Day 2 Saturday November 20, 2021 12.24 miles
That was the best sleep I’ve had on a trail!
Today we were planning to do 9.6 miles, but we had mileage to make up since we stopped early yesterday. Our 9.6-mile hike ended up being twelve miles!
From the get-go we were hiking up! Stopping when we did last night was a life saver because I'm not sure if I could have survived the elevation gain I was already tired from not being accustomed to the terrain. When you live on the Gulf Coast it's hard to train for hills. Where I live the only hills are bridge overpasses!
We came to a point where we could rest. Sitting for a few moments we encountered two hunters. It was nice seeing other people. We trudged on. We were expecting to come across a water source, but we hadn't. We were getting scared that it was dried up. Luckily, we ended up in this giant campground and to the right was a river. The water was cold, and so clear! We used Angie and Lauren's Sawyer Minis to fill up our bottles. I sat on a rock seat, looked down and a stick bug was crawling up my arm. Lauren came to my rescue and moved him. I changed seats, looked down and that bug was on me again! I decided then that my spirit animal is a stick bug! After our nice long break three hikers walked by, all men, all tall. They said they were heading towards the same shelter as us. Game on guys, we're going beat you to it! That was my motto, it was a fantastic way for me to stay motivated. The problem was they're tall guys, and standing at 5’3”, I'm the tallest in my group.
We set out again and came across another stream. This one we had to walk across stones to get to dry land. I nearly fell into the water when misjudged the stability of a rock. I did some awesome ninja moves and I stuck my landing like Simon Biles! I got a perfect ten in my head. Sadly, Angie did not have the same luck and she ended up falling in. Luckily, she didn’t get hurt or too wet largely because she has amazing waterproof shoes. The guys ended up taking a break there and therefore we were in line to be the first ones to the shelter.... that was still a million miles away.
We found a nice area to take a lunch break. Once again, we had to traverse rocks, this time they were large rocks and were mostly stable. It was nice to shed another layer and rest against the cool rocks. I collected more water for us. I'm not a big drinker on the trail and I drink even less when it's cold, but there are a few areas that don't have any water, so we wanted to be prepared. As we started to pack up our things and head to the shelter the guys passed us. Which we never returned the favor.
We knew that the shelter was .1 mi from the highest point on this mountain. Therefore we knew that we were going to be hiking up. So much up that we weren’t going to want to go up anymore. We got to an area that looked like it was our summit, I was so excited I knew the end was near and then I realized it was a false summit. If I looked to the left I could see a much taller mountain and we were headed that way. More up. At this point I was getting worried because we had hiked many miles and I had no clue how many more we had since we stopped early the night before. We kept hiking and eventually it evened out, it even went down a few times which really annoyed me to no end because you know that you must go up again if we were going to reach the summit! We got to one point where the trail was not clearly marked, Maprika wasn't opening completely for me, however it did for Angie. But we still couldn't figure out if we were to go straight or veer slightly to the right and go up. Lauren went one way, Angie and I went the other...we ended up in the same spot. I suggest fellow hikers go slightly to the right and up, it's a bit roomier that way.
After a mile or so more Angie told Lauren and I to go ahead of her. She said that the trail was clearly marked and she could do it on her own, she needed to slow down. I told her that was fine but if there was a split in the trail, we would wait for her. We finally got to the summit which was extremely anticlimactic. There was nothing to see just an outlook on the other side of the street, but you had to hike down and I was not about to do any more work than I needed to. At least there was no more up. We got back on the trail and hiked more than .1 miles but less than a mile to the shelter. Angie met us there about 5-10 minutes later. The guys that we had seen earlier were already there and all set up. The older guy had the same tent as I and camped outside the shelter. The one who looked to be the youngest set up on the backside of the shelter in his hammock. The other one set up on the platform in the shelter, no tent. I knew there wasn't enough space for all three of our tents. Angie set up her one person on the platform. The third guy offered his 2-person tent to us. Lauren and I both used 2-person tents however they're very small 2-person tents. We took him up on his offer and set it up on the ground in the shelter. It was so windy that one of us had to hold it in place until we put our sleeping bags/pads inside otherwise it would blow away! After cooking dinner I convinced everyone to play a game of Uno. I bought a set of RIDICULOUSLY small cards, they're about 1.5" tall. They are difficult to play when it's cold, windy, and you're wearing gloves, but we managed. After 1 game everyone was ready for bed. We ended up moving the tent up onto the platform. After getting into bed we heard someone come in the shelter. Three people and a dog joined us. I didn't realize how much warmer it is when you share a tent! I shed my gloves, hat, sleep sac and even unzipped my bag. That didn't happen the other nights. Most nights were around 36-38 degrees.
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