Holy hypothermia!

We knew the rain was coming on Thursday and Friday, but we were hoping that it would hold off until we could get packed up on Thursday morning. That did not happen. It started raining around midnight or so and didn't stop. We were camping at the Siler Bald Shelter which is at around 4700 feet and we woke up to a bit of ice on the top of the tent. We quickly packed up, ate some pop tarts, and got moving so we could stay warm.

We were planning on either hiking about 12 miles to a shelter or if that was full an additional 5 miles to the next shelter. The problem is that when it is raining the shelters fill up very fast and our tent and most of our stuff was wet. To make it worse we were hiking up the side of Wayah Bald which peaks at 5342 feet. Everything started freezing. Everything! The branches, the roots in the path, the grass. Even my backpack gathered about a quarter of an inch of ice on it to the point where I could barely open it up. MerryCline's hat had ICICLES on it for the love of pete. Our fingers were freezing and we had to keep moving to stay warm. We knew by the time we got to the top that we were in trouble and needed to get out of the weather as soon as we could. Our guide book listed a couple of shuttles and taxis and we called them all trying to get off the freezing top of that mountain. By this point there were large branches breaking from the trees around us because the ice buildup on them was so significant. On the trail these branches are called "widow makers" - you can figure out why. Larry finally answered his phone and told us he could be there in 45 minutes. We told him we were too cold to stand still and wait for him so we would be walking down the road toward him. He said he had to stop 3 times on the drive up the mountain to clear big limbs out of the middle of the road. When Larry arrived we threw our ice covered packs into the back of his car and clung to the heaters in the car like we had never felt heat before. He drove us down the twisting road back to Franklin, the town we had just been in the day before. It felt like a step in the wrong direction, but freezing didn't seem like a better option. We booked a room at the Microtel in Franklin, NC and spread our crap all over the room to thaw and dry out. The large pizza and cheesy bread sticks helped us to be happy with the decision to come into town and it hasn't stopped raining all day. We heard of some other hikers who woke up that morning to find their tents so frozen and stuck to the ground that they were not able to pack them and they had to leave them there and decided they would check back tomorrow to see if they had thawed out.

We booked a ride back up the ride in the morning to where we jumped off the trail and we plan on getting in about 12 miles tomorrow after icing our my knee in the hotel room and some vegging out in front of the TV.