Long Branch Shelter 2091 to Muskrat Creek Shelter 2112.2 (21.2 miles, 2112.2 total miles)
It was my coldest night on trail, as we all did our best to stay as warm as possible in the 24 degree air. It began raining shortly after we laid down, so in the morning everything was covered in a layer of frost.
I woke up with my alarm at 7AM, when the sky was light and Flamingo had his bag almost fully packed next to me. The air was frigid, and with dismay I found that my ursack was frozen solid to the tree I’d tied it to.
It took 10 minutes of breathing hot air through my hands on the triple knot I’d made to thaw the ropes enough to dislodge the bag. It then took another 10 minutes of holding the top of my ursack between my knees to thaw the knots holding the bag shut.
In the meantime, my body was growing colder, and doing anything took extreme effort. Removing my snacks for the day and putting them in my fanny pack, packing my bag, making hot coffee and oatmeal all seemed nearly impossible. Only the liter of water in my Nalgene that I’d used as a hot water bottle overnight was thawed. All the other water I had was frozen solid in its respective containers.
The rest of the group had come down from the loft and were on the same struggle bus as me, while Shade Tree was long gone, and Flamingo hiked out after not too long. Enigma and Peggy were awake, but still in their sleeping bags, which I envied deeply.
Soon my fingers and toes were burning with cold. I hadn’t changed out of my sleeping clothes, rather had added on my rain jacket on top of my puffy now that it was dry from the rain the day before. I had a pair of insole warmers in my bag, but wanted to save them for tomorrow morning since I knew it would be just as cold.
We were still well within freezing temperatures, as we learned when Milky Moo poured a bit of water in his cup and it froze immediately. Lentil and Looseleaf were having a very hard time cleaning their cook pot from the same problem. When someone mentioned filtering water quick and putting their water filter right back in their pocket, I realized I may have messed up, as mine had been out of my quilt and exposed to the elements for at least an hour.
I ate three packets of oatmeal, but could only finish half my coffee. Even thought the drink itself was hot, my toes were so cold I started crying and dumped out the rest of the coffee. Not exactly leave no trace, but I wasn’t near a water source to contaminate, and I was desperate to start hiking in the hopes of warming up.
I was shocked when I saw I was on the move at 8:30, as it had felt like the longest morning I’d ever had on trail. I climbed the side trail to the AT, then started up the climb to Albert Mountain, where the 100 mile remaining (or traveled so far for NOBOs) marker famously was located.
Milky Moo and Painkles passed me early on the first part of the climb, then when things leveled out for a mile or so, I walked through rhododendron tunnels for a while. I could see frost all over the trail, and little ice curls that formed next to it in spots. Depending what side of the ridge I was on, the trail could appear more or less icy.
The good news was that the leaves had decayed quite a bit and weren’t as slippery as before, even covered in a fine layer of frost. It took quite a while, but eventually feeling began to return to my fingers and toes, though my thumbs remained stubbornly cold.
I unzipped my rain jacket and puffy, putting both trekking poles in one hand at a time and stuffing the other hand in my coats, nestled next to my fleece to warm up, which worked quite nicely. Happy caught up and passed me a while into the climb, and at Glassmine Gap I saw I was only half a mile from the fire tower, so very thankful I’d had a climb to start the day to warm me up.
I saw Milky Moo, Painkles, and Happy a bit ahead, where they’d made a 100 marker out of rhododendron leaves at the actual 100 miles remaining point. Due to reroutes, these places often changed throughout the years. After Happy managed to set up her phone on trekking poles to take a photo of us, we continued up the last, very steep, part of the ascent.
I arrived a minute or two after the others, who’d climbed up the tower, though Painkles admired the view from the bottom, which was still quite nice. The tower itself was locked “to prevent vandalism” according to an informational sign. When Lentil and Looseleaf arrived, we made the number 100 with our bodies, commemorating the occasion.
Milky Moo and Painkles left first, and I followed after several minutes later, while the others stayed behind, coordinating our visit with Looseleaf’s dad. His dad had a house in Clayton, a trail town in Georgia, and we were all going to visit for a couple nights and slackpack for one day, but there were quite a bit of logistics involved in that for eight of us traveling together.
The first .3 of the descent was rocky, extremely steep, and a little treacherous with frozen and painful knees, but it was also beautiful with more views. It appeared to have snowed in the Smokies as far as I could tell, and I thought to myself I didn’t know what I’d do if I woke up in the Smokies this morning at 6,000 feet.
At a gravel road, I stopped to remove my rain pants, jacket, and puffy, leaving all my other layers on. I passed a group of car campers playing very loud music, but I kept my earbuds out of my ears for the moment, knowing I was hiking another long day and wanting something to look forward to later.
As I descended for a couple more miles, my brain was in a poor place. I’d asked the others if they thought I’d ruined my water filter by keeping it out for an hour and the general consensus, and my gut feeling, was that I had. That meant I needed to buy another water filter right before the end of the trail, which felt a little pointless. I’d also have to borrow from someone else till we got to town, and knowing that gave me a dependent feeling I didn’t like.
I knew I’d survived the night and morning, but it had been so unpleasant that I began ruminating heavily about the following night and morning that would be more of the same. Possibly also because I was deprived of my usual morning caffeine and it somehow felt too cold to eat anything while I hiked, my mood sunk lower and lower.
I began feeling like I wasn’t going to finish, and this extreme cold was going to be the thing that ended my goal of finally thru hiking the AT. I was going to get right to the finish line, and fail again. I could quit now, nothing was stopping me from finding the closest road and simply going home.
Nothing except the fact that I knew I’d never let myself do that. It was nice to know it was an option, I supposed, as I walked past streams of water cascading off trailside moss, and flecks of ice resembling snow broke off tree branches and fell around me.
It unsettled me to actually not want to be on trail, as that had happened so sparingly throughout this trip. It was strange to end this way, when I knew how long the days had been and how wonderful the weather was when I summited Katahdin. It would be such a treat to finish in those conditions, but I also knew the NOBOs had been dealing with this cold at the beginning of their hikes.
The main difference to me at the moment was that, in the beginning, most would be thru hikers travel around 8-10 miles per day as their bodies adjust to the new demands of carrying a pack up and over mountain after mountain. As far as I know from secondhand knowledge, they usually finished the day before dark and would have fires in the evening.
For us, we are going through the cold and dark while hiking 20 mile days, night hiking into camp almost every evening now, no time for anything except making dinner by headlamp and going to bed.
I climbed out of Betty Creek Gap, feeling very alone right then. I was strangely particular about wanting to hike alone during the day, even among a group, possibly because of my prior experience of being a flip flopper surrounded by NOBOs.
Through my journey of always being the slowest, to fighting to being one of the fastest, to my pace slowing back down with the accumulated miles and added weight, I felt weird about hiking with others, afraid to push myself too hard into hiking fast, or finding that I couldn’t keep up. My competitive nature had been overcome largely, but that had mostly been by making myself slow down in northern VA, and removing the temptation to compete with others by purposefully hiking alone.
I climbed an easy hill to a beautiful view, grateful the overall terrain of the day was the easiest we’d had in quite some time. The view was lovely and in a directly sunny spot, the first real warmth I’d felt all day. I made myself keep going, though, wanting to get the next couple miles done so I could break at the shelter ahead.
After another small climb and gradual descent, I reached Carter Gap Shelter at 12:30, after passing through a very icy section that glimmered beautifully in the sun. Yet I was feeling lower than low as I checked the logbook and saw I’d gotten to yet another shelter with a missing pen, unable to even express myself there.
I used the privy, and when I returned Lentil, Looseleaf, and Happy had arrived. Lentil asked me if I was better than this morning, and I told her truthfully I felt a lot worse. She asked if she could give me a hug, and gave me such a sincere and caring one that it made me tear up all over again.
I told the others how I was feeling, and they couldn’t have been more encouraging and kind to me. I felt better after getting my feelings off my chest, and being with people who understood deeply how I felt. Soon they had me feeling less alone and wretched, as I unpacked my whole bag to eat tortillas with peanut butter for lunch.
Normally I’d already have my lunch on the outside of my pack to access easily, but it had been far too cold to do that this morning, and there was no way I was making myself eat a cold packet of chicken with my tortillas in the still frigid cold. Lentil and Looseleaf shared a pistachio snack mix with me and some of their vegan noodle dish, which was hot and quite good.
A section hiker named Happy Hour arrived, and while waiting for her group she told us about her three AT thru hike attempts and how she was now sectioning the spots she’d missed instead. By then, I was cracking jokes with the others, several at my own expense, which somehow seemed to help.
Lentil was adamant that they’d never let me quit, and when Looseleaf riffed on Mean Girls and told me “Get in the tramily, loser, we’re going to Springer” we all howled with the type of laughter that can only come from the deep camaraderie that is created from shared suffering on this trail.
Nevertheless, it touched me deeply to be considered a member of the trail family, something we hadn’t talked about but I had rather fallen into. I hadn’t been intending to hike with anyone else, had been planning on remaining solo till the end, to prevent the type of heartbreak I’d encountered so many times on this trail before.
Yet as much as it had become extremely beneficial for me to have that solo journey, I also had been on a journey of community on this hike as well. Maybe the lesson was to find the balance between the two, weathering the transitions with grace, and learning to enjoy both experiences equally.
When Lentil said I should hike with them, I readily accepted, and we all headed out after a nice long lunch break in which I’d drank my usual afternoon dose of caffeine and was feeling a lot better with company. In fact, I teared up again as I followed behind the others, truly feeling cared for and with the people I was meant to be with, so touched to feel at home with a trail family again.
After not long, we hit the 2100 mile marker, and as Happy pointed out, it would be the last one we’d see; there would be no 2200 marker, as the trail concluded at 2194.3 miles this year. After a few pictures and congratulations to each other, we continued on, traversing a couple tricky water sources, descending to Coleman Gap, as the gaps all seemed to have names this far south.
After a small climb, we started on a bigger, 2.7 mile climb of only 900 feet, but finally I was beginning to heat up. I removed my fleece and rolled up my leggings, hat and gloves finally packed away. Happy lost us on the climb, and I put in music to keep up with Lentil and Looseleaf, which I did for the most part.
We found Happy having a snack at the spur trail to the summit of Standing Indian Mountain. Looseleaf was the only one to take the .1 side trail, while I put my fleece back on and ate a Snickers. As we all continued down the 1.5 drop to the shelter, a couple more views opened up, which we stopped a couple times to admire.
Happy had fallen back on the descent, as she was a faster uphill than downhill hiker, but we thought we heard her catch up to us just before the shelter. When we arrived there off the blue blaze, we were all then surprised to see Enigma had hiked up behind us instead.
We said hi to Enigma, and while Looseleaf used the privy we found out he’d lost his headlamp and was hoping to night hike with us to the next shelter using the light from ours. Happy arrived soon after, and we all headed off together, though Happy dropped back after a bit so it was just the four of us again.
We descended a couple miles to Deep Gap with the sun low in the sky, then began climbing for another 2.5 miles, during which the spectacular leftover colors from sunset could be seen through the trees to our right. The sky was vibrant hues of deep yellow, orange, and pink, becoming more and more beautiful, even after we put our headlamps on.
It was rather distracting, trying to catch glimpses of it and continuously turning my head to my right, trying not to trip over rocks when I wasn’t looking. I refocused as we continued on toward the shelter, a few miles left to go.
We stopped to appreciate the juncture of Chunky Gal Trail before traversing a very flat mile to the shelter, Lentil telling us about a podcast she’d been listening to. When we arrived, Milky Moo and Painkles were making dinner, while Flamingo was getting settled into the shelter. He’d brought us bags of chips from trail magic that we’d missed earlier, which was very nice of him.
I made buffalo chicken mac n cheese for dinner, feeling in much better spirits than I’d started the morning with. I stayed in the shelter with Flamingo, Enigma, and another thru hiker I didn’t know, while the others tented.
We made a plan to wake up early to catch the shuttles tomorrow, and I went to bed laying head-in the shelter this time, because Flamingo said it would be warmer. It was supposed to be a low of 27 in the evening, three degrees warmer than the night before, and I was beginning to think every degree counted these days.
The miles I’d hiked with the others today had absolutely flown by compared to the morning. My friends had made a huge difference in my perseverance today and even enjoyment of the second half of the day. I was grateful as could be for them, and very excited to sleep in a warm bed for the next couple nights. The trail certainly made me appreciate things I’d taken for granted most of my life, and that was a lesson I wouldn’t soon forget.