Day 18

Well, today started interesting. Late at night, it started raining and I fell asleep to the sounds of it hitting my tent. (I love my rubber earplugs! Best gear I have!) I was prepared for the temp to drop but instead, I started sweating and pulled off most of my layers. Sometime REALLY early in the morning, I woke up to a chill. It wasn’t raining anymore so I assumed the low front finally reached us and I put all my layers back on. When my watch started vibrating my 6am alarm, I awoke to see my tent was sagging and almost touching my face. It was darker than I expected. That’s when I realized my tent was covered in snow and I started hitting the tent to knock it off. My Tempe thermometer said it was 37 inside my tent but when I set it outside, it dropped to 21.2 degrees. It’s amazing how much warmer you can be inside a tent! After packing up a frozen tent, drinking a hot instant breakfast with a coffee packet, I hit the trail with my hiker partner since Neels Gap: Generic. We made it 3.6 miles to Rock Gap where there was a large tent set up for trail magic. It was amazing! So warm in the tent with a gas fire burning and I got to fill my water bottles and ate one donut, two cheeseburgers and a hot dog with a bag of chips. I am so very thankful for those guys and their kids. While Generic caught a shuttle from there to town, this trail magic strengthened my resolve to finish my goal and continue to Winding Stair Gap where Bobby the Greek picked me up and took me to my hotel with a bunch of other hikers. I now have my own warm hotel room at the Hilltop Inn and I plan to warm up, clean up, do laundry, get a few things from the outfitter and figure out food for the next leg of my journey. Next stop should be the Nantahala Outdoor Center.