day 3, and rain

Tonight we're high in the Smokies and rain drizzles plasantly outside the shelter. We're tired after a long day which nearly had us stopped 8 miles back after the initial ascent out of Davenport Gap. The climb took us about 4000 ft. up over the course of 4 miles. Yesterday evening, Eliza's knee starting giving her a lot of trouble as we descended from a similar height on the other side of the Gap, and today, all morning long she was in a great deal of pain. We ate a good meal of oatmeal, fortified with flax, soy, sunflower seeds, dried apples and bananas at around 12 pm and pushed on a bit further until stopping at 2:30, when Eliza thought she might have to call it a day. We got out the park map and figured what we would do in case her injury was really a serious one which had to be dealt with.

We thought of giving ourselves another day. We considered altering our route to shorten the trip. We even considered just pushing on the Newfound Gap and calling it quits there. Finally we opted to get in touch with Jacob who had agreed to pick us up and ask for another day. I left a message and there we were, sitting at a shelter alone at 3 pm under what had suddenly turned into a beautiful, sunny sky. Since she had just popped a few of our pecious ibuprofin about a half hour before, Eliza thought it only right that we hit the trail for one last push and try to make th next shelter.

Now this ibuprofin stuff works wonders. Eliza and I flew over the next 8 miles, ascending another 1000 ft to well over 6500. We entered a high zone where snow and ice covered the trail and tall aromatic firs replaced the bare oaks and lush rhododenron bushes of the lower altitudes.

We came to the Tricorner shelter at about 7 pm as rain began to fall. 6 others were already inside, two of them busy kindling a fire in the stone hearth. An older man, the only other section hiker we've seen, was sitting up keen and interested in introducing himself and hearing about us.

We didn't care to talk much though. We were tired and had a dinner to cook. We had cous cous and home dried beans with fresh cauliflower and broccoli. It seemed like many of the guys knew each other from earlier sections of the trail and kept to themselves to some degree. They had their trail names and there inside jokes already well established. One hiker, Doc, showed up just a few minutes ago and successfully rousted the whole nest with the sweet promise of a nip off his plastic water bottle full of Scotch. It didn't sound bad, actually, but I was happily engrossed with this entry here.

The social scene here in the shelter is surprisingly adolescent--macho fraternity type humor abounds. One guy repeatedly makes note that they're all thru-hikers here, following himself up with an obnoxious grunt. I even heard someone snickering from outdoors (there's a tarp covering the entrance, due to the cold and rain) that "it's so funny how all the thru-hikers came out and the others didn't. They're like, 'We're on vacation, we don't drink'." It kind of gets my goat actually. I would hope that people would be a little more respectful. Then again, we don't all have to be friends with one another...

Eliza is sleeping now. I promised her a back rub but I missed my chance. After making such good time tonight, we may be switching back to the original plan for getting out of the park on Sunday. We'll have to see how we fare on another 20+ mile day tomorrow first.