The tent is wet and packing up in the rain is difficult. Disaster strikes. Digby leaves his gloves behind in the tent. The tent is folded and packed away and he decides that he can cope without them. This proves to be a really bad decision. Without his gloves he suffers frostnip and it takes many months for the feeling in his fingers to return.
The weather has closed in with very high speed winds and we are walking in cloud with 20 metres or less visibility. We have to go over two mountains, and are faced with 500 ft of climbing in exposed and very hypothermic conditions. At times we wonder if we are still on the trail. Just below the summit, the wind tries to blow me off the trail. We just keep going. Three hours later we finally descend into forest and get protection from the wind and the cold. As we reach the lower elevations it is warm and sunny. It is hard to believe that the weather is raging at 6,000 ft with wind gusts over 50 mph.
We reach the highway and turn left to walk one mile to a hostel called Mountain Harbour. The house is on the hill, they have a hostel in the stables and a campsite along the river. We choose the campsite, and camp next to the goat paddock. Turtle arrives later in the day and camps next to us - we havent seen her since Day 21 on the climb into the Smokies when she passed us on the climb up the first ridge.
At 5pm we join the shuttle into 'town' to shop for groceries. On the way back we stop to buy beer/cider at the 'speakeasy', a tiny old shed which is the only place which sells alcohol in 20 miles. When we walk in, it feels like we are on a movie set of a 1950s movie with all these oldtimers sitting around the bar who stop talking when we walk in.
We join the dinner shuttle with 13 people in the vehicle. I keep thinking - surely this cant be legal. Nobody seems to care.
No comments:
Post a Comment