. There are only four other hikers staying there with us tonight. After the crowded shelter last night this is a welcome relief. Two thru hikers - Paradise and Kindling who we have got to know, as well as a new hiker 'Tennessee', an older man walking all the trails of the Smoky Mountains National Park. We give him our spare map.