Report on Smokies

So, here I am in Gatlinburg, TN, nestled into the foothills of the Smokey Mountains. The last three days of walking since I entered the Smokies at Fontana Dam, NC have been particularly treacherous. The Smokies are home to some of the roughest terrain on the trail and I happened to arrive right at the tail end of a rather sizable snow storm which deposited about a foot of snow or more over everything higher than about 3000 feet. After the climb into the park up Shuckstack Mountain, I haven't been lower than about 5000 feet so it's pretty much been a winter wonderland. Hiking in snow presents some novel challenges. Prior to the last three days, I often awoke to light dustings or maybe an inch or two of accumulation, but nothing that impedes progress to a noticeable degree. Having to negotiate the trail with a foot of snow on the ground is quite another thing entirely. Monday was my first day in the park and snow was continually falling into my boots so that by the end of the day they were thoroughly soaked, after a night of 15ish degree weather (which is pretty much the standard so far), I awoke to find my boots frozen solid. The next day things got even more grim. Walking through snow mostly makes one hungry and tired, but things get worse as soon as the sun comes out and snow turns into slush. The trail tends to be recessed four to six inches from the surrounding landscape, so on Tuesday with the sun beating down all day, the trail turned into a canyon of six inches of shitty whitish brownish slush. I only walked about 12 miles on Tuesday, but it was by far my grumpiest day on the trail. It was hot and cold at the same time and pretty much every step sucked for one reason or another. Wednesday morning started out pretty rough as well, the slush had turned into Ice over night and so getting up or down hill (which is pretty much all one does on the Appalachian Trail) became rather a harrowing ordeal, but by the end of the day, the trail started to poke through and there was a lot more brown than white on the ground.