Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [23]
When people asked me before my hike what I was most afraid of, I responded that being cold and wet was my worst fear. Yet there I was in the freezing rain, and I was singing.
I entered Tricorner knob Shelter at twilight and introduced myself to bundled faces wrapped in sleeping-bag cocoons. After my first day in the Smokies, I had only encountered a handful of thru-hikers. I felt a fond admiration for the fellow hikers bundled up on the wooden boards. They had all been outside today, doing the same thing that I had been doing, in the same conditions. We hadn’t hiked together, but we had shared a really hard day.
The four male hikers in the shelter related stories from the day’s adventures and their previous miles. However, one hiker had more stories than the rest. Dude was an older man who spent his time off-trail as a bartender, and his laid-back attitude and surfer jargon were the root of his trail name. He had a cinnamon-colored beard down to his chest that put the blossoming facial hair of the other male hikers to shame. His skin was tanned and dirty, and his voice was even more overpowering than the strong hiker-stench that surrounded him.
The stories, the smell, the weathered brow and beard—they all stemmed from the fact that Dude had not started his thru-hike from Georgia; he had started in Maine. Dude began his southbound expedition last fall. He had traveled nearly two thousand miles and only had two hundred left before he would reach Springer Mountain. I respected and envied Dude. He had accomplished something amazing: He had hiked here from Maine.
When I woke up, I knew that I was still in the South, but it felt like Maine outside. I had spent the night submerged in my sleeping bag, which was rated for twenty-degree temperatures, holding my fists between my knees in the fetal position and shivering to keep warm. The shelter was at 5,920 feet, and the weather and elevation combined to make it my coldest morning on the trail. At least the sound of rain no longer resonated from the roof above. Finally, the two straight days of precipitation had come to an end. Then I glanced outside . . .
SNOW.
It was 5:30 in the morning, and already several inches of white powder gleamed in the remaining moonlight.
Seized with adrenaline, I threw on my top layers, packed up my sleeping bag, and slipped on my shoes, which were covered with a thick layer of ice.
I ran outside and over to the bear cables to retrieve my food sack. I was still having trouble working the cables in good weather, and now that the metal lines and clasps were frozen it was almost impossible. I finally took hold of the sack and wrestled it off the wire. Under the snow that surrounded the food bag was a stiff layer of ice. I had to put it on the ground and step on the sack several times before it was malleable enough to fit in my pack. Forcing it into the compartment with cold fingers, I closed up my icy zippers, picked up my pack, and sped down the trail.
My mantra for the day was “hostel or bust.” According to the data book, I still had eighteen more miles inside the park and then I would reach a lower road with a hostel nearby. I didn’t know what to do in a snowstorm, I was almost entirely out of food, and I was wearing every item of clothing that I had. If I didn’t make it out of the snow and out of the Smokies today, I would be in big trouble.
The snow in the air was blinding, and it continued to build up on the ground, and since it