March 26 - 14.9 / 123.5

This morning I woke up and tried to get a good internet connection. However, I couldn't get anything long enough to get my post out for yesterday. So make sure you read it below. I did get a connection long enough though to see that my friend Courtney had her baby. Congrats to her, TK, and AJ on the addition to the family.

I feel like most of today was spent hiking just to stay warm. The day was very dreary and hazy. Some places were kind of dark to walk through. Brad described some of the path as an Ewac (sp?) village. It fit. We also had more snow on the ground and were occassionally pelted with ice falling from the trees.

At 9.2 miles for the day we made it to the top of Wayah Bald. We ended up having lunch in the doorway to a bathroom beside the parking lot as that was the only place to escape the cold and mist. Afterwards, we were hoping the fog/haze would burn off to see the Smokies from an observation tower, but that was not the case. We made a 3 second stop and kept going.

A little down the path, I stopped to us a privy at a shelter. A privy is pretty much an outhouse for a hiker. Brad had taken another path to go get water. Will was with me, but took off as I was putting on my pack and was gone before I knew it. I went back to where all the trails met, but didn't see anyone. Not knowing where people were I just started to hike. I hiked by myself for about two hours and only saw one guy. I stopped to look at the map and Brad came rolling up. Neither of us knew who was ahead and who was behind. We hiked together until we caught up with Stickerbush and Danger Mouse. All of us the made it to the shelter where we found Will.

The shelter was already full. I have yet to stay in a shelter, but that is fine with me. A tent gives me my personal space. All of us hiked a little down the trail and set up our tents on a ridgeline. About 30 minutes later the sun came out enough to heat us up a little bit and finally burn off the fog. The view through the trees is great, and all of us are looking forward to a good sunrise.

Mike, from Ukraine, stopped by and said he was going to hike on a few more miles. We hope to meet up with him later. All of us had dinner with the best meal going to Will. He scored some olive oil from the pizza place yesterday. He cooked some noodles in it and added some tuna. It was very good.

All of us are heading to bed fairly early tonight. Tomorrow we are hiking into NOC and will spend our first zero day there. Also, my friend Elizabeth is hiking south from the NOC tomorrow to met us on the trail and day hike from there. Before I go, I was told I had to talk about this noise. All of us keep hearing was sounds like a ball dropping from the ridgeline we are staying on. I think it is some to do with rock or granite being pulverized, but it is kinda strange.

Speaking of strange, we learned more about the guy I blogged about the other day. It appears that people are referring to him as "Wildman." Supposedly the markings on his face are self tattoos and he has more on his legs. We were told that he is carrying around a machete and was seen cutting a tree for like three days straight. No one really knows how he ended up on the trail, but we were told it has been a good thing for him as he is discovering himself. Don't really know what that means, but I hope it is a good thing. The trail teaches each his own, and I wish him the best. I hope he stays warm and safe as it looked like he really wasn't prepared, but I could be wrong. That is all I have tonight.

TGIF even though that doesn't mean much out here. Out, BT.