Skywalker--Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Walker Page B

“clothes-lined.” In the rain I would wear my baseball cap with the bill pulled low and the hood of the marmot jacket pulled to my eyebrows. This reduced my line of vision to just a few feet. Many times in the rain I would be walking along, only to have my head ram into some low-lying limb. Every time it rained I worked on my technique to avoid such headers, but never completely solved the problem.
    As for trying to stay dry—forget it. All that expensive equipment we had purchased, with expert advice about how this or that piece would keep you from getting wet, ran into overwhelming reality on days like this. A hiker just had to become resigned to listening to the staccato patter of rain drops bouncing off synthetic equipment as your backpack, clothing, and persona became ever more water-logged.
    A couple hundred yards farther up the mountain someone called out, “Skywalker.”
    It was Tigress, hiding under some thick rhododendron bushes that lined the trail. Joining her, I asked “Do you think we should head back down the mountain? We’re heading to exposed areas.”
    “No, that’s not a good idea,” she said calmly. The minute there was a letup in the intensity of the rain we hightailed it to the Sassafras Gap Shelter and settled in for what would be a long, miserable afternoon.
    As the afternoon progressed, the shelter filled up, and the conversation was lively. One couple, Greenpeace and Greenleaf, were doing their doctoral theses in environmental science and couldn’t wait to get to the Smokies to view all the rare plant species there. Indeed, the southern Appalachians in Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee are said to boast greater biodiversity than any deciduous forests in the world.
    “We’re from Asheville,” Greenpeace said. “It’s the San Francisco of the South.” The counterculture element on the trail was strong.
    Normally quite social, I sat curled up in the corner of the shelter, in a sullen mood. I have always been cold-natured, due to my tall, thin frame. Nonetheless, I had lived through ten Chicago winters. But the stark difference was that on frigid days there I always went inside at the end of the day. Out here I was stuck outside with neither the prospect of warmth, nor a good night’s sleep.
    As things stood I had only done 5.9 miles for the day, which was not a pace that would get me to Maine before winter.

     
    The next day was to be the coldest single day I experienced on the AT. It was a sharp climb to Cheoah Bald, and the visibility steadily worsened. The one thing I could see was a tarp set up right at the top of the bald, just ten feet from a steep dropoff! Is this person crazy or am I just a wimp?
    I practically ran to get off the exposed bald, but then it began to sleet. This brought out my worst phobias, and I hurried to catch up with Seth. Not having expected weather quite this bad, I had taken off my long johns before hiking, and didn’t want to slow down to put them on. This was a mistake; the same one I had made on Blue Mountain in Georgia.
    “The nice thing about sleet,” Seth said, “is that you don’t get wet.” The guidebook was wrong. The topography in this section was ferocious and made all the more difficult by the high winds buffeting us. Once again I was urinating every fifteen minutes. “Looks like you’re hypothermic again,” Seth noted in half droll, half-serious fashion.
    We finally descended steeply into Steccoah Gap. But the powerful wind howling through the gap made it impossible to take the usual break before beginning the climb out of the gap.
    The ATC guidebook didn’t even mention a climb out of Steccoah Gap, which was a grievous oversight. Had I known what lay immediately ahead I might have tried to hitchhike somewhere on the highway that runs through the gap. The trail ran straight up the mountain, with the wind tearing at me from the west. It was impossible to keep up with Seth as he galloped ahead. That was a bad sign for the simple