>>270394Next morning, Boots frozen, clothes frozen. Noooo. Slip last builder's bar with friend who was completely out of food. Now we're both completely out. Still snowing. Eleven miles to road over the highest point on the whole AT. Let's do this. Fourteen of us leave, I'm near the vanguard, cuting through the trail some. Snow has gotten so high and the tree branches are so weighed down that they hand at chest level and slap you with ice, like walking through a wall of hands. Five hundred feet from the summit, the storm broke and the clouds started to roll away. Glissaded up tower, hollered like a viking, snapped a photo, and got the fuck back down.
We finally got to the shelter those guys were headed to the day before. Footprints going in, none coming out. Two O'clock. Oh shit. Turns out they were alive, though one of them had gotten pretty hypodermic. They joined our ranks, and around five we got to the road. They had just finished plowing. Nearly twenty thru-hikers cast their burdens down and basked like lizards on the pavement. Then the tourists showed up to 'see the snow'. They started throwing snowballs at each other. (So help me god if one of those hits me!!!) A Prius full of rangers showed up. They get out and their eyes slid right over us. Eventually I wrangled a ride from a lady dropping off her husband and son for a back packing trip. I thanked her profusely, but cautioned the other two that it was pretty rough out there at the moment. They didn't want to waste the thirty dollars they paid. I washed my hands of it and went into Gattlinburg for a zero during spring break.
Went back up the day after, and it was super icy, though I zipped through it with my spikes, but then snowed another eight inches that night. Nope. Busted 25 miles in snow and slush to get the fuck out of the park. That night I slept at Fresh Ground's and he cooked a bunch of us Easter breakfast.
