Pushing Through “The Suck” (ECT Day 101)

“Wish that I was on ol’ Rocky Top

Down in the Tennessee hills

Ain’t no smoggy smoke on Rocky Top

Ain’t no telephone bills…

I still dream about that

Rocky Top, you’ll always be

Home sweet home to me

Good ol’ Rocky Top

Rocky Top, Tennessee” 

– The Osborne Brothers (1967)

• Hiked Today: 12.1 miles
  • Appalachian Trail (178 – 190.1)
• Total Hiked: 2,114.6 miles
• Total Paddled: 99.5 miles

Weather: 35 – 45°F, cloudy, rain, hail, big flaky sideways snow, sleet, windy, we had it all except the sun

Elevation: 4,090 – 5,520 feet

Mollies Ridge Shelter to Derick Knob Shelter 

A little before 7:00 am I heard the first cable being pulled as someone retrieved their food hang from up high. I started to get things ready and went and grabbed Luke and I’s bags. We woke to being enveloped in a cloud, but the rain had held for the morning pack up. We got ourselves ready and around 8:00 am hit the trail.

The morning walk began with a steep uphill which we weren’t too excited about, but it was short and soon we got some down. We pretty much continued non-stop conversation of catching up. After a few years of not chatting often, there’s lots of topics to cover haha.

3 miles ahead, we stopped at the Russell Field Trail Shelter. It was nice and great to have second break underneath since the rain started off and on again. I couldn’t shake the chills this morning. Luke seemed to manage that better. The coffee helped and I was even treated to some French vanilla creamer that Luke packed. Turned out to be a stellar brew.

A peak inside… not all had the tarp over the open side, but many did here in the park.

Getting going again, things were quite swell. We were moving along nice, enjoying ourselves, and keeping a curious attitude towards the serene forests we walked through… trees growing right out of /on top of rocks and boulders. We wondered at the flowers too, some open and some closed up tight.

The uphill trend continued steadily for the first half of the day. We made our way up to 5,400 feet elevation at “Rocky Top,” where we did a quick lunch break. Both of us had tortillas and peanut butter. I added some honey to my wrap and then I of course had an assortment of other snacks as well.

The rocky summit of Rocky Top… funnily, the trail starts going up shortly after this again to continue to Thunderhead Mountain, which is a few hundred feet higher. It would be our high point for the day.

Things were pretty much in a fog then, but it was nice to sit and get some energy inside us. Two other hikers were up there who we’d leap frog with some the rest of the day. To celebrate the moment, I ended our break by playing the classic Tennessee tune, “Rocky Top” and that got us grooving up the trail.

A short ways ahead we filled up our water supplies at a spring just off trail. That’s when things took a turn for the day. Up until that point it’d been light and off and on precipitation. At the spring, it started hailing, getting windy, and again things became very chilled. My hands and fingers are always where I feel the cold the most and my smittens (sock mittens) were not designed for this extreme of weather!

It really felt like a total change after the spring. On top of the weather, our motivation and morale dipped. Or at least, I’ll speak for myself and say mine did. We had checked the FarOut app it was 3.7 miles still to go to the Derick Knob Shelter. Time dragged, the trail seeming to wind onward and upward forever. Luke was a freaking champ though.

It wasn’t late when we got to the shelter, maybe around 4:30 pm. We were quite soaked though and unsure the best order to go about our camp tasks. Upon arriving, it was clear we weren’t getting a spot inside unfortunately. This was further felt when the ridge runner told us as much and suggested we find a spot of already disturbed ground to tent acknowledging that it might be “in a mud puddle.”

Truthfully, there wasn’t a good vibe there when we arrived. We couldn’t figure it out, but it certainly wasn’t the encouraging “we’re all in this together” AT hiker attitude I’ve experienced thus far. Instead, we were ignored and even shunned aside a bit, I felt. Some did help. For example, I was grateful for the guy who pointed out and explained the trail to water. That was what we decided to do first.

The trail down to the water source was muddy and slick and I cursed out loud at my frustrations when I slipped. Freezing at this point and not excited about the continued wet prospects of the evening, I was not in a good mood. Back underneath the shelter overhang, we checked the radar. There seemed to be a bit of a break around 6:00 pm, so we figured we’d cook and eat and do all the things before going to set up our tents, hoping we might get a window to do so dry.

These are our disgruntled faces. You sometimes hear the phrase “embrace the suck” when thru-hiking. Pretty sure some other hiker said it to me in passing this evening, but I wasn’t having it. In the moment, it was just get through it.

Even with the shelter to cook under, this was one of my most uncomfortable times on trail that I can remember. That’s talking the entire Pacific Crest Trail and Continental Divide Trails. The cold was in my bones and my feet felt like frozen blocks of ice. Everything was just slightly damp and we felt we wouldn’t get truly warm until inside the sleeping bags.

Scouring our food down as quickly as possible, we checked the weather forecast again and it no longer showed that window of stopping. We had to face it. Once our packs were all prepped for a quick setup and our food bags hung up the cable, we set forth to find out spots. They weren’t great… a tad lumpy looking, but we went into super speed mode eager to get inside. Taking on a hybrid tag team style, Luke helped with my tent fly and then I helped with his, and then we each barreled underneath. 

Relief came, but it was subdued since I struggled to get my feet warm. Everything seemed wet still and I was worried about the cold overnight. My sleeping quilt was pretty much dry and my bottom base layers too, so that was a positive, but there would be no sleep socks tonight. Outside, I could hear others struggling and helping one another get their tents up. It sounded like one woman packed up her tent altogether realizing it was drenched to go try and cram into the shelter. Luke and I could talk to one another since we were pretty close, so occasionally we’d shout over the rain to check that the other was doing alright. 

Laying in my tent, I had enough service to text and reached out to my trail fam telling of our misery. Their words comforted me… 

“Hang in there. It’s the Smokies. There might be shuttles that will get you into Gatlinburg, good for a quick resupply or overnight… It’ll get better when you drop down in elevation. Hang in there. You got this. 

And,

“Hang in there! Glad you have a buddy to embrace the suck with, Stevie!”

And,

“Bring on the sun! I think I took 2 zeros in Gatlinburg to wait out weather 😂. It was awesome.”

Later on, we’d talk with another hiker and she’d tell us she saw us come in and felt so bad for us being already soaking wet and then having to set up in the cold sleet. She said the  turning away of the shelter space made her think of the Titanic movie when people were being turned away from the life rafts! Yikes.